You should not be trying to unhide and assign drive letters to the ESP(s). You don't add the other OS's ESP to the boot menu, you add the big NTFS partition that actually contains the entire OS.
In order to unhide an ESP and assign a drive letter to it, you first have to change it's partition type. The only time you want to do that is if you are going to build the boot files from nothing because they got corrupted for some reason.
I would try making a bootable USB flash drive of Kyhi's Recovery Tools:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums
Boot the computer from that, run the Macrium Reflect program and under the restore menu is a utility to Fix Windows Boot Problems. Run that utility and you can add both Windows installations to either/both boot menus contained in the ESP partitions.
That didn't turn out very well. Made the bootable, booted from it chose the macrium, went thru the steps chose disk to boot from, waited for finish, restarted, and it restarted to wrong drive and as appears now 10 is completely wiped. It did however create another admin account on 7 and gives me a choice there as to which account I want to log in with
Look at Disk Management from W7 to see if W10 was wiped, if it is the free space of that drive/partition should be 100%
It would be a good idea to label your C and D partitions, so you know what`s what,
they were c&d respectively depending which i was in at the time. first thing i noticed was in the bbotable i made it had as c&e which i figured ok the bootable probably took d. it booted to wrong drive (i had picked 10 for primary) and created am axtra admin account giving me a choice which to long in with. i got rid of the admin and restored my 10 and am now trying to figure out my next move. luckily had mirror copy on extra drive so am now here at this point
they were c&d respectively depending which i was in at the time. first thing i noticed was in the bbotable i made it had as c&e which i figured ok the bootable probably took d. it booted to wrong drive (i had picked 10 for primary) and created am axtra admin account giving me a choice which to long in with. i got rid of the admin and restored my 10 and am now trying to figure out my next move. luckily had mirror copy on extra drive so am now here at this point
upon further inspection 10 is still be labled E in 7 instead of D without ability to change back to D but in 10 7 is what is was and should be D and i can change it to E. ???????????????????????????????
this is what i have now and can someone explain to me how i am to accomplish a dual boot setup with this. so far, for whatever reason, the process is not working. i even tried once as the navylcmnd suggested using macrium's from a bootable winpese only to be left with 2 logins on 7 and now the extra drive is assigned a different letter when viewed from the other drive. i.e., from 10, 7 is D but from 7 , 10 is E,???
both are pro editions, 10 on ssd and 7 on hdd, both gpt, yet 10 shows one more partition than 7 does. thinking back on last dual boot or multi boot setup im thinking it was done with mbr?? i can boot to one or the other just fine from my boot override after post but its just a pain to do all the time. easier with my boot right into uefi app but still a pain and time consuming compared. ideas and instructions would be great as i am hesitant to try the macrium's again until i have stable and backups and figure out the drive letter deal. i think pics may be reversed in order3 is top 2 is bottom
When I said Label the drives, I meant label one Windows 7 and the other Windows 10.
It does not matter what letter the other drive has when you are booted into each OS, the one you`re using will always be C and the other drive will be D, E, F etc
If you want to change the other OS system letter, you can do that in Disk Management.
If there is another item ( say a dvd drive ) which is already using D, then you have to change that to another letter first before you can change the other drive to D
I always name the dvd drive Z
Please post a shot of Disk Management from Windows 7
In my opinion, (and this is just the way I prefer to do it) it is easier to just use the 1 time boot key to bring up the boot menu to choose which drive you want to boot into, this will always keep each drive independent from each other, you simply set your default drive (the OS you use mostly) to #1 in the bios so it boots to that OS on it`s own, then just use the 1 time boot menu to choose the other drive when you want to.
As far as W10 goes, after you have it setup the way you want it, you will barely notice the difference between it and 7, other than the user interface :) You will be fine, it`s just another OS :)
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