Dual boot Win7 and Win10 on seperate HDD's


  1. Chris Pear
    Posts : 3
    Win7
       New #1

    Dual boot Win7 and Win10 on seperate HDD's


    Hi all,
    I am sure that this has been asked a thousand times but I am new here so please bear with me.
    Th problem I have is that I loaded Win 10 on a separate HDD went to dual boot. The computer stared then it carried out a scan disk and happily deleted all the files needed to boot to win 10. I used the method of disconnecting my Win7 while installing Win10 onto the separate HDD however when I reconnected my Win7 disk and booted the computer carried out a scan disk as I said. Can someone help me please as I would like to load Win10 and then run it for a while and get used to it before moving completely over to it.
    Regards
    Chris


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  3. Samuria
    Posts : 8,101
    windows 10
       New #2

    Welcome to the forum. For duel boot you have to install the old o/s first as it wont undersatnd the new boot files from newer o/s. The simplest way is to use free virtual box Oracle VM VirtualBox and run it as a virtual pc as it doesnt effect paritions or boot files
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  4. Chris Pear
    Posts : 3
    Win7
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Dual Boot win7 and win10


    Samuria said:
    Welcome to the forum. For duel boot you have to install the old o/s first as it wont undersatnd the new boot files from newer o/s. The simplest way is to use free virtual box Oracle VM VirtualBox and run it as a virtual pc as it doesnt effect paritions or boot files
    Yea I did that by having win7 on one HDD and win10 on another however I couldn't dual boot as win7 wouldn't let me.
    I would like to dual boot so I can use both win10 and win7 and use them with the programs I have loaded.
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  6. NavyLCDR
    Posts : 18,432
    Windows 11 Pro
       New #4

    When you are booted into whatever Windows will boot, the other Windows install should have a drive letter. Let's say it gets drive letter F: for example. Open a Command Prompt Admin (or "run as administrator" command prompt). Then run:

    bcdboot F:\Windows /d /addlast

    Change the path in red to the second Windows installation you want to add to the boot menu. Then restart the computer.
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  7. Chris Pear
    Posts : 3
    Win7
    Thread Starter
       New #5

    NavyLCDR said:
    When you are booted into whatever Windows will boot, the other Windows install should have a drive letter. Let's say it gets drive letter F: for example. Open a Command Prompt Admin (or "run as administrator" command prompt). Then run:

    bcdboot F:\Windows /d /addlast

    Change the path in red to the second Windows installation you want to add to the boot menu. Then restart the computer.
    Unfortunately when I loaded both HDD's and rebooted the computer the computer ran Scan Disk and deleted all the win10 Files from the HDD that it was loaded on, leaving me with only win7 disc bootable.
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  8. NavyLCDR
    Posts : 18,432
    Windows 11 Pro
       New #6

    Chris Pear said:
    Unfortunately when I loaded both HDD's and rebooted the computer the computer ran Scan Disk and deleted all the win10 Files from the HDD that it was loaded on, leaving me with only win7 disc bootable.
    Then I guess you will have to reinstall Windows 10.
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  9. AddRAM
    Posts : 4,594
    Windows 10 Pro
       New #7

    Strange, I have 7 and 10 installed on 2 drives, installed while all other drives were unplugged, and I have no issues at all.

    It ran a check disk (1 time), which is normal, not a scan disk, and it`s been running fine ever since.

    W10 is set as my default OS and I use the boot menu to choose 7 when I want to use it.

    As stated earlier, when installing 2 different operating systems on 2 separate drives, you do not have to install them in any special order, that only should be done when both drives are hooked up. And there are ways to easily fix that if the older OS is installed last.

    There may be a Fast boot option in the Bios that you may have to disable, but I tried mine disabled and then enabled and neither choice had any affect on the outcome, so I have it enabled.
    Last edited by AddRAM; 14 May 2017 at 01:25.
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  10. AddRAM
    Posts : 4,594
    Windows 10 Pro
       New #8

    If you can`t come up with a fix then you could do what I did when W10 first came out.

    I kept the W7 ssd totally unplugged, then totally switched the cables when I wanted to use 7, for me it was only a matter of taking the side of the C70.

    The entire process took less then 10 seconds.

    But when I installed W10 on the Samsung M.2 that idea went out the window, as the M.2 is always plugged in. I suppose it could be disabled in the Bios, but I`m not having any issues.
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  12. SIW2
    Posts : 4,564
    several
       New #9

    Use the newest bootmgr, in this case replace bootmgr on your 7 hdd with a copy of bootmgr from your win10 hdd.
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