| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 139710 | 2015-06-15 11:09:00 | Dual Boot Win8 & Win7 | bk T (215) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1402745 | 2015-06-16 00:58:00 | You've installed them separately, normally you don't change the boot device between installs and when you install to another drive it still puts the boot loader on the same drive as the previous OS (which is why you install older first, windows 7 doesn't know about windows 8). When you do it that way the installer detects the previous OS and creates a boot menu for you. The way you've done it is good if you intend to remove one of the drives but as you can see they still affect each other. you could edit the BCD yourself either via windows or using a program like EasyBCD designed to simplify the operation and add windows 7 to the windows 8 start menu (you still have one but it doesn't show when there's only one option). That way you won't need to change the BIOS to change OS each time but it probably won't help with the chkdsk problem. Just google how to edit the windows 8 start menu or ask for instructions here if you want to do that, I don't recall the steps off the top of my head. Normally to dual boot windows all you do is; Boot of a windows disk and Install the first (oldest) windows to a drive or partition - can use the installer to create a partition or do it first. Boot off the newer windows install disk and install the 2nd OS to another partition or drive. Done No need to play with the BIOS, even if you want to remove an OS at a later date it's possible to simply restore the correct bootloader for that OS or edit the BCD to remove the 2nd entry. It does mean if you remove the drive with the bootloader neither OS will start but that's easily fixed as mentioned. Worst case is a repair install to restore the bootloader. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1402746 | 2015-06-16 01:02:00 | How do I do that? I don't get the options to boot into W7 or W8.1. Just quickly threw W8.1 on a second drive ( got to do something while waiting for 3 PC's to scan, update etc) :) Anyway -- Two separate drives: 6525 Both Drives attached at the same time, W7 on the 3.5 drive - The laptop Drive Was wiped and W8.1 installed, when booting you get the following Options: 6526 Select which ever one you wanted. note: If the W7 drive wasn't attached at the same time then Dual boot wont work. As far as each OS is concerned "IT's" the only OS Since W7 was installed first, when it boots, you see the W8.1 symbol for a few seconds, then the option screen, this happens whether you have selected W7 or W8.1 since its booting from the W8.1 loader. When selecting W7, it didn't bring up any chkdsk. The reason you're getting chkdsk when changing boot order in the BIOS is W7 thinks is damaged, so it runs. What you will find is if you are using W8.1 and go "restart" it will boot directly into W8.1 again, no options so you need to shut it down fully, BUT if using W7 and you restart Then you get the option of which OS. You may need to install a boot manager since it didn't take correctly Something Like neosmart.net Scroll down the page, bottom Left, its free for home use, register and install on W8.1 -- then sort out the OS's ( see the documentation / Screenshots) |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 1402747 | 2015-06-16 05:34:00 | THANK YOU all for sharing your experiences and knowledge. :thanks :thumbs: | bk T (215) | ||
| 1402748 | 2015-06-16 07:20:00 | You can have separate boot loaders, each on their own drive, which is what you have done but there is confusion over which would be c drive and which would be D drive if you change hard drive boot order. In that scenario both drives are bootable, but you have 2 bootloaders and neither know about one or the other. You can modify the first drive to boot to the 2nd drives bootloader, I believe it's called chaining bootloaders but I haven't chained bootloaders in a while, usually I did it for ntloader to boot Linux lilo, which has been long since replaced by grub2. The thing with this way is that the BL is booting to another BL so you are not actually booting the OS but just getting to the other BL which will then boot the OS it knows about. What I was saying is with both hard drives in the system, the first drive you would install win7, this will create a bootloader on the first drive. You then install w8 on the second drive, it will modify the bootloader on the first drive to know about both OS, the 2nd drive will not be bootable, meaning if you changed boot order to that drive it'll complain because the 2nd drive doesn't have a BL. If however you get rid of the first drive and need to boot the 2nd drive, you use the installation CD, boot to console/command line and run the fixmbr and fixboot commands and it'll install the bootloader to that drive turning it into a bootable drive, so all is not lost. There's other ways to boot drives by having a bootloader on any means of media you can boot off from your bios, USB sticks, other hard drives, CD/DVD/br, etc. There's quite a lot of other bootloaders out there, which can scan your drives for OS to boot from and on the fly create a menu to select. Its great to see you experimenting though. You'll soon understand more on the boot process which is actually used in a lot of devices, not only computers. The BIOS contains a basic boot loader too, which is how I believe you performed your dual booting by changing order, years ago this was not possible, the drive in the first ide, always was the boot drive. I believe Windows still uses ntloader, Linux usually uses grub2 but you can also get it for windows. Cheers, KK |
Kame (312) | ||
| 1402749 | 2015-06-16 22:57:00 | So have you used BootRec.exe /ScanOs to resolve your issue? Instructions for 7 or 8 can be found here www.7tutorials.com |
KarameaDave (15222) | ||
| 1 2 | |||||