After Installing Windows 10 To a New SSD Prior OS Choices Are Gone

[decarlod]

I had a dual boot system, one was Windows 10 and the other was Windows 7. These were both running on separate drives. Windows 7 was there first then I added a second drive that had Windows 10. After installing Windows 10 I had 2 choices to boot from which is what I wanted.

Recently I purchased a SSD drive and figured I would do the same. Add the SSD and install Windows 10. I did that and it installed fine. After rebooting my other choices to boot from are gone.

I tried booting off a usb drive and doing at Bootrec /rebuild but that didn't find the other OS's. I thought installing a new drive and doing a clean install would preserve the other OS choices.

Any suggestions on how to get them back?

 

[Colif]

Was the win 7 drive in the PC when you installed win 10 on new ssd?

Did you remove the other win 10 install when you added SSD?

can you right click start
choose disk management
take a screenshot of disk management and upload it to a image sharing site (like imgur) and show a link here

What I think has happened is the new install has created its own boot partition, whereas your previous install of win 10 used the win 7 boot partition, hence why 1 can see win 7 and the other can't. The Disk management screen shot should tell me more.

 

[decarlod]

Thanks for taking the time to answer. Yes I left both drives in the machine the way they were. Let take a pic as you asked

 

[decarlod]

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AqO1eGcB3grwhLNOjvXLOmi5BDPWTw

 

[Colif]

Is win 7 64 bit?

Active partitions are the boot partitions, so disc 0 & 1 both have 1 active partition on them, I would guess the EFI partition on disc 2 is also active. So 3 boot partitions and 2 of them are currently invisible, PC is only using the one on Disk 2 that didn't see the partition on disk 1 for some reason.

Its curious, somehow, the way you installed win 10 the 1st time is different to 2nd.

so the new SSD is set up as GPT, whereas the old installs were set up as MBR. Your bios is likely to be set as Auto when it comes to boot method and Win 10 will use GPT if it is allowed to

Now UEFI bios are meant to be able to boot both GPT and MBR so I wonder if we can convince the boot loader to see all the drives.

What motherboard do you have?

There are problems having win 10 installed twice on same system, they will fight over which is 1st. Why do you have win 10 twice? Do you need them?

If you only need 1 win 10, one way to fix it is make sure BIOS set to Legacy boot method (if motherboard is made by Asus, for instance, you need CSM mode set to on), remove the 1st copy of win 10 from the PC and install win 10. If bios set up right, it will format the drive again and use MBR and should see the win 7 install during the install process.

It should have before but its possible 2 win 10 installs confused it. If you planned to replace the install on hdd with the ssd, you should have removed the hdd while you installed. Its possible this problem would still occur given Win 10's love for using GPT but it may have seen the Win 7 install and added its boot info to boot loader, like it should

 

[decarlod]

First thanks again for your time. You are on to something here. I setup the first Win 7 and Win 10 in a much older motherboard. That was an old Gigabyte mother board from 2009. I upgraded my system to a newer Gigabyte GA-B250M-D3H earlier this year and just took those drives and put it in the system and everything worked the way it did on the old motherboard. Then a few weeks ago I got the SSD and installed with a new clean install thinking it would just add another selection.

And yes the Win 7 is 64bit.
I see where you are going with this and its starting to make sense. The reason why I kept the Win 7 setup in the first place was because I had some old programs on it that I don't have the setup or license info anymore. So reinstalling it would be difficult and time consuming. The reason to keep the older windows 10 is pretty much the same reason.

Do I need those older installs?? Most likely not but would like to try and keep them going. What happens I just unplug the new SSD win 10? Would the bios then find it?

And yes Win 7 is 64bit

 

[Colif]

Do you use the old programs a lot? What is on win 10 you can't replace? a lot?

the only way to boot from them would be to swap the boot method in bios to CSM enabled (see page 29 of motherboard manual), if its disabled it only supports win 10. Doing this and then running bootrec /rebuild may find the other 2 installs. TBH, I would disconnect the old win 10 install while doing bootrec as I am not sure where it would put boot info, and that other install concerns me.

bootrec should see the win 7 install with CSM enabled

Back in 2009 most motherboards only had legacy as UEFI was only released in 2009. So that explains why they both used MBR. UEFI better even if just for mouse support, and having a GUI that does not look 20 years old.