[SOLVED] Dual boot options?

Flyingkiwidude

Distinguished
Mar 8, 2010
124
3
18,585
I have two ssd's. one with windows 7, the other 10.

I would love to be able to choose on startup which OS to use without having to mess around with bios each time.

I tried EasyBCD 2.4 but it mentioned something about my machine booting in efi mode.

I do not want to risk changing anything on my drives in case things go wrong ( which they often do for me ).

Any help?
 

Flyingkiwidude

Distinguished
Mar 8, 2010
124
3
18,585
So?! Did it tell you to change it? If both your OSes boot with uefi enabled then what's your problem?
If you only add the other os to the boot menu and don't mess with anything else then the worst thing that could happen is that the menu won't boot the other OS.

No, it didn't.

I don't know about the windows 7 drive.

the problem is that the error says "EasyBCD has detected that your machine is currently booting in EFI mode. Due to limitations set by Microsoft, many of EasyBCD's multi-booting features cannot be used in EFI mode and have been disabled.

Press "OK" to continue or "help" to read about these limitations and possible workarounds."

Ohh, hang on.

I just read "If your Windows PC is booting in EFI mode, Microsoft has blocked the loading of legacy or non-Windows operating systems from the BCD menu. "

So i may be able to use two windows OS's.
 
Ok.
So windows 10 is installed in UEFI mode and windows 7 is installed in legacy mode.
Each os has separate bootloader.
Windows 10 has bootloader on 100MB partition on Disk 3.
Windows 7 has bootloader on partition together with OS.

You can add windows 10 boot entry to windows 7 bootloader by executing following command from windows 10 environment. Use elevated command prompt, or else you'll get an error.
bcdboot C:\windows /s G:

Also you can add windows 7 boot entry to windows 10 bootloader. For this, you have to boot into windows 7 environment first.
Assign letter to 100MB partition on windows 10 disk. For example letter M:
Note in windows 7 - letter C: belongs to windows 7 OS partition now.
Execute from elevated command prompt in windows 7
bcdboot C:\windows /s M:
 

Flyingkiwidude

Distinguished
Mar 8, 2010
124
3
18,585
Ok.
So windows 10 is installed in UEFI mode and windows 7 is installed in legacy mode.
Each os has separate bootloader.
Windows 10 has bootloader on 100MB partition on Disk 3.
Windows 7 has bootloader on partition together with OS.

You can add windows 10 boot entry to windows 7 bootloader by executing following command from windows 10 environment. Use elevated command prompt, or else you'll get an error.
bcdboot C:\windows /s G:

Also you can add windows 7 boot entry to windows 10 bootloader. For this, you have to boot into windows 7 environment first.
Assign letter to 100MB partition on windows 10 disk. For example letter M:
Note in windows 7 - letter C: belongs to windows 7 OS partition now.
Execute from elevated command prompt in windows 7
bcdboot C:\windows /s M:

Really?

That simple?
 

QwerkyPengwen

Splendid
Ambassador
I personally haven't done dual boot in a long time, and this built in method is one I haven't personally done myself, and have only used third party boot loaders (specifically to dual boot Windows with Linux) but looking at it, I would say it's fine.
Skynet is a long time user with good knowledge, I would trust the info based on the profile data they've collected.