Dual Boot Win10 / Win7

[Slavegamer]

Been running win 7 on this pc . I keep the os and programs on it's own hard drive , and use a second hard drive for storage . I got a 3rd hard drive and installed windows 10 today. When I installed windows 10 , I unplugged my win7 drive and storage drive. That went well, however I wanted to be able to just switch hard drives in the bios or boot menu upon a restart. For some reason I think my keyboard is not booting up in time for the key to register the bios menu , or boot menu. I have to completely shut down , restart and wait for post before I can get into bios .

I am researching a way to get a dual boot menu to appear upon restart with out the risk of somehow corrupting my windows 7 boot. I tried this before when I went from XP to win 7 and I ended up loosing everything. I want to do this knowing there is a solid way to recover if I fail .

I have all hard drives connected. The hard drives are set to cable select. Windows 10 see's
the new hd as c: drive , and the windows 7 install as f: . I boot up windows 7 and it see's the windows 10 drive as g or something . Both OS share the storage drive and for some reason when I use windows 10 and take a file from the storage drive, upon a restart it wants to run a chkdsk , it finds minor errors and then boots up normally , and all files, storage that I moved are ok .
Thanks in Advance for your input - cheers

 

[CountMike]

Try this http://rs.n1info.com/N1-Uzivo to make boot menu.

 

[Slavegamer]

Thank you for responding , I added the path to the windows 7 windows folder in the msconfig boot menu . Now I get a boot screen . Now I have a new problem . Keyboard only works on the boot screen if I shut down pc , power off psu completely , then restart. After that if I do a normal restart my keys work fine. If I go a 3rd restart there is no keyboard function at all in the boot menu and i have to wait for the count down before windows 10 starts. From there I must power down 100% then restart. Legacy support in bios is enabled, fast start is disabled, hibernation mode disabled from cmd promtp, checked in power options to confirm no hibernation power settings enabled at all . In device manager all USB root hubs power management is set correct.
Its a razor keyboard, drivers installed up to date, with or with out drivers same issue. Running out of ideas and I constantly searching , I see many people with this problem , yet no solution works . Before I installed windows 10 I could always get into my bios , and have key function . Only thing I have not done is reset the cmos . I did not want to do that because then I think I will have to redo my overclock settings again, and this noob lost his notes on how to do that, will go look , in the mean time is there anything I am missing ? oh and btw that Link is to a news channel video ?

 

[Slavegamer]

SOLVED : Dual boot windows 7 / windows 10 on separate hard drives .
Make sure you plug in only one new clean formatted drive and install windows 7 first , fully update.
Note * make sure THAT DRIVE it is boot priority in the bios so when windows dose it's restarts upon installation there is no problem .
all done , now If you want , Name that hard drive so you know it's windows7

Shut down machine. power off 100% Unplug windows7 drive. Plug in a another clean formatted drive and install windows 10 and update
DONT forget to make sure THAT DRIVE it is boot priority in the bios so when windows dose it's restarts upon installation there is no problem.
Name that drive so you know its windows 10 . In windows 10 OS disable hibernation, and fast boot. Restart. then shut down again and power off.

Plug in your windows 7 drive ,power on and start machine. After windows 10 is loaded up , go to my computer. Locate the drive with windows 7.
Using BCDBOOT your going to add the windows 7 windows folder to the boot menu found in msconfig.
Locate that on the windows 7 drive . for example D:\Windows
Right click start menu and select Command Prompt (Admin) , you can replace the drive letter in this line below, copy and paste to command prompt and hot enter.

bcdboot D:\Windows /addlast

You will see a success confirmation, then you can exit .

Right click on start menu , select run and type msconfig . In the boot tab you should see your windows 7 folder on the list . Make sure windows 10 is the default OS. here you can also set the time delay for when the default OS will start if no menu input is received. after your done select apply and restart your machine.

You will now see a boot menu and be able to select what OS you want. If your keyboard dose not respond and it is usb, make sure it is plugged into the upper left usb slot in the back of your machine/motherboard.

A issue I ran into was when I started up windows 7 from the boot menu , during startup it wants to check disk on the windows 10 drive ..DO NOT . hit a key to skip this . Check disk will run if it sees a dirty bit, or inconsistency. Im my case I think because windows 7 sees windows 10 drive with the letter c assigned to it , and because it thinks its the c drive will go looking for errors .

To fix this I disabled chkdsk start up in windows 7 from command prompt.
Run command Prompt as admin , type CHKNTFS /X E: The X tells Windows to NOT check that particular drive (E) on the next reboot, assuming your windows 10 drive letter is E: Next time you start windows 7 it will not look at the windows 10 drive .
When you start windows 10 , it might do the same to the windows 7 drive , I did not happen to me but if it dose, then then you can do the same thing telling windows 10 not to look at that drive at start up . Also make sure you do not share or cross librarys between the 2 OS . You can install a 3rd drive as shared storage between them.

I know there are a few ways to get this done. After researching the subject I found this way to be the safe bet if you want to keep your trusted win7 untouched. Never let windows 7 do a check disk on the Windows 10 drive or vice versa . You will have a data loss problem.

 

[CountMike]

Sorry about mixup with the link, I was helping a friend wit something else at that time. EasyBCD is here: http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ it can do everything with dual (and more) boot and also solve problems with mixed boot sectors, on same disk or multiple ones,

 

[Slavegamer]

Thanks , I will check this out