Background:
I had an old Acer Windows 7 Home computer I kept around for my kids to play some old PC games that worked well on Windows 7. I was recently given a newer HP Pavilion with better hardware for free that was my old office PC at my place of employment, so I know it is a good computer. It has Windows 10 Pro on it. I tried installing those games on the Win10 HDD, but they are not playing well with Win10. So I decided to take my Windows 7 HDD and install it into the HP as a secondary drive from which to dual boot so my kids can keep playing games on that one but with the faster processer, better graphics card, and more RAM than the old Acer.
Problem:
When I start the computer and enter the boot menu to choose to boot from the Win7 HDD, the "Starting Windows" screen pops up, the colored lights start spinning to make the Windows logo and then it shuts down. It never gets any further than this. With both drives installed, it will automatically restart to the Win10 drive.
This is what I have tried so far:
1) Connected both drives to the Mobo and PSU and tried to boot from Win7 HDD. Result as described above.
2) Disconnected the Win10 HDD and used the same SATA and power connection to connect the Win7 HDD to rule out any issues with SATA ports, SATA cables, or power supply. In this configuration, the computer boots automatically to the only drive now installed (Win7 HDD), but it gets to the "Starting Windows" screen then goes into infinite reboot. I can get into the System Repair, but from there, the dialog box does not show the drive to choose from. So I click the Load drivers button but am not sure what it is I need to look for to make the drive appear.
3) I have taken the Win7 HDD and reinstalled it back into the Acer and it boots fine, no problems. So I ruled out the HDD going bad.
As I said, the Win10 drive always boots fine. Is this a hardware issue or a settings issue? What other things can I check? Both Windows OS are legit installations, nothing pirated. Thanks in advance for any help. Let me know what other info I can provide that may be missing from my post or if I should post in a different part of the forum.
I had an old Acer Windows 7 Home computer I kept around for my kids to play some old PC games that worked well on Windows 7. I was recently given a newer HP Pavilion with better hardware for free that was my old office PC at my place of employment, so I know it is a good computer. It has Windows 10 Pro on it. I tried installing those games on the Win10 HDD, but they are not playing well with Win10. So I decided to take my Windows 7 HDD and install it into the HP as a secondary drive from which to dual boot so my kids can keep playing games on that one but with the faster processer, better graphics card, and more RAM than the old Acer.
Problem:
When I start the computer and enter the boot menu to choose to boot from the Win7 HDD, the "Starting Windows" screen pops up, the colored lights start spinning to make the Windows logo and then it shuts down. It never gets any further than this. With both drives installed, it will automatically restart to the Win10 drive.
This is what I have tried so far:
1) Connected both drives to the Mobo and PSU and tried to boot from Win7 HDD. Result as described above.
2) Disconnected the Win10 HDD and used the same SATA and power connection to connect the Win7 HDD to rule out any issues with SATA ports, SATA cables, or power supply. In this configuration, the computer boots automatically to the only drive now installed (Win7 HDD), but it gets to the "Starting Windows" screen then goes into infinite reboot. I can get into the System Repair, but from there, the dialog box does not show the drive to choose from. So I click the Load drivers button but am not sure what it is I need to look for to make the drive appear.
3) I have taken the Win7 HDD and reinstalled it back into the Acer and it boots fine, no problems. So I ruled out the HDD going bad.
As I said, the Win10 drive always boots fine. Is this a hardware issue or a settings issue? What other things can I check? Both Windows OS are legit installations, nothing pirated. Thanks in advance for any help. Let me know what other info I can provide that may be missing from my post or if I should post in a different part of the forum.