Trying to dual boot win 10 with 7 on seperate hard drives

[porkyzig]

I want to dual boot win 10 on one ssd with win 7 on a seperate hdd. I tried changing the boot order in bios, but that didn’t work. I have an hp z220 with a gtx 1060 6gb, 16 gb of ddr3 ram, and an i7-3770. I want to know if there is a program that would allow me to select what drive to boot into, preferably free. I also didn’t have the win 7 hdd plugged in while installing win 10 on ssd.

 

[azaran]

If you don't want to get deep in to how to use the BCDedit tool, then I'd look at something like EasyBCD https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
It's free for non commercial accounts.

In general when doing this, make sure the more recent OS (Win10 in your case) is the default boot drive in your bios. I've run in to issue with Win10 not playing nice if it's not the default boot.

*edit... Before doing ANYTHING to your boot process, make sure you have your important data backed up.

 

[karenjoly]

ASUS boards have a boot menu where you may select the boot drive regardless of the UEFI boot priority setup. Then F8 key brings up the menu. While you may change the boot priority for the drives in UEFI the F8 key selection overrides that setup for the current boot only. I have never had to set any particular drive as the boot priority to use F8.

As I understand Easy BCD, it saves a step by bringing up the F8 menu automatically . I'm not sure if it allows a default drive like the UEFI priority setup so that you always have to select the boot drive.

 

[azaran]

ASUS boards have a boot menu where you may select the boot drive regardless of the UEFI boot priority setup. Then F8 key brings up the menu. While you may change the boot priority for the drives in UEFI the F8 key selection overrides that setup for the current boot only. I have never had to set any particular drive as the boot priority to use F8.

As I understand Easy BCD, it saves a step by bringing up the F8 menu automatically . I'm not sure if it allows a default drive like the UEFI priority setup so that you always have to select the boot drive.

EasyBCD is a more user friendly tool than the command line to change the bootloader for Windows. It's not effecting anything on the BIOS level. When messing around with the bootloader, keeping your drives in a static boot order in bios is best.

 

[karenjoly]

Using an F8 key boot selection menu does not "mess around" with anything. Actually, the EBCD is that kind of solution. It creates its own bootloader menu. In any case, nothing is more simple than F8 and choosing the boot drive.

And secondly, F8 does not move UEFI drive priority as I pointed out already.

 

[azaran]

Using an F8 key boot selection menu does not "mess around" with anything. Actually, the EBCD is that kind of solution. It creates its own bootloader menu. In any case, nothing is more simple than F8 and choosing the boot drive.

And secondly, F8 does not move UEFI drive priority as I pointed out already.

When I said "messing around" I was referring to the bootloader, not anything with UEFI or BIOS settings. As for F8 to change drives, I never said F8 moved the drive order. I said it's best not to change the BIOS boot order when changing the bootloader.

I've watched Win7 and Win10 corrupt themselves over time changing the boot order via F8. Usually at the worst possible time. I recommend adjusting the bootloader instead of changing boot drive order after many years of running multiple labs where we had to do specialized dual, triple and sometime quadruple boot systems. Your experience may have varied with that, and if so then good for you. I've been burned enough times by not doing it properly that I never recommend using that system.