Installation :: Fixed Drive Letter Designations After Dual Boot Install?
Jun 17, 2015
I've installed W10 in my laptop in a dual boot configuration with W7 successfully. I used this tutorial Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 I'm setting up to do the same thing in my desktop and have a couple questions about drive letter designation after doing it. I created a 30G partition on the C drive of my desktop for the W10 install.
My laptop has one drive, the OS "C" drive, I created a another partition for W10, after installing W10 using the USB ISO "boot from USB" instruction when I'm in W10 it shows as the C drive, and the W7 partition is inactive D drive. Just the opposite when I'm in W7, it shows as the active C partition and W10 is the inactive D partition.
On my desktop I have the 120G C drive for W7, a 500G D drive for backups, a fixed CD-ROM E drive, and a virtual CD-ROM F drive. I've made a 30G partition on the C drive to install W10 on for the dual boot. The question is when the auto backup runs (I have it backup & image every Sunday at 7:00pm) it backs up the C drive to the D drive. Will the W10 dual boot install change my backup drive letter to something other than D, or will the non OS physical drives keep the same drive letter? I will have to remember to be in W7 for it to be the C drive when it backs up, but my concern was if the dual boot was going to change my backup drive to something other than D. That would affect the backup.
I've attached disk mgmt. below, FYI the G drive is the USB with the W10 ISO
In my desktop I have two hard disks ( disk 0 and disk 1 ) . Disk 1 is a clone of disk 0 created by Macrium Reflect Disk 0 : ( C: ) windows 10 pro , upgrade from windows 7 , ( E: ) windows 8.1 pro , ( G: ) Storage partition Disk 1 : clone of disk 0
problem description : I see in msconfig / boot a wrong listing
windows 10 ( C:WINDOWS) : Current OS ; Default OS
windows 8.1 pro ( H:WINDOWS ) instead of ( E:WINDOWS )
Nevertheless the dual booting works fine as well as the shift between the disks via BIOS.
The question is , could I fix the situation using the EasyBCD of Neosmart Technologies to edit the bootloader ?
I see can change drive letter H: to E: and save the change , am I right or wrong ? or any other way ....
After several weeks of testing I'm ready to go full on Windows 10 and want to get rid of Windows 7 but I have some partitioning issues I want to clean up. I currently have Windows 7 on drive 0 (360 GB) and Windows 10 on drive 1 (500 GB). Both are SATA drives and RAID is enabled in the bios but not active.
What I think I'd like to do is simply swap the drives physically so that Drive 0 has my current Windows 10 install on it and make it primary boot active etc. The drive with Windows 7 on it would become drive 1 and I would delete the Windows 7 partition and re-partition it with a clean empty partition just for extra space.
Second question, any advantage to using this drive configuration in a RAID setup?
I have the Windows 10 Pro ISO with a Windows 10 key. (from MSDN)
I want to install Windows 10 as dual boot with Windows 8.1. Both are x64.
Is it possible to install Windows 10 from the ISO? I know you can upgrade that way. But I want to do a clean install AND install alongside Windows 8.1.
I have two systems.System 1 is a desktop running W7 Premium SP1. I did clean install of W10 from iso on separate partition. W10 will not activate using W7 numbers. I suspect that is because I moved W7 to an SSD 6 mos. ago and W10 expects the old HDD. BTW, installed W10 to partition on the SSD
System 2 is dual boot laptop (Dell Inspiron) with W7 SP1 and W8.1. I want to keep W7, and I could try W10 install either by upgrading 8.1 or clean install to the 8.1 partition. Reccomendations? I don't want to risk losing the W7. I do have disk image backups of both W7 and W8.1.
Read the tutorials but still not sure... I want to use my new SSD Win 10 Pro 64bit upgrade clean install via Brink's USB tutorial (when done setting everything up) and would like possibility to be able to dual boot with/to my old Win 7 Pro 64 SSD in same box.
Can this be done this way and what's the way to get the bios to play nice with the two Windows SSD operating systems ?
1. Upgrading does not allow an installation with dual boot option.
2. Windows 7 is gone after one month. If you don't like it, too bad.
3. My "legacy" Dell colour laser printer will not function with Windows 10. It works flawlessly with Windows 7 and getting a new printer gets rid of the saving plus a lot more than the savings of a free W10. I will pass on the "free" upgrade.
OK, I have Windows 7 OEM Version and want to upgrade to Windows 10 After I get Windows 10 Activated through the upgrade can I...
Clean install Windows 7 (with Original 7 key) and clean install Windows 10 (should automatically activate) to have a dual boot? Or is Microsoft going to block my activation saying you can't have both 7 and 10?
I have a different computer that has a OEM-Builders edition of Windows 7. I don't want Windows 10 on it right now as the software I need to run will not run on it but...
I want to upgrade to Windows 10 just to get the free upgrade and activate then revert back to Windows 7.
Later on down the road a year or so can I install Windows 10 with no problems activating it?
GOAL: Create a dualboot system with a clean WIndows 10 installation on SSD while keeping my regular Windows XP for as long as I need it.
SITUATION: Monoboot system booting Windows XP from a regular HD. I already purchased an SSD for Windows 10, but need to install it.
QUESTION: Which steps (and in which order) should I take to make my goal as stated above achievable without (too much) hassle. I was advised by a friend to simply install the SSD, then start installing Windows 10 and everything would be ok as W10 would recognise the existing XP installation.
My laptop has dual boot - Windows 7 and Windows 10. My Win7 environment is my main working environment with lots of programs installed and important files. I installed the Win10 environment just to play around with 10 during the technical preview. Now, I would like to disable the 10 environment and upgrade the 7 to 10. Am I able to do this, or have I already "used up" my one upgrade on this computer's Windows license?
I notice that in Windows 7 I have not received the icon in the notification area that invites me to upgrade to 10. This makes me think I might have used up my chance to upgrade.
My end goal is to have a single Windows 10 environment. Note that the reason I want to upgrade my 7 environment to 10 is because I don't want to have to re-install all of my programs and files into the current 10 environment.
So I have a 128gb 840 evo ssd as my C drive and then a WD caviar Blue as a mass storage drive . So with windows 10 just coming out and it being free I thought I would duel boot it with windows 7(currently running) and went and cleared out a bunch of old games and programs and ended up the 47 gb free so I would have space to make a partition and have a little room after that. then once I tried to shrink the volume it says the maximum i can shrink it is 129mb. so I tried on my HDD and it worked just fine being able to shrink it 600GB(the remaining storage).
I want to purchase a copy of Windows 10 Pro. I currently own Windows 7 Ultimate. I do not want to lose Windows 7 Ultimate because I have games and other files that I am concerned will be incompatible with Windows 10 in the same way that they are incompatible with Windows 8.
My system specs: Intel Core i7-4790K Asus ROG Maximus VII HERO Club3D R9 290 Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD Western Digital Black 1TB WD1003FZEX Asus DRW-24B1ST DVD-RW G.Skill Trident X DDR3-1600 CL7
The 840 EVO has Windows 7 Ultimate installed on it. There are many basic programs installed to this drive, such as Microsoft Office, my Daemon Tools, Fraps, and other "mission-critical" things that I want to access quickly and reliably.
My mass storage drive is the Western Digital Black drive. All my games are stored there, as Steam has a folder it reads most of its games from. A few other large programs are stored there. It only has one partition.
What I've been thinking of doing is when Windows 10 comes out, I want to grab a 256GB Samsung SM951 M.2 drive for my Maximus VII Hero and install Windows 10 onto that. I'm hoping that way, I can access my games via either Windows 7 or Windows 10, so that if there's compatibility issues, I can boot to either Windows 7 or Windows 10 and not have to worry about being able to play my games. I don't really want to do the free upgrade path because I'm concerned that it will replace Windows 7. I don't want that.
I'm also wondering if I can still run the games on the WD Black from Windows 10 using Steam launching from the SM951, as I currently do with Windows 7 on the 840 EVO.
I'm pretty certain that I won't be able to access Microsoft Office, which is on the 840 EVO imbedded into Windows 7's Program files. Or will I?
I have just set up a mirror drive(software RAID1) and want to change the drive letter. I am getting a message "The parameter is incorrect". I am wondering if I am stuck with the one assigned when the mirror drive was set up.
I have win10 64 installed on my SSD and win10 32 bit on a HD. The SSD is GPT partitioned and the HD MBR. I can boot from the Windows boot loader in the BIOS into 64 bit windows on the SSD and, by selecting the appropriate HD in the BIOS into the 32 bit windows in the HD. I cannot figure out how to get that boot menu (either gui of text based) that I have read about in the forums. Do I need to convert the HD to GPT as well. Do I need to change anything to get this to work?
I have Windows 10 and 8.1 dual booted but I’m having trouble removing 8.1. 10 is on a Seagate 2TB HDD, and 10 is on a Samsung 2TB HDD. Both are SATA and my motherboard is BIOS. As long as the Samsung (8.1) is drive 0 and is boot’s first choice, all is well. I get the option to select either OS, and either one can be made default.
In attempting to remove 8.1 I have tried several things like making the Seagate drive O, removing power from the Samsung, swapping boot choice, but always fail and I continually get, “an operating system wasn’t found” no matter the disk or boot sequence, except the one above.
Included are jpg’s of disk management while in Windows 10, both disk and volume views. How to decouple 8.1?
I attempted to set up a dual boot configuration using my existing Win 7 Pro on a Samsung SSD drive, and a clean install of Win 10 Pro on a fresh Kingston SSD drive. I created bootable Windows 10 installation USB, reset the UEFI Bios boot order and proceeded with the install. Win 10 installed, however it would not recognize the Win 7 Pro drive. I checked the UEFI Bios again, and the Samsung SSD was no longer shown in the "Fixed Boot Order Priorities". However, it was listed under "Hard Drive BBS Priorities", and under "Boot Override". It also shows up in Win 7 in the drives listings.
My motherboard is a MSI Z97 Gaming 5, with Click Bios 4 v1.9.
I must also mention, my Samsung SSD with Win 7 Pro was set up not with UEFI but Legacy boot. This was my first mobo with UEFI, so I made that mistake due to my ignorance.
I reformatted the Kingston Win 10 drive. Rebooted, but got error message that boot device not found. I rebooted and hit F11 to get back into Bios. A popup box gave me a listing of bootable devices and the Samsung SSD appeared. Selected it and it booted into Win 7 no problem. I went back into the Bios, but the Samsung SSD still not listed. I shut down the system, unplugged the Kingston SSD, rebooted, went back into Bios, and the Samsung returned.
I then shut down the system, connected the Kingston into a different SATA port, rebooted the system, went back to Bios, and the Kingston remains unlisted in the "Fixed Boot Order Priorities" as before, but shows up in "Hard Drive BBS Priorities", and under "Boot Override". It also shows up in Win 7 in the drives listings. Remember that the Kingston is just formatted, no op system installed on it.
I set up the Win 10 install on the Kingston SSD as a legacy drive too. Another question I will ask is can you have one operating system on a legacy drive and one on a UEFI drive in the same PC?
I have Win 10 as the second of a dual boot with Vista. Each is on it's own hard drive. If I remove the Vista drive then win 10 won't boot as it is looking for winload.exe. Is there a way I can give it access to the winload.exe it is looking forand then uninstall Vista? If this cannot be done it isn't a big problem weaving Vista active, I just don't need it anymore.
I was running win 7 (64bit) pleasantly but decided to install Win10, did all the needed stuff for getting dual boot setup.Win10 booted fine, when selected from dual boot menu, but I have many issues on win10, Lenovo laptop is begging for mercy on win10 for many things, my android phone gets disconnected every few seconds if I use youtube, laptop becomes sluggish. USB3 will not install, which worked in win7 earlier.
Fed up with win10, even after disabling driver signature, making sure every driver is correct which I am installing, but this laptop hates win 10 as of now.Now if I choose to run win7, lappy reboots and thats a LOOP. my win7 installation is shown in Drive letter E: while windows 10 is shown in C: What would be the safest way of Re-installating win 7 on E: without loosing the following the crappy win 10 of c:/ dual mode option on win 7 +10
What I want is to run win7 setup which has SP1 integrated and still be able to boot in win10 if I needed later.I have activation keys for both provided by my office which is based on volume licensing.
I have a PC with win 10 x64 installed. It is a new PC with UEFI firmware and secure boot enabled, though I can disabled it very easily.
I want to installed Win 7 x86 (32bit) on a second hard drive and have it dual-boot config with the current Win 10. I know I have to disable secure boot for installing 32 bit, but Im concerned about the process of installing Win 7 AFTER the already installed Win 10.
How can I go about doing this without losing access to my Win 10? I need to install win 7 for compatibility reasons.
I am dual booting with Win7. I have not used 7 in a few months. I want to know if there is a way to delete and merge the partition that Win7 is on. Also I want to know how to get rid of the dual boot screen and just go with the reg Win10 boot screen.
I have a Acer Aspire XC-603G desktop upgraded to Windows 10 64bit Home (no Hyper-V). I want to run 16 bit software that is incompatible. I would like to dual boot with Vista x86 (gave away my XP). From what I understand, you must load the older version first due to Windows 10's MBR. Can I backup/clone Windows 10 partition, reformat and repartition the HDD, install Vista in first partition, then restore Windows 10 to the second partition? I'm thinking I'll need a fresh Windows 10 install. Or is there a simpler way? The only other way I see is to buy the Pro upgrade to get Hyper-V. And if I did the latter would it really be compatible with my Windows 95 16bit ImageReader Scanner software?
I recently (clean) installed Windows 10 on a new SSD. Windows 7 resides on my first drive.
1) I first set the USB to boot from;
2) Began to install Windows 10;
3) First snare: upon first reboot, after removing the USB, the system just started my old Windows 7 (!). (I expected a dual boot menu there.)
4) Rebooted, set SSD to first disk, and finished installing Windows 10;
5); Tried to add boot menu later (both in Windows 7 and Windows 10), using the Advanced System Settings, to no avail: neither OS sees another boot partition.
Can I have both a GPT and MBR formatted drives on a dual boot system?
I would like to retain my Win 7 installation as is with MBR formatted hard drive, and after the Win 8.1 to Win 10 upgrade, do a clean Win 10 install with GPT (UEFI) format.
I have a dual boot 7 and 8.1, which are on separate drives. I'd like to keep 7 and install 10 over 8.1, I have downloaded 10 on usb. My question is do I have to disconnect the windows 7 drive before I try to install 10?.
Windows 10 currently installedUEFI (Legacy/BIOS is supported but I do not prefer using it as it may cause more problems in the future)1 Hard Disk Drive
Goals: Install Windows 7 on another partitionMaintain my current Windows 10 installationNOT have to switch to Legacy/BIOS mode
I found this: Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 But it assumes a Windows 7 installation and subsequently dual booting Windows 10 on it. What I would like is essentially the opposite.
I have Windows 10 installed on HD1 (Samsung) and working will. I had a second HD2 (WD) with Win7 installed for a dual boot operation. For some reason, I could never successfully boot into Win7. Out of frustration I decided to format the Win7 drive and start over.
The problem now is I cannot install Win7 on the HD2 drive. When I choose F12 on boot up and select the WD disk, a screen appears saying "Windows Boot Manager" It instructs me to insert my Win7 install disk an reboot.
Next steps:
I insert the Win7 install disk and reboot using F12 to select the WD disk. The "Windows Boot Manager" screen appears again with the same instructions as above! If I reboot again and do nothing, the system will boot to Windows 10.
My question, how to install Win7 on the WD disk and then setup a dual boot operation?
