Following from my Windows is weird thread, but perhaps justifying a separate one, a new question: my desktop PC runs Windows 7, with the OS loaded onto an SSD drive. From an earlier experiment with the same machine I also have Windows 10 on a similar drive, now removed. If I replace the Win10 drive would it be possible to set up a dual-boot system so I can run proper comparisons of the two systems with the same basic resources?
Many thanks.
I believe so. In linux its a snap, but I am less sure about windows. It might be possible to use the linux boot loader though. Or even have linux and two windows setups available,
Should be possible using BCDEDIT, I used to do a fair bit of dual booting up to about winXP, then virtualisation came along and dual boot became less popular, there's a risk as to which O/S sees which physical disk as which partition and logical dive letter (made worse if one drive was cloned from the other and both have identical serial numbers).
I'm not familiar with that; I'll look it up.
I did wonder about that.
Not the case here, so that is one less complication at least to worry about.
Thanks.
If they are on separate physical drives then he can just change the boot order to achieve Win7 or Win10. If he wants the option to switch between them quite often then either putting Win7 as a virtual OS inside Win10 or using a boot manager to swap the various parts in and out.
If they are in partitions on the same physical drive then you pretty much have to use a boot manager.
For a quick test I'd just do it from the BIOS boot drive setting.
Why not plug 'em both in and use the BIOS to choose which one boots?
If you disable the drive you don't want to use there's no chance of cross- contamination / mucking up boot settings etc.
Trivial on macOS too. You can either select a startup volume in System Prefs, for subsequent reboots, or hold a key down and choose at boot time.
On the same vein, EasyBCD might be worth a look:
Make sure you have backups and recovery media before attempting such though.
Cheers, T i m
Modern computers have two hot-keys at power up.
One is the key to enter the BIOS. One of the first things you do there, is disable the Dell splash screen, so that any text can be seen on subsequent boots.
The second key of interest is the popup boot key.
On my Asus setup that I'm typing on, <Del> enters the BIOS, while F8 is the popup boot. A blue-framed box will appear, with UEFI and Legacy BIOS entries for the drives, and you select one from there, as the "boot device". If you know a drive is UEFI(GPT) partitioned, then you'd be a fool to select the legacy entry (crash/boom/bang).
I have to hit F8 just after text starts appearing on the screen. What I'm doing ("BIOS steering of boot"), looks like this.
BIOS | +------- F8 boot menu ----- Win7 Drive (no menu visible, nothing to select) (BIOS feature) Win10 Drive (no menu visible, nothing to select)
I do almost all my booting using F8, even when more complicated menus follow at the next level (or two).
Check your user manual (or check the bottom row of the startup text screen) for the hotkeys to use.
*******Tim has the other suggestion, which is to allow the BIOS to continue booting from the current choice. Let's say that randomly, the box is doing this when both SSDs are plugged in. It doesn't matter (in this case only) which "drive" is "driving the bus". Just as long as someone starts the first stage of booting process. We need the computer to consistently make this selection at BIOS level, which isn't actually that easy if you keep sliding extra drives into the box. The BIOS is easily confused, which is why this unadorned method can lead to surprises. Just... don't panic. This works well if Vista/Win7/Win8/Win10 are involved, as they're all BCD based. If you mix WinXP in here, well...
BIOS | +------- Win7 Drive ----- consult BCD menu --- "Windows 7" (Win10 Drive) --- "Windows 10" <== Select one
Now, Tims suggestion is EasyBCD. One advantage of EasyBCD, is it uses the legacy menu, which is a black screen with white lettering. The advantage of this particular menu, is it allows "direct booting" (aka chainload) of the C: partition of one of the disks. This gives the fastest boot times.
If you use the Microsoft-provided way, the menu will be a lot slicker looking, but potentially more stupid. It takes *two* boot cycles the Microsoft way, to select the non-"Default" OS.
Note that, if Win 10 were driving the bus (was the holder of the nice BCD menu), if you did a Win10 2104 upgrade in four or five months, the black EasyBCD menu would be replaced by the slick Microsoft menu (with its slower boot). You can presumably hammer things back into place with EasyBCD. (There is one line in the output of "bcdedit" that corresponds to enabling the legacy menu.)
You can edit the BCD menu on *both* drives so that they both have the double entry menu showing. It would require using the boot selection in the BIOS, to select the drive we haven't been using for "liftoff", then doing the EasyBCD thing a second time.
Other ways of enabling the boot menu, would be Macrium Reflect Rescue CD and the "Boot Repair". It would put the Microsoft menu there, as long as you told it you wanted both OSes in the menu.
*******The only time I use the dual-entry idea, is when both OSes are on the same physical drive. I do not like to extend any feature, between drives. The "entanglement" involved in this case is trivial, and really causes no problems at all. If the Win7 drive has the dual menu, and you unplug the Win10 drive, shit only hits the fan if you cursor down in the menu and select the Win10 item. It's going to tell you it cannot locate the GUID for that entry (since the partition has "left the building").
As long as you can comprehend the number of menus present, where they're coming from, you won't have a problem managing the outcome.
On the Test Machine right now, if I press F8, there are *five* boot entries for the same hard drive :-/ Two for Windows Boot Loader (don't select the legacy one!). Two entries for Ubuntu Grub boot manager (don't select the legacy one). One entry for Kali Linux Grub boot manager. Why Kali couldn't play nice and live in the Ubuntu entry, I haven't a clue. It is possible, to have more than one "boot menu manager" in the F8 popup boot, and some of these "boot menu manager" things, actually list the names of the "foreigners", so you can vector off to them. All of these stupid menu managers, live in the EFI System Partition (ESP) of the GPT partitioned disk drive. I could reach in there and delete the Kali one, and one fewer entry would be in my F8 BIOS level popup.
Is this f****ng craziness, or what ? :-) Computers. Why can't I just talk into the mouse, like Scotty did on the Star Trek movie ?
*******"The very instant you entertain the usage of two OSes, you enter a new dimension."
Paul
EasyBCD - option for acquisition without needing to register for it.
See the three screenshots at the bottom of the majorgeeks web page, for a limited preview of what to expect.
*******In an administrator Command Prompt, type "bcdedit" before using EasyBCD. After EasyBCD is done, type "bcdedit" again, to see what has changed. The second OS entry, adds a stanza to the output. EasyBCD may offer to make a backup, but really, having your own backups is more reassuring, if you don't know how to "undo" stuff.
If you have the Macrium Reflect rescue CD and the "boot repair" menu item, you can plug in the Windows 7 SSD by itself, boot from the Rescue CD and boot repair it. Shut down. Plug in the Windows 10 SSD by itself, boot from the Rescue CD and boot repair it. Shut down. Now, you're back to square one, and all is well with the world.
*Make sure* your Macrium Rescue CD works, before sallying forth. Some people make the CD, then discover later that it doesn't boot. Version 7 Macrium Reflect will scavenge a WinRE off the hard drive, and sometimes it scavenges the wrong one. (It can grab a 32-bit WinRE and mix it with a 64-bit version of Reflect executable, as an example of a failure mode.) Using the WADK options in the optional choices, might ensure a better mating of materials. But involves a download (<800MB).Paul
Not as easy as with say Win7 and XP.
Something to do with the boot sequence Win10 runs and the BIOS.
Hope you get an answer. I've left the old SSD with Win7 on it on one machine. It would be nice to be able to boot into Win7.
Doesn't work here. Have a very recent MB. Something to do with the BIOS.
Yes but it can be a bit tricky keeping the news reader in synch with what you have read and replied to with most news readers.
One of the compatibility problems I found when I first experimented with Win10 was that it didn't seem to care for the Windows Mail email & newsreader which I'd happily used since the days of XP. I did eventually get it both to run and to look reasonable but there was always a distinct hint of instability about it.
I deal with that by placing my newsreader on a stick. I am currently using a paid-for copy of Agent but the free, Thunderbird Portable works just as well. Wherever I am, I just plug my USB memory stick into the host and I'm good to go. Only limitation is that, whilst either Agent or Thunderbird will seemingly run on any flavour of Windows, I can't use this memory stick newsreader on other platforms.
Nick
Ages since I did it, but should be fairly straightforward to set up dual boot. But there are several steps 'twixt here and there.
If the machine has power and memory, you could always run a virtual machine.
I have run a tower PC with both W7 and W10 installed. Dates back to when I cloned the W7 HDD to an SSD, then upgraded the HDD to W10. I then plugged the SSD back in and booted from that with the HDD still installed.
From the BIOS I could chose boot order (USB, HDD etc) and then chosed within the HDD bit which order the drives were tried.
If the BIOS isn't helpful then I think it should boot from the lowest number SATA port first.
You can crudely sort out boot order by opening the case and swapping the SATA cables round.
Cheers
Dave R
Windows 10 has its own email which isn't too bad. Maybe Thunderbird for news?
I'm so used to Windows Mail now, have so many message-sorting rules (well over a hundred), and a vast number of saved and classified messages stored, that it would be very hard for me to switch unless I could import my existing messages and layout. Is that possible, I wonder? I shall take a look.
Also, the convenience of having one program which handles both email and Usenet is not something I'd readily give up.
Yes, others have suggested that. This is not something I'm familiar with: can you point me to a words-of-one-syllable beginner's guide?
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