One of the difficulties you can run into a new hardware is the modern UEFI supports secure boot, and if that is turned on it makes it difficult to dual boot machines since it replaces the traditional BIOS boot capabilities.
You normally need to turn that off in the BIOS setup screen when installing multiple OSs
Tried that from the start. I can remove everything from the MB apart from the SSD containing Win7 - which worked with the old MB. And set it to 'other OS' Still won't boot.
Are all the drives formatted the same way (i.e. GPT / MBR), and which partitions have the active flag set?
You may find that you are using the Win 7 SSD as the only active partition on a MBR drive.
The Win7 SSD was cloned from the original HD on the old MB. And worked just fine on that. When I changed the MB, my priority was Win10. Fitted a new SSD, since I wanted to keep the old Win7 intact (and also an XP HD) Simply loaded in new Win10 Pro. The BIOS settings in the new MB are much more comprehensive than the old - ie confusing. So I pretty well let it do it's own thing. I've not made any changes to the Win7 SSD. Although it's possible EasyBCD did so.
The instructions with the new MB ain't exactly helpful. Seem more about tweaking things for gaming. It's possible I just bought the wrong MB - but it does now work very well with Win10 - much faster than any other I have.
Courtesy of a borrowed desktop PC I've now been able to spend some time comparing Windows 7 and 10 side by side, and it's clear that though there are certainly some look-and-feel aspects of Win10 that I like and possibly even consider superior to their Win7 equivalents, overall, for my particular uses and purposes, Win7 is the better choice for me.
Now I do make extensive use of the internet, I do use online banking, and I'm aware of the possible security implications. And if I do experience any problems which might not have happened with Win10 it's possible that I'll regret the decision - and if and when I post a call for help here, please feel free, one and all, to say that you told me so. But until that day I'm content that I've made the right choice.
Many thanks to everyone who chipped in with thoughts and suggestions, all of which were much appreciated.
Oh, one mild side effect of all my experimentation: as far as I can tell, the computer is now in exactly the same configuration as it was before I started, and runs with exactly the same speed and efficiency as previously. Except that on boot up, after I enter my password and press return, I'm now presented with a completely blank blue-grey screen which lingers for some ten seconds before my desktop is generated.
It's no more than a mild inconvenience but I'd be interested to know what is causing it. Any thoughts? Thanks.
None of them are - quite often the help gives very limited expansion of what the settings actually do.
To be fair it sounds like most modern boards - lots of stuff that can be tweaked to support overclocking etc.
UEFI systems normally require that the boot partition be on a GPT disk and not a MBR one. So even if there is a MBR disk present, with an active partition, the system will not boot from it.
(you may be able to coax it into working by by turning off UEFI support in the BIOS - but at expense of then upsetting Win 10)
If you do a fresh install of Win 10 on to a SSD then it will usually format that as a GPT disk rather than MBR.
The old Win 7 one was probably MBR with one partition set as active. Tools like Acronis will allow you to clone and change the format to GPT, but that is not the default setting.
The history is covered here:
I had problems with online banking (Barclays) using Win10 and Firefox. It wouldn't allow me to set up a new payment, using the PinSentry card. Eventually sorted it by using Chrome. FireFox now works again, though.
With an older not supported OS you're bound to get this sort of thing in the future.
I'd say you need to live with Win10 for more than just a day. I thought the same as you - but am happy enough with it now. Although it is still flaky talking to the other Win10 machines here.
I take the point, and as I said if I do ever find something for which Windows 10 is unavoidable then I suppose I'll have to look at the situation again. Perhaps a second machine running Win10 would be a solution: it would certainly avoid having to complicate my main PC with dual booting or a VPN.
I have only very limited use at present for a laptop, but maybe obtaining one, with the later OS, might be a feasible idea.
Many thanks for your thoughts.
That isnt really much of a comparison. You really need to use the new one for a few months to be sure that it is worse for you.
I do most of the online banking on the smartphone now.
I still use Win7 most of the time, but that's because a couple of the things I use every day don't work on Win10 but I do have a separate Win10 system available for what needs it.
Thanks for the washup, not common enough imo.
That seems an ideal setup. You might not have seen my follow-up to my earlier post, where I speculated on doing exactly that.
You rather baffled me with that, but now that I've looked it up, you're welcome.
Process Monitor has a "boot trace" option.
On the next reboot, Process Monitor collects ETW events from T=0 when the system boots up. After the desktop appears, you can wait a bit before starting Process Monitor. It will ask you whether you want to store the file.
You can enter filter events such as
"Operation" "Is" "CreateFile" "Operation" "Is" "ReadFile" "Operation" "Is" "WriteFile"
to see what programs are banging on the disk at bootup. Which may give a hint where the delay is coming from.
A popular means of messing up the boot, is asking the OS to "map" a network share, and then having the network share shut off so the OS can't reach it. That can cost you five minutes wait.
There's more to using Process Monitor than this, such as setting the usage of a backing file instead of using RAM to hold traces. If you reboot while Process Monitor is collecting a trace, and have also selected Boot Trace, not only do you get to keep your shutdown trace, you also get the benefit of a bootup trace. The program can trace both, in the same session, and you have to be careful to store both of them when the desktop appears on the reboot.
ETW events do not have the granularity or depth of WinDbg or GDB. Instead, it's more similar to strace or truss on Linux/Unix, giving some I/O calls so you can say "I see Notepad was busy". That's about the level of picture it's about to paint. Activity detection. Since the file calls include full path and size info and offset, you can even tell what it's reading :-) Some programs have the most convoluted patterns.
You will see a ton of registry calls in that trace. But they're of more interest at non-boot times. You will find many registry items getting polled once a second for example. It's a good thing the registry is efficient.
Russinovich wrote Process Monitor. The MSFT staff wrote WPA and friends, but that was more a matter of showing off, than making something useful. You want xbootmgr if using that stuff.
xbootmgr -trace boot -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP wpa # Windows software development kit - 10.0.14393.33 # Windows Performance Toolkit directory
I like Process Monitor, as it gives you something to work with, with relatively little mental load. Yes, it takes a while to get used to it. A long journey starts with the first step. It won't bite you. The File Menu has the trace flag, and you toggle the flag to off, to stop a trace. Edit has a Clear to clear the screen of a capture trace. The events in the menus, should be from the "pool" of stuff in the trace. So if Notepad wasn't running, you cannot select "Process" "Is" "Notepad", because it won't be available unless Notepad was running during the trace.
Paul
Paul,
Many thanks for that. We're definitely heading towards areas beyond my experience there, and possibly my abilities too, but I'll take a look at Process Monitor.
Most people find it takes a week or two of use to get comfortable with
I'd say that too, having recently changed. Against my will - rather the same as Bert. I'm using the same 'screen saver' pics as I had on Win7 - views around the UK.
Yes, I accept that. Perhaps the pending acquisition of a laptop with Win10
10 will change my mind, or at the very least give me a chance to get better accustomed to it.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.