Windows 10: Dual Boot 10 and 8.1 massacre

Oh man great. Alright, hold onto your butts...

Was gonna post pic but didn't see how. (Install setup, not your butts)

 

Good luck!!! BTW, maybe you could have taken a pic with your phone and attached it to your post, thru manage attachments in "Go Advanced".

 

When you get Windows 8 back, first thing you are going to want to do is post a screenshot of Disk Management. Make sure and widen the columns so we can see everything listed in them:
Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of - Windows 10 Forums

 

Ok one thing. I started The installation. And as it does it's various restarts it keeps prompting me to boot from the USB device. Which is where the 8.1 is. But if I do it just restarts the installation process. But if I don't it brings up the windows boot program where you choose which operating system to start up.

But both of them say 8.1 on partition three. Because the old broken one is still showing up. So I don't really know which one to continue on with the insulation and which one is the old one.

* I went back in and restarted the installation process on partition three. But it will now allow me to format or delete. Should I try to delete that so we can start over from scratch. But I'm afraid if I do that it'll turn it into something that won't allow me to install it on. But it's going now. So I'll see what happens.

 

That's what I'm working with. But now delete and format are available. But like I said I went ahead and started the installation.

 

Ok i'm on Windows 8.1!! So now i'll need to do that stuff? Or do i need to do something different since i'm on the same system?

 

Do what Navy asked.... Dual Boot 10 and 8.1 massacre - Page 2 - Windows 10 Forums

 

Ok, thought so. Thanks

 

We can figure out your booting problems from Windows 8, but we need to see the screenshot of Disk Management first to start with.

 

C is now this little partition with 8.1 on it

E has my Win 10 and all of my stuff on it

 

Ok. You are in good shape because the boot files are in the System Reserved partition at the front of the disk. Open an elevated ("run as administrator") command prompt. I can't remember exactly how to do that in Windows 8.1. Then run in the command prompt window:

bcdboot E:\Windows /d /addlast

Restart your computer and you should get Windows 10 / Windows 8 boot menu to choose from. After you successfully get back into Windows 10, we'll go from there.

 

i hit enter and it went back to command prompt. Was it suppose to do anything else?

OK sorry i didn't see the Boot Files Successfully created. Restarting now

 

Dudes... THANK YOU. I'm in 10... So relieved.

Now to get rid of 8.1 without doing the same thing all over again... ha.

 

Next, if you get into Windows 10, you will press Win + R key to bring up the run dialog. Type MSCONFIG and run it. Click on the boot tab. You should see the Windows 10 boot menu item set as the current OS. Make that also the Default OS. Change the timeout to 0 and click apply. Do not click make boot settings permanent. Restart computer again and you should go into Windows 10 without it asking you.

 

Once you are booting into Windows 10 without being asked, run MSCONFIG again, this time delete all the entries other than the Windows 10 which should now be the current and the default OS. Do NOT click make permanent. Apply and restart again. If all that is successful, then you can carefully delete only the Windows 8.1 partition and expand the Windows 10 partition back into the free space. Your boot files are in the 200MB partition at the front of the disk. Don't delete that one!

You were very clever to re-install Windows 8 to that empty space, we all completely overlooked that option!