Windows 10: Dual Windows Booting with exclusive Hard Drive access

Hi. I have recently bought a preloaded HDD with arcade game emulators. and games that I want to attach to my PC. The problem I have is that to set the external HDD up requires disabling my antivirus and firewall and installing several applications from the HDD for the emulation system to run. I am a little dubious about doing this due to the possibility of a sneaky little virus or some nastiness finding its way onto my PC. I contemplated buying the bare minimum of components and making another PC solely to run the emulator drive on, but not really liking the idea of spending $1000 when I alrea

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Dual Boot for dual boot windows 7 and 10 on two separate hard drives

Hi Jay,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.

I regret the inconvenience caused to you. I will be glad to assist you with this issue.

It would be grateful if you can reply to this question in order to assist you further:

• What is the exact issue are you facing?
• Are you able to boot to Windows 7 from dual boot login?

Your issue is bit unclear to us, so I request you to kindly elaborate the issue so that we can assist you further.

For the time being, I suggest you to access your BIOS settings and make the settings for Boot up to Boot up with Internal hard drive and check if it helps.

For reference: BIOS: frequently asked questions

Reply with the necessary information to help you troubleshoot the issue. I will be glad to assist you.

Thank you.

 

Dual Booting with Windows 8.1


The procedure below will allow you to boot Windows separately or in dual boot configuration.
Here's what I recommend to do:

1. Disconnect the drive containing Windows 8.1
2. Install Windows 10 with one drive connected.
3. After step 2, reconnect the drive containing Windows 8.1
4. Boot up Windows 8.1. Open disk management and take a note of the drive letter of Windows 10 OS.
   NOTE: if you boot up Windows 10, then take a note of Windows 8.1 drive letter
5. Open Admin command prompt and type: bcdboot X:\windows where X: is the drive letter of Windows 10 (Windows 8.1 if you boot from Windows 10 in step 4)
6. Reboot the PC. You should have a dual boot screen.

NOTE: To break off the dual boot setting, Win+R->msconfig->boot and delete the none default entry on the list.

 

Accessing a Hard Drive...

You can boot from Norton Ghost and clone that disk to your hard drive. Then boot normally install virtual machine with xp and from that machine access cloned drive. It's a complex but safe process.