Windows 10: EasyBCD Dual Boot management for Win10 and Win7 on separate drives

I would try making a bootable USB flash drive of Kyhi's Recovery Tools:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

Boot the computer from that, run the Macrium Reflect program and under the restore menu is a utility to Fix Windows Boot Problems. Run that utility and you can add both Windows installations to either/both boot menus contained in the ESP partitions.

 

not at all familiar with macrium's but i guess i need to start. i do have bootable usb of both os's as both are clean installs last few days

 

That didn't turn out very well. Made the bootable, booted from it chose the macrium, went thru the steps chose disk to boot from, waited for finish, restarted, and it restarted to wrong drive and as appears now 10 is completely wiped. It did however create another admin account on 7 and gives me a choice there as to which account I want to log in with

 

Look at Disk Management from W7 to see if W10 was wiped, if it is the free space of that drive/partition should be 100%

It would be a good idea to label your C and D partitions, so you know what`s what,

 

they were c&d respectively depending which i was in at the time. first thing i noticed was in the bbotable i made it had as c&e which i figured ok the bootable probably took d. it booted to wrong drive (i had picked 10 for primary) and created am axtra admin account giving me a choice which to long in with. i got rid of the admin and restored my 10 and am now trying to figure out my next move. luckily had mirror copy on extra drive so am now here at this point

they were c&d respectively depending which i was in at the time. first thing i noticed was in the bbotable i made it had as c&e which i figured ok the bootable probably took d. it booted to wrong drive (i had picked 10 for primary) and created am axtra admin account giving me a choice which to long in with. i got rid of the admin and restored my 10 and am now trying to figure out my next move. luckily had mirror copy on extra drive so am now here at this point
upon further inspection 10 is still be labled E in 7 instead of D without ability to change back to D but in 10 7 is what is was and should be D and i can change it to E. ???????????????????????????????

 

this is what i have now and can someone explain to me how i am to accomplish a dual boot setup with this. so far, for whatever reason, the process is not working. i even tried once as the navylcmnd suggested using macrium's from a bootable winpese only to be left with 2 logins on 7 and now the extra drive is assigned a different letter when viewed from the other drive. i.e., from 10, 7 is D but from 7 , 10 is E,???
both are pro editions, 10 on ssd and 7 on hdd, both gpt, yet 10 shows one more partition than 7 does. thinking back on last dual boot or multi boot setup im thinking it was done with mbr?? i can boot to one or the other just fine from my boot override after post but its just a pain to do all the time. easier with my boot right into uefi app but still a pain and time consuming compared. ideas and instructions would be great as i am hesitant to try the macrium's again until i have stable and backups and figure out the drive letter deal. i think pics may be reversed in order3 is top 2 is bottom

 

When I said Label the drives, I meant label one Windows 7 and the other Windows 10.

It does not matter what letter the other drive has when you are booted into each OS, the one you`re using will always be C and the other drive will be D, E, F etc

If you want to change the other OS system letter, you can do that in Disk Management.

If there is another item ( say a dvd drive ) which is already using D, then you have to change that to another letter first before you can change the other drive to D

I always name the dvd drive Z

Please post a shot of Disk Management from Windows 7

In my opinion, (and this is just the way I prefer to do it) it is easier to just use the 1 time boot key to bring up the boot menu to choose which drive you want to boot into, this will always keep each drive independent from each other, you simply set your default drive (the OS you use mostly) to #1 in the bios so it boots to that OS on it`s own, then just use the 1 time boot menu to choose the other drive when you want to.

As far as W10 goes, after you have it setup the way you want it, you will barely notice the difference between it and 7, other than the user interface *Smile You will be fine, it`s just another OS *Smile

 

I'm squared away on how to change the drive letters and before the macrium ordeal they were C&D but after that somehow, while in 7, the 10 disk drive shows up as E now instead of D and the option to get D back is not there. Literally goes A,B,C,E,xxx on down the alphabet. While in 10 tho, 7 disk is labeled D. I can change that to E to avoid confusion but where did D go and why is it no longer an option. I can send another screen shot in a bit when I get back home but that question still remains along with how can i add boot files from primary to secondary drive and visa versa. No matter which drive I run bcdboot D:\Windows from I get the failure to copy error message even after just completing bcdboot /rebuild on the OS drives?? Should they be converted something other than gpt and would I still be able to uefi if so? Does one being ssd and other hdd have something to do with it? I've reinstalled both enough times with one or the other being installed first to determine that installation order is not playing a role in it at least as far as I can tell. Can one be gpt and the other mbr and still boot uefi with the option to boot either from the graphical menu. It's brand new system but before and up until one of the more recent clean installs I even had a win 7 textual dual menu. The several clean installs I refer to have been in last couple weeks for both os's as one would destroy the other during first attempt at dual boot.

 

Post a shot of Disk Management from Windows 7, there has to be something using the D letter.

There is no reason to change W7 from D to E, (when booted into 10) leave it be D

You can't change a GPT drive to MBR if you want it to be strictly UEFI (as far as I know) any experts can chime in on that.

My Z170 Bios has a Legacy & UEFI setting and that`s where I leave it, if I had a GPT OS disk and a MBR OS disk, I could boot into either one if I wanted to, but I only install in Legacy Mode on a MBR Disk ( I like having only 1 partition for an OS on my SSD ) but that is just the way I like it.

There is no real difference between a ssd or a hard drive when it comes to a OS, it has no idea what it`s using ( if you understand what I mean ) *Smile

 

i understand exactly what your saying but at this point im throwing everything out there since nothing seems to be working. my x730 bios has uef only, legacy only, or do not launch either which i assume is the same as whatever is needed is what gets chosen

 

thats just it, i didnt change it. when it booted to the wrong drive after trtied with the macriums reflection or whatever it is called i suddenly had an extra login option. the regular admin. account you get when you first install and the elevated admin microsoft keeps hidden. thats when i noticed D was changed to E and when i looked to change it back, there was no D to choose. i cant keep the drop down open when i open up the snipping tool to show you but it is not there i promise

 

Your cd rom is using D, at least in your DM shot it is. Change it to Z, then D will become available.

And if you ever want to add a picture that has a drop down that you want to show, tap the Print Screen key once, then open paint and click paste, you now have a picture of everything, now use the snipping tool to capture what you want and save it to your desktop as a jpeg, then add it to your post, you can always delete it later.

 

ill be damned it is.. if misread that since it got changed last night i guess. problem one solved now for #2 how am going to get my dual boot back?lol

 

i think maybe finding out this answer to this question may lead to solving the dual boot issue going on. both os's installed gpt. win 10 has one more partition than win 7. why is that and why did the win 10 windows partition get boot files but the win7 windows partition did not? especially if both installed by themselves no other drives hooked up besides optical

 

im at a complete loss now!!! i shut her down unplugged 10 booted right into 7 >disk mngt> C: and here is what it looked like



notice in primary it has the boot files. so then i shut 'er down unplug 7 plug in 10 boot her up and she looks the same primary has the boot files. everything looks identical from one to the other what could go wrong right??? so since i was thinking i had enabled setting in bios that would let me avoid the whole post and boot process which is where i figure the confusion was happening and i plug in 7 and without looking since i am counting on it working i jump into cmd and run bcdboot and " failure while attempting to copy" again. ideas ideas?????