Both Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 load up Windows 8.1 in boot menu

Stamanatic

New Member
So today I installed Windows 8.1 on a partition of my ssd, i shrunk my current windows 7 partition to 130gb and the windows 8.1 partition is 100gb, I installed windows 8.1 on the new partition.

Installed fine, when it first loaded it didn't give me an option between windows 7 and windows 8.1 it kept booting straight into 8.1 after multiple restarts.

So then I installed EasyBCD, it showed windows 8.1 in the boot menu and then I went to add q new entry and saw windows 7 was available on the c drive to add, so then I added.

Now when the boot menu shows, both options still bring up windows 8.1.

When I was in windows 8.1, it was showing just one drive, 100gb c drive, but should it not in fact show that as the e drive with 100gb and then the c drive with 130gb, that is what they were set to in windows 7 BEFORE i installed Windows 8.1.

Should it not be saying the E drive?

Also in the view settings it's showing both 8.1 and 7 having drive : C:\

I know for a fact that I installed windows 8.1 on the e drive partition 100gb and windows 7 was on the c drive which was 130gb.

I gave the original partition had no drive letter, I couldn't give it c or e, i gave it f, but it shows it as empty, and when I point the boot menu to that it just gives an error.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
 
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You might try this,,,boot into your Win 7 install dvd, and select repair option, let it do it's thing and it will reboot. Then look at your boot up options and see if the word ( recovered ) appears behind each of your boot up options. If so it will now work, and you can use EasyBCD to rename them to what you want.

I have done this and it worked perfectly for me...

Good luck and let us know the results :tongueout:

So today I installed Windows 8.1 on a partition of my ssd, i shrunk my current windows 7 partition to 130gb and the windows 8.1 partition is 100gb, I installed windows 8.1 on the new partition.

Installed fine, when it first loaded it didn't give me an option between windows 7 and windows 8.1 it kept booting straight into 8.1 after multiple restarts.

So then I installed EasyBCD, it showed windows 8.1 in the boot menu and then I went to add q new entry and saw windows 7 was available on the c drive to add, so then I added.

Now when the boot menu shows, both options still bring up windows 8.1.

When I was in windows 8.1, it was showing just one drive, 100gb c drive, but should it not in fact show that as the e drive with 100gb and then the c drive with 130gb, that is what they were set to in windows 7 BEFORE i installed Windows 8.1.

Should it not be saying the E drive?

Also in the view settings it's showing both 8.1 and 7 having drive : C:\

I know for a fact that I installed windows 8.1 on the e drive partition 100gb and windows 7 was on the c drive which was 130gb.

I gave the original partition had no drive letter, I couldn't give it c or e, i gave it f, but it shows it as empty, and when I point the boot menu to that it just gives an error.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
 
Drive letters don't exist in the "real" world.
When your PC is switched off, no letters exist on any partition.
When you boot a Windows OS it will assign letters, either dynamically or according to it's registry map if any have been permanently assigned within that OS.
Each OS has its own map, hence both 7 and 8 are C when you boot them.
When 8 is booted, 7 can no longer be C since Windows can only use each letter once. 7 will therefore be the next unused letter in W8's map.
EasyBCD maps the letters identically to the system you are running it on, so when you create a W7 entry in W8's BCD you must quote the letter which W8 explorer gives to W7, not C.
If you created an entry for W7 with the letter C, then bootmgr will go to C (W8) to find the winload module, hence W8 will start.
Give the BCD entry for W7 the same letter that W8 explorer gives it, and it will start properly.

For the above reason, the booted installation disc (which is an OS in its own right) also maps all the partition letters according to its own map, so if you placed W8 by letter E, it was not necessarily where you expected it to be.
By this means, countless users before you have inadvertently overwritten their original OS whilst thinking they are installing a new one alongside it.

The only safe way to install a system in the exact place you intended is to ignore letters and make use of the volume label field.
The label is a physical "real" entity which does exist whether your PC is on or off, and is visible to every OS you boot.
When formatting, most people leave the label field blank and assign a letter.
It's far safer to do the exact opposite.
 
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