Cannot dual boot Windows 7 and Windows 8

A

Arizona Willie

Member
When I boot the computer I get through the BIOS and get to the BCD boot menu but if I choose Windows 8 I get an error message about digital signatures or corrupted file etc. etc.

The dual boot menu does not work to boot into Windows 8 I CAN boot into Windows 7 with it.

I have to hit F8 as it finishes up the BIOS boot if I want to get into Windows 8 and bypass the BSD booting.
 
Just rename the W7 bootmgr to bootmgr7 (e.g.) and select and drag bootmgr from the W8 partition root into the W7 partition root.
When you tire of W8, delete bootmgr from W7 root and rename bootmgr7 to bootmgr and you'll be back where you started.
 
Big big trouble

Yesterday every time I tried to boot into Windows 7 it would tell me my disks needed to be checked but didn't seem to find any problems.
But, when I get into Windows 7 my programs will not select using the cursor. Clicking does nothing. The mouse moves the cursor but that is all.

One time I did get it working and went into Control Panel and told it to delete EasyBCD since I was having so much trouble with it installed.

It said it did -- but when I rebooted the Easy BCD menu was still there and all the same problems.

So this morning I reinstalled Easy BCD and then removed Windows 7 from the menu since I had read a post that that was one way to fix things.

WRONG

Now I can't get into the Window 7 AT ALL ANY WAY NO HOW NO WAY.

When I boot now I get the menu with Windows 8 on it ( but of course that doesn't work ).

If I hit the F8 key I can by pass that menu and select the Windows 8 disk and run it as I have done in order to get online now.

But I can't access my Windows 7 disk no matter what I do.

Hitting F8 and selecting the Windows 7 drive just brings me back to the Easy BCD boot menu.

I'm sure this is my fauolt for not putting the Windows 8 bootmgr on the Windows 7 disk in the first place.

But how do I fix this?


Terry60 said:
Just rename the W7 bootmgr to bootmgr7 (e.g.) and select and drag bootmgr from the W8 partition root into the W7 partition root.
When you tire of W8, delete bootmgr from W7 root and rename bootmgr7 to bootmgr and you'll be back where you started.
Click to expand...
 
"One time I did get it working and went into Control Panel and told it to delete EasyBCD since I was having so much trouble with it installed.
It said it did -- but when I rebooted the Easy BCD menu was still there and all the same problems."
EasyBCD is not a boot manager. It doesn't have a boot menu. It's not involved in booting your PC
It's a tool for allowing you to change the entries in the Microsoft boot manager's boot menu.
Putting it on, or removing it from an OS has absolutely no effect, only using it to change something.
You appear to have HDD problems unrelated to W7's inability to recognize the W8 bootloader's signature.
(though I do have personal experience of installing a new OS (Ubuntu) suddenly making Windows think that every partition on the PC is "dirty". You can ignore it, assuming that it can't be true, but ultimately you'll have to give in and let chkdsk "fix" everything, so that you don't get pestered for ever, or worse !)
Can you not use W8 (Explorer right click > properties > tools) to instigate a chkdsk on your W7 partition ?
 
Boot to Windows 8. Install EasyBCD.
EasyBCD | BCD Backup/Repair| Recreate Boot Files
EasyBCD | Add Entry | Windows 7
 
Well, sorry to report things have gotten worse. Earlier this morning, after I made that previous post, I decided to try System Repair from the Windows 7 install disk but when I ran that it said it was the wrong operating system.

Then, when I tried to go to Windows 8 I got an error screen and it seems the NTFS file system on THAT disk is now messed up so I can't get into either Windows 7 or Windows 8

BTW I did earlier let chkdsk finish because I booted the computer and left the room forgetting that it was going to try to check the disks so it did. But when I saw it trying to check disks yesterday it never found any errors.

I also have tried using my Acronis rescue disks to restore a backup and it says the files are busy. So apparently they are hosed also.

And the backup files are on an external drive. It's like a virus went through and corrupted every drive in my system.

At this point it looks like I have lost everything. Both operating systems and all backups are gone.

I'm using my laptop to get here now -- so if anyone has a suggestion I can download and burn dvd's etc. on this in order to try to recover my main computer.

Thanks for any help you can come up with.
 
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I don't know if that's going to help in this case, Terry.

Though he could run testdisk from Ubuntu, that would help.
 
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