Windows 7 10 dual boot issues-will EasyBCD help

trinaz

Member
Have my old Win 7 Pro 64bit on a separate hard drive - disconnected that 7 drive and did a clean install of Win 10 Pro 64bit - Tried to set up a dual boot by entering CMD command that follows per Win 10 group suggestion: bcdboot F:\Windows (F is seperate HDD in box)

After running the above cmd command in Win 10 Upon reboot I do get 7 and 10 boot options...but if I choose 7...Win 7 Pro does boot...but really really slow...probably 2 to 3 minutes before log on screen.

Before logon in 7 I also get the attached error message at boot start - booting to 10 has no issues or messages...10 works smooth....7 when finally loads runs a little sluggish also

Have UEFI on new MB - original Win 7 Pro was installed prior to UEFI - Win 10 Pro was installed with new board/cpu etc running UEFI. I'm thinking there's a conflict between the new Win 10 UEFI startup and the older unknown bios prior to UEFI systems ?

Win 7 drive I'm sure has 'boot record' on the HDD from it's own start up installed years ago ? The older Win 7 was a straight boot 1 drive only...no other drives OS's were involved with that system O/S.

Hopefully the above makes sense and I can either remove the dual boot - or fix the win 7 drive so it starts smooth without the error message attached when booting via dual boot to 7 drive

Thanks....TiminAz
 

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I don't know whose advice that was to use the bcdboot command, but that's certainly not how we recommend adding a dual boot. You just need to point and click in EasyBCD's GUI to have it done right from the start.

bcdboot doesn't add an entry, it reinstalls the bootloader entirely. I would set up your BIOS to boot from the Windows 10 drive, and then run EasyBCD from within Windows 10 to add the Windows 7 entry.
 
I don't know whose advice that was to use the bcdboot command, but that's certainly not how we recommend adding a dual boot. You just need to point and click in EasyBCD's GUI to have it done right from the start.

bcdboot doesn't add an entry, it reinstalls the bootloader entirely. I would set up your BIOS to boot from the Windows 10 drive, and then run EasyBCD from within Windows 10 to add the Windows 7 entry.

I have a very similar situation as the OP.
I have a 3 year old HP Envy dv7, with two hard drives, one with Win 7 Pro 64 bit, and the other with Win 10 64 bit. Both hard drives had clean installs of each OS on this laptop mentioned at two different times. Put either hard drive in by itself and the laptop boots and runs fine to the OS loaded on it. Put both hard drives in the laptop with Win 10 as primary, with easyBCD 2.3 installed on the Win 10 hard drive and the drive with Win 7 added to boot menu via esayBCD. Shut down and reboot I do get a blue screen with a choice of which OS to boot into. Selecting Win 7 gives me the exact same error black screen as the picture in the OP post.

I did try this ("bcdboot doesn't add an entry, it reinstalls the bootloader entirely. I would set up your BIOS to boot from the Windows 10 drive, and then run EasyBCD from within Windows 10 to add the Windows 7 entry.")

What to try now?
Thank you,

James
 
Is your PC UEFI ?
If so, are both OSs on GPT ?
If W10 is GPT and W7 is MBR, MS won't let you dual boot them from W10.
In EasyBCD "view settings", does one load Winload.efi and one Winload.exe ?
 
Hello Terry,
And Thank You for replying.
My PC is UEFI.
Both are GPT.
Both are Winload.efi.
I did make sure to check, and had to reset my BIOS to Legacy Boot.
Rebooted and got the blue screen boot manager again ( windows version of a BM? ) and selected Windows 7 again. After a real long boot time, and a few dark blank screens it did boot into the Win 7 OS hard drive (secondary).
I played around there, went online to see if any WiFi or Browser settings had changed, all was well....
Went to shut down Win 7, and I got the blue screen saying there was an ongoing process that when finished, Windows would turn off the PC..not an exact quote from the screen, but...
I left it alone for about 3 hours. I had been checking the hard drive activity LED and it stayed really busy for all of the 3 hours. I let it be, until the activity was done and the LED quit blinking. However the Blue information screen stayed up....I hit the power off button and rebooted. The PC went to a black screen with I am guessing the easyBCD boot manager, selected Win 7 and it booted perfectly into Win 7. Shut it down again and rebooted into Win 10, again got the black screen BM and selected Win 10...WaLa..I had Win 10.
I am not entirely sure what process was happening during the 3 hours, but It must have re-written something.

Thank You Again,

James
 
1 down vote
A bit easier solution for the above problem.
  1. Press F10 during boot-up to go through Advanced BIOS settings
  2. In BIOS Boot Order settings enable Legacy Boot order which will enable both UEFI and Legacy Boot Order.
  3. Increasing Boot Delay to 5 secs will give some time during boot time OS selection.
  4. Save the BIOS settings and exit.
  5. On the next boot you will be asked about boot selection option. Press F9 to enter and select the appropriate boot option (Windows OS Boot Manager or Ubuntu)
 
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