Need guidance to dual boot win7/8 in laptop that is the spawn of satan

gregrocker said:

The G drive which appears to have no OS on it should not be marked Active. Only the partition booting the Dual Boot should be marked Active. So Mark Partition as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums. If that's the problem data drive that might be the reason why. Another reason for a data drive blocking boot is that it accidentally had boot code written to it if attached during a repair or reinstall.

So if G is not the problem drive, plug it in and boot the Win7 disk to determine if it is Partition Marked Active (Option Two) to mark it Inactive. If this is not enough to stop it from interfering then move its data off to wipe it with Diskpart Clean Command to clear boot code and partition table, then repartition in Disk Mgmt and move data back on.

Next we see Windows 8 is the booted OS signified by the Boot flag on it, and that it is correctly being booted by its System Reserved partition as signified by the System Active flags there.

Now boot into Win7 to see which partition is now marked System Active. This will tell us if the drives still remain independently bootable via the BIOS even if EasyBCD configured a Windows Boot menu.

I think you may be correct.

Attached is the disk management image taken from windows 7. This time the 2tb external data drive was attached. And the problem is that it is marked active. The SSD with windows 8 is G: in this.

you must be install first windows 7 in your hard drive after that you able to install windows 8.1 version. Windows never allow to install a lower version on upgraded version so first windows 7 then windows 8.1

ethan11james said:

you must be install first windows 7 in your hard drive after that you able to install windows 8.1 version. Windows never allow to install a lower version on upgraded version so first windows 7 then windows 8.1

Actually it is possible and i have more or less been able to do it, just working out on some remaining minor issues. Please read my previous posts for details.

So did setting the External Inactive resolve your problem?

I notice that the Win8 System Reserved partition is still System even when Win7 is booted, likely because you added 7 to Dual Boot menu from Win8. This is okay but I'd want to know that 7 can boot on its own without the 8 drive attached. It should since 7 was booting itself before, correct? EasyBCD does not remove the 7 Boot files, only configures 7 to boot from the Win8 boot files on its SysRserved partiton. So try unplugging all other drives except 7 to see if it boots on its own. If not you'd need to confirm 7 is marked Active and run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times.

After setting the external drive as inactive, i get a new error upon boot with the drive connected: 'Invalid partition table'

Everything works fine if the external drive is unplugged while booting/rebooting/switching OS's

gregrocker said:

So did setting the External Inactive resolve your problem?

I notice that the Win8 System Reserved partition is still System even when Win7 is booted, likely because you added 7 to Dual Boot menu from Win8. This is okay but I'd want to know that 7 can boot on its own without the 8 drive attached. It should since 7 was booting itself before, correct? EasyBCD does not remove the 7 Boot files, only configures 7 to boot from the Win8 boot files on its SysRserved partiton. So try unplugging all other drives except 7 to see if it boots on its own. If not you'd need to confirm 7 is marked Active and run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times.

I will have to remove the keyboard to remove win 8 msata so i would like to keep that as a last resort. Popped off the trackpoints scroll button while installing the msata ssd

Run a full Disk Check on all partitions including External. Make sure you're backed up first.

If error persists move the data off to wipe External with Diskpart Clean Command then repartition following the commands in Method One of Partition / Extended : Logical Drives - Windows 7 Help Forums

Did you set D Inactive? I'd also unplug it if possible to observe.