Dual boot Windows 7 X64 with Windows 8 on two seperate internal HDD's

I admit to being clueless when it comes to dual booting. I already have 7 X64 on my C: drive and a completely blank internal, formatted D: drive. How do I go about installing Windows 8 on drive D: and setting it up to dual boot?

Thanks in advance.

Hello Vincent,

You could just boot from the Windows 8 DVD/USB to install to the blank drive as normal to dual boot them. I find that to be the easiest way. The tutorial below can give you more details on this to help if you like.

Dual Boot Installation - Windows 8 and Windows 7 or Vista

Hope this helps,
Shawn

After going to the link as directed, I'm confused as to how to do the dual boot with 7 remaining as my default system.

No worries. By default, the last OS installed will be the default OS to run automatically at startup after the 30 second time delay. In this case Windows 8.

After installing Windows 8, you can use the tutorial below to set Windows 7 to be the default OS to run at startup again.

Startup Options - Choose a Default OS to Run at Startup in Windows 8

Better than dual booting is 2 independent installations. Unplug the Windows7 HDD and install Windows8 on the other disk. You then switch between the 2 systems (after replugging the Win7 disk) by changing the BIOS boot order (tapping F12 or ESC at power-on). This scheme will save you a lot of headaches later.

That's certainly another way, but IMO it just seems to be a much harder way to dual boot to have to use the BIOS/motherboard boot menu to select which OS you want instead of in the normal "Windows Boot Manager" screen.

Maybe, but especially with Windows8 it is faster (unless you change the bootorder) and a lot cleaner. The day the OP wants to uninstall Windows8 he will have a lot less trouble - cleaning up the bootmgr and MBR may be easy for us but may be a challenge for the OP.

To uninstall Win8 for me when Dual Booting has been as easy as deleting it in Disk Mgmt. It does leave the boot files and Active flag on Win7 which is all the remaining OS needs to continue on its own.

The Metro-style Dual Boot menu and options are a much nicer GUI for Win8 Dual Boots anyway. I wouldn't want to miss them even if I was using separate HD's.

For the 8 CP and later presently for the 8 Release Preview I first unplugged the 7 host drive and saw the clean install of 8 each time on a second drive before replugging the 7 host back in. With the CP I added a boot entry for 7 in the 8 BCD and vice versa for adding an entry for 8 into the 7 BCD.

The problem before the eventual clean install of 7 that came up was the need to run the Automatic repair option in order to see 8 load when selected while booting into the 7 boot options. That replaced the original 7 mbr entries with 8's.

For the RP I still added 7 into the 8 boot options but now have the second drive set as the default boot drive in the bios setup with 7 set as the default OS. Each version has a stand alone install on separate drives while the 8 boot loader saw the additional entry simplifying things by lowering the boot options screen from 30 ro only 10 seconds.

When not right there every time to press the F12 key no worries! EasBCD saw the boot entry for 7 added in as well as the boot options screen appearing to select 8 when planning to boot into the RP. This allows for OS selection by either method.

I was going to start a new thread but the title of this one is exactly the issue I have..

The problem is that I have Windows 7 64bit installed on one internal SSD and I wanted to install Windows 8 64bit on a different internal SSD. That worked all fine at first, but now I keep getting errors when I attempt to boot Win8. I get error code 0xc000000e because there is apparently a problem with my winload.exe file.

I have tried multiple times installing Win8 first then 7, and 7 then 8. I tried making one SSD primary and then the other. Every way I try it eventually gives me the same error. Sometimes when I first boot up it will work, but the next time I reboot it's broken again. And sometimes when I choose to boot to the Win8 drive it will work once, but not again.

This is driving me nuts as I never have had any problems with dual boot setups in the past. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Suggest you install Windows 7 first, then disconnect the Windows 7 disk, then install Windows 8 on the other SSD. Reconnect the Windows 7 SSD and change the boot sequencece with the BIOS.

You can also do it the other way around - Win8 first. What is important is that the one SSD is disconnected when the other OS is being installed.

The best move is to unplug the 7 drive to see 8 as a stand alone on the second and press the F key assigned(F4, F8, F11, or F12 usually sometime the DEL key is used on portables however) to bring up the boot device menu in order to select the 8. Someone here refers to that as bios managed dual booting.

Thatt seems to be far less problematic then replacing 7 mbr entries with those for 8 being the newer version and problems seen when booting into 7 from the 8 boot options. Lately I have been hear about a few other bugs in the retail besides drive errors ending being seen however.

For those running Gigabyte boards the AppleCharger.sys file mainly for seeing hand helds like Fruti Company IThis or IThat recharged is put back by MS with Win 8 after Gigabyte had already removed that particular driver from their updates! The person discovering that one ran the Autoruns utility found at the TechNet Sysinternals downloads to isolate the problem it was causing with shutting 8 down and see a hanging black screen instead.

Thank you for the quick replies! I thought installing them separately like that would work, but I was hoping to find a way to do it with the Windows dual-boot menu so I could select the OS I wanted without using the BIOS boot menu to select the drive.

Oh well, I don't plan to change between 7 and 8 much so installing them separately won't be a problem. I mainly got 8 just to test it out. It is strange that it doesn't work better than that though.. I suppose installing both on the same drive would be better but I don't want to do that.

When dual booting the Customer Preview with 7 I added the boot entry in after the 7 was replugged back in. Then I had to boot up with the 8 dvd burned at the time to run the Automatic repair(Startup repair in 7) to see the 8 mbr entries overwrite those for 7 and then could watch 8 start up when selected.

Likewise if you dual Vista with 7 and add the 7 boot entry into the Vista BCD you would then need to boot up from the 7 media used to run the mbr repair by Startup repair tool or manual at the command prompt option with the Fix boot and Fixmbr commands due to 7 then being the newer of the two versions.

The 8 boot option being there makes it easy while the few things needed as well as possible errors on each version's own volume is where the problem came up here following the test on the PC Refresh option in 8. With the 7 host still plugged in I booted into 7 when having the 8 RP drive set as default and both versions suddenly started freezing up solid upon arriving at the desktop and as soon as each loaded fully the first item you clicked saw total freeze up!

That's when the Disk Check tool came in handy. Later when switching from Native ide mode to AHCI 7 suddessfully mounted the pair of OS drives's volumes a SCSI devices adding one more post screen to the mix and 8 failed miserably! Both at the time following the just seen clean install of 7 after the freeze up mishap and error checking had all board drivers installed fully unlike when first getting the board in AHCI mode and the then fresh 7 install not running normally as it should until the initial switch over to the Native ide.

Besides the need for a 3rd party addon like Classic Shell, incompatibility issues with some older still wanted programs, DX 9 elements needed for some old titles, and then seeing 8's apparant lack of adoption when changing drive modes 8 spelled a disaster in waiting here! If I later go for 8 with SP1 I will not see the two version linked together due to the apparent problems that can surface but will likely skip over 8 entirely as a result.

The other thing that seems to be but may not be just related to a select number of Gigabyte model boards brought to my attention lately was the driver file for charging IPhones and IPads in case you find that in the System32 folder by chance. Apparently MS still kept it in their 8 driver base even after Gigabyte found it to be a concern of some type and removed it.

Hi,

What happens if I use WHS method from post #5 and later want to remove the HD Windows 8 is installed on ? Do I simply remove the HD (with the Windows 8 installation) and then I am back to my same set-up before Windows was installed on the 2nd HD or do I have to make other changes ?

Thanks,

Dan

mrdb said:

Hi,

What happens if I use WHS method from post #5 and later want to remove the HD Windows 8 is installed on ? Do I simply remove the HD (with the Windows 8 installation) and then I am back to my same set-up before Windows was installed on the 2nd HD or do I have to make other changes ?

Thanks,

Dan

Click to expand...

With my method, these 2 systems are completely independent. If you remove the Win8 HDD, you will be back to Win7 (or whatever your previous system was) as before. You don't even have to change the BIOS - it will just skip the removed disk.

Thanks for your prompt reply WHS, appreciate the help.

Dan

No problem. Any time.

One thing to know ahead of time about Win 8 is if you do have to use the PC Refresh option that will automatically see 7 added into the 8 boot options unless you remember to unplug the 7 drive first before proceeding with the new form of OS repair which amounts to another clean install of 8.

If you happen to be mixing Sata II drives with Sata III having a pair of S3 ports in use simply removing the 8 drive(if Sata II or SSD) might leave a 3rd drive not second OS drive set as the first in hard drive list. Being familiar with the Integrated Peripherals section of the bios and how to use the NumKeypad arrow keys to move the hard drives up and down in the list of drives will allow you to verfiy which drive(when multiple drives are installed) is set as the default hard drive when seen at the top of the list.

The rest of the time you can simply press the F key assigned to the boot device menu to select the drive not set as default to boot from the other. No need to go in and change boot orders constantly.