Macrium recovery on boot menu and Dual-boot Win7 Win10

Not sure if I should post here or on a Windows 10 forum.


I have a Windows 7 Ultimate laptop that I recently added Windows 10 to as a dual-boot. I'm trying to figure out how to ADD a Macrium System Recovery boot option for Windows 7 without disturbing any of the recovery options that are already there after they got changed by Windows 10, and I'm finding the bazillion locations where there are windows images scattered around, confusing. I've been doing a lot of reading, and it was helpful to my understanding at first, but I'm on information overload now...

I have a Legacy BIOS mode setup and MBR partitioning scheme on my mSATA boot disk (disk 1).

Prior to adding Windows 10

I had the following partitions on disk 1:
- Recovery (no drive letter): I can't remember if it was "always" there or if it was added by Macrium 7.3 when I added a boot menu item for Macrium System Recovery. This was the active partition.
- Win7 System (C:): This is the partition containing my Win7 Operating System.
- Win10 System (D:): This is the partition I had created with the intention of installing Windows 10.
- Unallocated Space: I've gotten in the habit of always leaving some unallocated space on my hard drives in case I fill up a partition too full and need some breathing room to clean up

Even before I used Macrium to add its recovery to the boot menu, F8 advanced boot options never did include Repair My Computer.

I had created the Macrium boot menu option using its default recommendation for a Windows image, which I believe was WinRE. From Internet research, I believe my Windows 7 installation includes a WinRE image in c:\Windows\System32\Recovery, and I do see one there, but I'm not sure if that is the one that Macrium used. I have a backup image of my Recovery partition from before adding Windows 10, and the Windows image there is newer then the one in C:\Windows\System32\Recovery.

Boot used the Windows bootmgr, and presented a text-based menu of Windows 7 Ultimate or Macrium System Recovery, defaulting to Windows 7 Ultimate. I don't think I had to do any EasyBCD tweaks to get this working (I did on another PC).

After adding Windows 10
I have the following partitions on disk 1:
- Recovery (no drive letter): NOT active any more. Windows image is different (newer).
- Win7 System (C: when running Windows 7, no drive letter when running Windows 10): This is now the active partition.
- Win10 System (no drive letter when running Windows 7, C: when running Windows 10):
- Unallocated space

The install also screwed up my drive letters on Disk 0 and the optical drive in Windows 10, and completely deleted a large partition on Disk 0, but I fixed the drive letters and restored the missing partition with no issues. And, I guess because there is now a different active partition, I had to re-create my Macrium backup jobs for Disk 1 in Windows 7 because the partition identification is invalid.

Boot initially went into Windows 10 by default, and as my laptop was behind my two external monitors, it was hard to make out what was on the Metro boot menu. I used my Macrium Rescue disk to fixboot and included both Win7 and Win10 as boot options and set default to Windows 7. Then I got my bearings through several iterations of changing the boot configuration using EasyBCD and trying out the boot menu options. I added a boot entry for the Windows image in the Recovery partition, hoping that would be the Macrium System Recovery, but no, it puts me into the Windows 10 Recovery Environment with the Metro interface.

I'm pretty sure I did see Repair my Computer as an option somewhere buried in that menu.


So now I have a bunch of questions:
1. If I use Macrium from within Windows 7 to add Macrium System Recovery to the boot menu again, will it create a new recovery partition, modify the existing one, or do something else? Macrium currently says my WinRE has been updated (well, I guess no surprise since the Recovery partition is different now).
2. If use Macrium Recovery from within Windows 7 to add Macrium System Recovery to the boot menu but tell it to use a WinPE image instead of WinRE, same question, does it create a new partition, modify an existing one, or something else? Also, which WinPE image would be recommended?
3. Will using Windows 10 WinRE features damage either my Win7 or my Win10 OS, due to the fact I have a Dual-boot system with Windows bootmanager and Win7 as the Active partition? What about WinPE?
4. Does it matter if I give my nonactive Windows partition a drive letter (D:) in each OS? I remember reading something about unmounting nonactive system partitions in the registry to try to avoid loss of System Restore Points when switching back and forth between operating systems (and I checked, yes, my Win7 Restore Points are all gone now that I've been mucking around with Win10), but I didn't read in detail.
5. Is there any way to restore my image of the Recovery partition to a different location than where it was (like into that unallocated space at the end of Disk 1)? Can I just copy the files from the image to a new partition I create, and use EasyBCD to create a boot menu entry that points to its Windows image?

Thanks for any help, or suggestions where to look for answers.


Rebeccah

It will help if you post a screenshot of disk management

1. If I use Macrium from within Windows 7 to add Macrium System Recovery to the boot menu again, will it create a new recovery partition, modify the existing one, or do something else? Macrium currently says my WinRE has been updated (well, I guess no surprise since the Recovery partition is different now).

It creates the image using winre ( ir if you select winpe, it will download that _) and stores it in c:\boot\macrium. It doesn't change your partitions.

3. Will using Windows 10 WinRE features damage either my Win7 or my Win10 OS, due to the fact I have a Dual-boot system with Windows bootmanager and Win7 as the Active partition? What about WinPE?

No.

5. Is there any way to restore my image of the Recovery partition to a different location than where it was (like into that unallocated space at the end of Disk 1)? Can I just copy the files from the image to a new partition I create, and use EasyBCD to create a boot menu entry that points to its Windows image?

Imaging programs ( including the one you are using) let you point at where you want to restore the image to. They should also automatically handle the boot entries.