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

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  1. Posts : 50
    Windows 7
       #1

    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.
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  2. Posts : 71,980
    64-bit Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
       #2

    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
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  3. Posts : 50
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       #3

    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.
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  4. Posts : 71,980
    64-bit Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
       #4

    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
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  5. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #5

    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.
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  6. Posts : 71,980
    64-bit Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
       #6

    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.
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  7. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #7

    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.
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  8.    #8

    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.
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  9. Posts : 8,375
    W7 Ultimate x64/W10 Pro x64/W11 Pro Triple Boot - Main PC W7 Remote PC Micro ATX W7 Pro x64/W11 Pro
       #9

    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.
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  10. Posts : 5
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
       #10

    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.
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