Is it possible to have 2 windows 7 on different partitions?

Super Starman said:

I need grub, I keep windows for some games and some applications that do not emulate well with CrossOver.
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the windows partition is not Active, yet updates worked for more than a year
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As for first partition and system hidden volume, we'll have to disagree, because that's how I've seen people fix that nonsense caused by KB4474419.

I'm not criticizing you for multi-booting with linux. I see nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying that changes made by grub appear to be the cause of your update failure, so that's where your focus should be. How you deal with that is up to you, but it's not an issue with Win7 being on other than the first partition, and it's not an issue with whether or not you have a System Reserved partition. That's what I take issue with -- the unfounded assertion that those are somehow "facts". And other people, no matter how many, jumping to conclusions based on anecdotal evidence they do not understand, does not constitute "proof".

The screenshot below shows an example I threw together in a virtual machine. I pre-partitioned the disk into four partitions, and made the fourth partition active. I launched the Win7 installation DVD and told it to install on partition 3. No fuss, no muss, no complaints, no whimpers. It went ahead and did it easily.

And whether or not previous patches worked is not relevant. Patches are applied to different parts of the system, and if patches are not concerned with the system boot files, it should be no surprise they can (and they did) successfully install themselves.

From the circumstances being reported, it would appear this particular patch is trying to change something in the early boot process, and it's expecting to be able to find whatever it's looking for by following the active partition, but that method is being thwarted by grub and the linux multi-boot. I'm postulating that the people who successfully applied this particular patch did so by temporarily reverting to a configuration in which the active and System partition were one and the same. It wasn't because they put Windows on the first partition ... though if that's how they achieved the goal of making the active and System partition one and the same, that's fine. They achieved their goal, but you can't extrapolate that as proof that Windows must be first. It's nothing more than a coincidental side-effect of the solution they happened to choose. There's a difference between saying, "This technique worked for me," and saying, "This technique worked for me so that proves some unrelated happenstance."

It's your system and I'm not telling you that you should or shouldn't do this or that. If you prefer to reinstall with Windows first and you're able to solve your problem, then that's great. After all, that's the ultimate goal. But if you post incorrect assertions as fact, don't be surprised if you're challenged.

dg1261 said:

Yes, that's not only possible, it's my preferred setup for my family's machines. My own machine multi-boots several OSes, but for my wife and adult children (who don't really need dual-boot but whose machines I inevitably still support), I basically "dual-boot" them with the same OS. There are many ways to setup a dual-boot, but I prefer the genuine way with two completely independent OS partitions with optionally a third-party boot manager (i.e., boot manager not embedded in either OS partition). You don't actually need a boot manager if you're willing to manually set the "active" partition, but a boot manager makes things a little easier.

Without the boot manager, I can think of using Disk Management to switch active partition. How do you switch the partition when the W7 being used becomes unable to boot and want to boot to W7 on another partition?

churin said:

Without the boot manager, I can think of using Disk Management to switch active partition. How do you switch the partition when the W7 being used becomes unable to boot and want to boot to W7 on another partition?

If the system doesn't boot, you simply boot from removable boot media, such as a CD or USB stick.

Any half-decent partition manager, such as MiniTool Partition Wizard or Aomei Partition Asst, for instance, can change the active partition. If you haven't already created their "rescue media", you may need to install the program on a working system first before you can use it to create a bootable CD or USB stick, with which you can boot the non-working system and set the active partition.

Since all you're doing is changing the "Active" flag it doesn't need to specifically be a Windows-based tool, so there are also linux-based tools, such as G-PartEd or Partition Magic. (FWIW, note some linux tools may refer to it as the "Boot" flag instead of the "Active" flag.) These can usually be downloaded as an .iso and burned directly to CD or USB without having to install on a hard drive first.

IIRC, forum member SIW2 created a custom rescue CD that you can download as an .iso, so doesn't need to be installed and is arguably easier to use than a linux .iso, as well. Perhaps he can point you to that.