Solved Dual boot Windows 7 Pro and Windows 8 Pro partition issues

[tekxan]

Good afternoon,
I want to install Windows 8.1 Pro (x64) on a newly created primary partition for testing purposes in a dual boot (windows7 Pro (x64), however my hard drive is already partitioned into C and D. D basically has all my data on it. What I noticed was that my D partition is also marked as primary, don’t know how that happened. Booting from the Windows 8 disc I choose to custom install which should give me the option to install on the newly created partition F but this does not show up in the available partitions to install on. I thought maybe by converting my D partition to a logical drive (extended) would fix the problem but this just results in the D partition no longer showing up in Windows. This is all a little embarrassing as although I haven’t set up a dual boot machine for years I should know where I’m going wrong, think age is catching up with me.
I’d appreciate some assistance with fixing this issue please. Oh just as a footnote, I decided to take 20GB or so from D partition to create the new F partition, this and formatting etc was done in Aomei 5.5 Pro as it was the only one of a few softwares I tried that allowed me to not only see unallocated space but also create a primary partition. I think there is a 3 primary partition limitation as far as I recall although there are workarounds I don’t care to complicate this further as I stated previously, I only want to run Win 8.1 for testing purposes.

Kindly

Tek

 

[gregrocker]

Why would you leave out the drive map? Please follow the instructions given here for posting screenshot of http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...nt-post-screen-capture-image.html#post2261610

You can have 4 Primary partitions but would need to convert one to Logical to add any more.

The Windows 8 partition is way too small so I'd use Partition Wizard CD to borrow some space from C to add it to: How to extend partition easily with partition magic ? Partition Wizard video help.

You're also missing the System Flag which apparently should be on the partition marked Active. Run http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html to see if it appears. This proves that the System is bootable and marks the partition booting the OS which will also be dual booting.

If after these changes the Win8 installation media doesn't see the target partition please post back a picture of what it does see. Where did you get Windows 8 media? How is it burned?

 

[tekxan]

I left out the drive map because 1 - I was trying to minimize the size of the attached image, 2 - because the drive map fundamentally contains the same info just displays it differently, 3 - I had to attend to my son in between sorting this post out (poor time management). However I've now attached the necessary (which I wasn't aware of & hopefully adequate) screen shot. I appreciate your input and I'll follow the steps you suggest. Win 8 was downloaded from Microsoft I think. Done this a while back.
Partition size should be ok as I have no intention of installing much in Win8 I'm more interested in the workings of it.
However, I will look at what you have suggested.

 

[gregrocker]

Makes it easier now we can see where Win8 partition is positioned. So you'd want to delete it in Disk Mgmt, shrink C by another 10gb and then create a new Win8 partition.

But first I'd try to get the System flag flying on the 400mb System partition because it's wrong without it. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

 

[tekxan]

Sure thing Greg, I'll give that a go but what difference does the system flag make please.

I see what you mean re drive map. Yes, what I did I resized D in front of it to purposely place the newly created partition before D

 

[gregrocker]

System flag tells us which partition holds the boot files and is booting the System. Without it the System should not even boot. So it's absence cannot be ignored.

 

[tekxan]

lol my system boots fine so go figure. ok gonna try this now but I must say in my experience I've had very little success using start-up repair so I fundamentally never use it. Apart from regular back ups i tend to rely more on Rollback RX which gets the PC back to a working environment quickly and efficiently 99.9% of the time.

 

[gregrocker]

If you'll read the tutorial you will see the purpose of the three repairs, which has sorted identical issues thousands of times before here.

 

[tekxan]

Afternoon Greg,
Read, understood and applied the article and this is what happened.
On first run the following resulted.
The following start-up option will be repaired:
Name: Windows Boot Manager
Identifier: {9DEA862C-5CDD-4E70-ACC1-F32B344D4795}
The following start-up options will be added:
Name: Windows Recovery Environment (Recovered)
Path: Recovery\WindowsRE\Winre.wim
Windows Device: Partition E: (400MB)
A copy of the current boot configuration data will be saved as: E:\Boot\ BCD.Backup.0002
System rebooted to start up repair once again and failed to repair rendering Windows unbootable. At this point I wasn’t too concerned so I ran it a third time and again Bootmanager problems. Decided to run Bootrec, which also didn’t work as expected.
On top of Windows not booting anymore, Rollback RX also failed which is unusual so I finally decided to recover Windows from a backup I had made earlier yesterday morning which also failed. Now a little more irritated as everything had been working before I tried this method I decided to reinstall Windows which went without a hitch. Once installed I noticed that my D drive containing all my data was now a raw disk which annoyed me even more as my last back up of this was yesterday and I had done a lot of work on the drive yesterday. My fault should have been my usual attentive self.
Luckily I had invested in Active @ Data studio a while back and was able to recover D drive properly so no harm done there.
So needless to say I still have a lot of software to reinstall, system tweaks to tune etc which should take me the best part of a week to sort out as I don’t have as much time to do this as I use to. This all because I want to install Windows 8 which incidentally I will do ASAP.

 

[gregrocker]

Be sure to follow http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164 to get and keep a perfect install, using only the tools and methods which work best for Win7 compiled there.

It sounds like you may have disk problems. I'd test the hard drive with the maker's Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure extended CD scan, followed by a full http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html from the DVD's http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html Command Line on a full disk partition you create from Step 2.2 in http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91339-ssd-hdd-optimize-windows-reinstallation.html.

Data should always be backed up externally. A method to do this and at the same time sync it to your other devices is here to http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-r...re-your-files-cloud-skydrive.html#post2269172.

 

[theog]

Did you try to convert F: into GPT and see if there is any difference?

You can not convert a partition to GPT, only the full HD drive.

 

[tekxan]

Hi Greg,
I ran a few hardware/drive tests and all seems fine. In hindsight I think I'll put Win 8 on the back burner for now but I will try again as soon as i am happy all is stable. Thanks again for your helpful suggestions

regards

 

[tekxan]

A big Thank you to all who have assisted me with this issue and now I can officially state that this thread is solved as I have now got Windows 8.1 Pro sitting very comfortably alongside Windows 7 Pro after ascertaining that my favorite safety net Rollback RX was causing too many stability issues and messing up the bootsector.