Load/boot Two Versions Of Windows 7 On Separate Drives?
Mar 5, 2011
Currently running Win7(64-bit) in RAID-0 on 2 WD Caviar Black's.I just purchased a SSD drive.What I want to do is load Win7 on the SSD and use that as my main drive, while also keeping my RAID drives boot-able and in tact as they are now. (Thus, a dual-boot Win7 setup)Will the BIOS allow me to select which drive to boot from upon start-up? My mobo is an ASUS Rampage II Extreme.
I currently have Windows 7 installed on two separate drives in my box. I can only set (select) boot sequence in the BIOS. If I recall correctly, way back when a boot selection menu would appear when I think I was running Windows 7 (when it first came out) alongside XP but that screen no longer appears with my current setup. Is there a way to get that screen back, or an alternate way to select the OS of choice without the hassle?
I have separate ide drives one is installed with XP Pro and the other with windows 7. I want to have the choice of either os when the pc boots i.e. choose the drive to boot the pc.
I have Window XP installed on Drive C:. My son installed Windows 7 on Drive E:. However, when the computer is booted up, it boots up in Windows 7, without allowing a choice. I suspect this can be corrected in BIOS, but don't want to screw it up.
Is there an easy way to dual boot on separate drives, i have installed windows 7 on 1 drive & vista on another. This was done independenly on the same machine as to say put vista on last year the got another hard drive took the vista drive out put new hard drive in & installed windows 7.I connected both. they see each other.I have read lots about reinstall one OS but nothing on if its already installed. IS THERE AWAY?
I have read that using a computer specifically for financial transactions with known and trusted entities (such as a bank) is a good way to reduce (though not eliminate) the risk of your accounts being hacked by reducing the likelihood of inadvertently installing a malware, spyware, or virus by reducing internet sites visited. Assuming this is correct, I was wondering about dual booting one computer with two physical hard drives (each with its own OS) versus one hard drive with two partitions. I figure the former would be "more secure" since one drive would be isolated from any unwanted programs. However, since they shared a few things (motherboard and such), is this set up as "secure" as having two computers? If so, how does one go about setting up a dual boot with two separate hard drives of the same operating system using one computer?
I want to install 7 on a separate hard drive to see how it works & work indepenantly on it's own system. How can I if at all make it so when I am booting up I can toggle in between 7 & xp startups.
i have xp home 32 bit as my OS now and i have another hard drive installed and ready to install win 7 64 bit on to. can i do this with xp running or should i disconnect the HD with xp on it, then when i start the computer it won't see any OS and then i could boot from the win7 dvd and do a clean installl and then re=connect the HD with xp on it.
then when i start computer i should get the choice of which one to boot from or is this not the way to do it?? i want the OS's on separate HD's for now as i am sure that not everything that i want to run will work on the 64 bit win7 until i can afford to get all the programs i use to work on win7.
I currently have windows 7 ultimate in a Dell Gx270 P4 2.6ghz I know its old. And i want to Install Windows XP in another hard drive i have, but how do i make both hard drives boot, so i can select which one i want to boot.
I'm doing this because XP mode doesn't work in this computer. And i don't want to partition.
Most information i find in google requires partitioning and i don't want that.
If you know how please post it, or post the Links where i can find it.
I am currently running XP and have Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 installed (I work in a training environment hence the need for different versions). I am intending to upgrade my computer and take the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7, but on the point of ordering I was told that I could only run one version of Office with Windows 7 which would make it very difficult for me to work effectively.
I would like to have the latest software as I really need this in the environment I work in but do not want to be limited to one version of Office.
I have got two separate hard drives one running Windows 7 one running xp. I need to be able to chose which os to run but currently I can only do so by pressing F12. I have tried EasyBCD but it wont work - does anyone know how I can do this?
I have 5 hard drives in my system and I have installed windows 7 x64 on 2 separate drives and done this within windows. However a few times it booted okay but then started hanging on the post where it states verifying DMI pool data. Subsequently I tried everything to repair as I thought that the MBR was probably corrupted.
I have installed windows separately now on each drive by disconnecting all drives except the one that I am installing and then shut that down, disconnected it and connected the next and installed a fresh copy there to.
I am concerned that windows will corrupt the MBR again when I connect the drives one by one. I am not overly optimistic about windows boot manager and its reliability.
I want to run two separate drives from the same windows. I want to have all of my personal stuff on one disc and my business on the other disc, but still just running one windows from one hard drive. What is the best way to do this?
Ok I have Win XP on a ide drive (still use) I bought Windows 7 and installed on a seperate drive (sata) I also Have a 1TB Storage drive for media, files etc... (sata)
Now how do I do a dual boot with what operating system I want to start with Currently, I am disconnecting one of the drives from inside the case to use either Xp or 7.
As I know when using XP it says C Drive and the same for Windows 7 when Im using that...
Think it will crash or fail to install as they both say C Drive where the O.S. is.
Ok.I got it using Easy BCD..with no issues apart from a major one now!
I have 4 Sata connections on mobo 1-Data Drive for files / media (1TB) 2-Win 7 (320Gb) 3-DVDRW Drive 4-Blank on iDE cable - is Win XP
Now upon startup where it asks wither I want 7 or XP I can open/eject the drive but when either OS Starts and is ready to use ...my drive sticks ...cant open screen freezes!
Tried in 4th Sata connection and also other drive and same thing happens!
I have (2) internal hardrives in my current pc, what i want to do is install a separate Win 7 OS on each. I have read that you unplug the main hardrive which already has the Win 7 OS on it. And I proceed to plug in the other hard drive, but my pc never allows my to install the Win 7 CD Rom Install disk. I keep getting the "No Boot Device Available error" It sees the hard drive and the CD Rom when I try to click on either i get the No Boot Device Available Error. When both Hard drives are plugged in there is no problems windows boots fine. How can I get the second hard drive to install the CD Rom so I can have (2) separate OS systems on the two hard drives. I am using a Dell Precision T3500 if that has anything to do with it.
I have a question regarding the install of Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. I've done this on one HDD successfully and due to conflicts with additional software I wish to reinstall Windows 7 on a completely new HDD (on the same machine). This way I can keep both programs separate also leaving me with an additional OS in case the other fails. I plan to use the BIOS to switch to the other drive (boot order) when I wish to use the other software on occassion. I plan on backing up my files onto an external drive. So my question is as such, can I load Windows 7 onto a separate drive and switch the drive of which to boot from to achieve my goal?
Created an additional partition and restored the old WINxp (Service Pack 3) into it from my old desktop I want to get rid of.Think the missing ingredient is I need to create a boot sector unless it already exists...then I need to edit it.My CPU is a Celeron - it can't multitask, therefore it can't use a virtual machineHow might I go about booting into different versions of Windows?
in the past i had a seperate personal hd for my work laptop I would take my work HD out then install my personal drive in and it worked great. But now on new laptop there is a biosandhard drive can I still switch hard drives or will it not work or will my work know I swap. Them.
after installation of linux mint 7 gloria when i tried to perfoam a new installation windows 7 cant't load drives as well as other operating system i tried
My question is are these neccessary and why are there multiples? Wouldn't that in itself cause software conflicts?They came from various games off steam and other programs such as drivers and editing software.I don't understand why it stacked so many, I mean wouldn't it be better to uninstall all the versions and reinstall the most up to date versions? I went this route last time and afterwards I got side by side errors. I just don't want software conflicts so I ask the experts here, is it safe to remove these?
I want to combine my 2 desktops into one, since I never use both together and the older one is very dated by now (think Time/tiny computers old). My current machine is an Asus P5Q-E with a C2D and has one HDD on a SATA connection running windows 7 64bit. The old computer is a single core Athlon 2700+ thing with a pair of hard drives on a single IDE ribbon.What I want to do is put the hard drives from the old machine into the newer and be able to choose between Windows XP already installed on the old master IDE hard drive and Windows 7 on the newer SATA drive (I've only kept the old computer to run XP for compatibility), all the while keeping the old slave IDE drive as a slave.
My computer has windows 7. I created a separate partition on my hard drive to install windows xp, but now when I try to install it I get an chkdsk /f error.
I would like to remove Vista from my dual boot setup. Here is how I got to where I am now.
I had Vista installed on my PC hard drive (was C. Later, I decided to install Windows 7 HP on a new and seperate HDD. I unplugged the Vista HDD and added the new HDD and installed Windows 7 as if from scratch (I was worried that the install would mess up all my files on Vista). After the Windows 7 was up and running, I then reconnected Vista redesignated it as drive E: and after some searching on how to, I created the dual boot using my Windows 7 disk so I'm assuming the boot file in on drive C: along with Windows 7.
I now want delete the dual boot and Vista so I can use the drive as a backup drive or possibly Win8. I have found several methods to do this but none that really have my specific situation.
have a 1TB drive partitioned into two 500GB partitions. One has everything on it, the other is a backup of the other partition (I know, a horrible idea, but I had no alternative). I now have a 60GB SSD that I want to use only as a boot drive, and store everything else that I possibly can on the 1TB hard drive.Here's my question: What is the best way to go about setting this up? Do I need to set up RAID? Also, will I be able to selectively restore the OS and anything else necessary onto the SSD from my backup partition?
I've done some searching for this and found some similar issues but nothing fits exactly what I'm trying to do. I have been running Vista Ult. 64 bit for a little over a year and have loved it. It solved all the problems I had with XP Pro 32 bit on my hardware. I bought 7 Pro 64 bit through www.theultimatesteal.com since I'm taking some night classes. I forgot I couldn't upgrade from Ult.
to Pro so I had to do a clean install, which I did, on a separate drive. I have five drives in my system, C, D, and E are all 1TB while F and G are 1.5TB. C is where Vista is installed and G is where 7 is located. I'll be going back and forth between the OS's until I get everything the way I want it.
At that point I want to remove Vista and have 7 be the only OS. But I do not want to migrate the install onto the 1TB C: drive, I want to keep it on the 1.5TB drive but have it recognized as the C: drive. The install was done from within Vista from the download since my physical media has not yet arrived. So even when I boot into 7, it is seen as being installed on the G: drive; it did not make itself the C: drive.
So I'll need to get rid of Vista, get 7 to see itself as being the C: drive, get rid of the boot menu, and swap the drives and cables around to put my 7 install at the head of the HDD pack. I've already done a full system backup of my Vista install with Acronis TIH 2010. How do I need to go about this? On another note; why did MS only offer home and pro through ultimate steal? They offered Vista Ultimate. I mean, it is called ULTIMATE steal, not Pro steal afterall, and it would have made the upgrade process that much easier.
I downloaded EasyBCD 2.1.2, used it to recognize EVERY boot record, deleted the MBR on the old HDD, and rebooted.Now, the system boots straight to the new HDD without prompt from bootloader (which is good) but still requires the presence of the old HDD (I disconnected it, alas...)In the end: I called and told the customer that "I'd be happy to GHOST all her data and slap a fresh Windows 7 install on the new HDD (with a fresh/whole MBR) and then drop all her data back onto it. However, this would require more time; the other option being that she accepts the machine for what it is, perfectly functional minus the dependency on the old HDD."have considered this option, but I found ZERO indication of the old HDD failing, other than "BAD" written on the drive with Sharpie. The customer was happy yesterday and accepted the current state (she didn't want to invest more time/money into it) but today when she picks it up she isn't happy because she was told four months ago that the drive was bad and now I'm saying I don't see an indication of it. Other than pulling the data, installing fresh OS, then dropping data back on; or not installing OS with two drives present in the first place?
I plug quite a few different hard drives into my PC running windows 7 VIA a usb 3.0 Nexstar SATA adapter, normally just bare hard drives that need data backed up or moved, and as time goes on it seems to get slower and slower to find and bring up a new drive when i bring it in. My assumption is that it caches all the drivers for each drive and searches them to see if a matching driver is already installed for that specific device, or something of the nature. I had thought the 2-5 minute wait when plugging in a hard drive was just how W7 operates but apparently this is not the case according to some other tech savvy people i've talked to. Other USB devices such as flash drives don't take nearly as long to come up as a SATA I could clean out so as to get the process back onto a fresh leg.
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?