Dell :: Dual-boot 2 Instances Of Windows 8.1
Mar 30, 2014
I have used two XP PCs to separate US and Canadian versions of Intuit Quicken and Turbotax (I am a dual citizen). I did this because I learned the hard way that funny things could happen, as it seems there can be some conflicts when each are on the same system. Now that Microsoft has encouraged me to buy a hot new XPS 8700, I am considering how I might accomplish this on one system.
Establishing a separate partition with another instance of 8.1 seems logical, unless someone has another idea.
If this is best/only way to achieve this separation, does my MS license allow this, and how do I access it^
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May 19, 2014
I was wanting to dual boot a Dell pc inspiron 600 with win 8. I thought I will breeze through it like I used to circa WXP/Vista/W7 and didn't research what changes there might be with Windows 8. I have focused my attention more on Android and I really should have done that research.
I hadn't backed up externally docs that I needed to save - so I will remove the drive and copy the contents to my laptop to be on the safer side. So the first wrong move has led to missteps.
I downloaded Easus and created a blank disk space before the current active partition instead of behind it. I thought I needed to have win 7 in the first partition. Before rebooting I also installed a popular freeware boot selection manager (I totally forget the name but I know some most will know the one I am referring to EDIT: ***EasyBCD*** ). It gave me a warning that no bootable system was selected. I kept editing to point it to current Windows 8 but nothing changed. It also warned me that my pc might not boot. I thought I will fix it to a bootable drive with my old discs-Ultimate boot cd, CPM, etc. Easus performed creation of the new partition and then trouble started. It refused to boot.
None of my discs are working as they did before Windows 8. on UBCD Fdisk cannot find any partition it can make active. I decided not to write an new MBR. My windows 7 install CD is giving me the "Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition X" details ->"The selected disk is of the GPT partition style."
Here are the partitions
My questions are: At this point I don't mind to have only windows 7 installed or if this situation is salvageable a dual boot then I don't have to remove the drive to copy the docs. I can just boot into 7 (which is what I mainly want to use) and just have access to Windows 8 partition from there to access my docs. I would prefer not to pull the drive out if I can avoid it but only if I know for sure what I am doing.
Second question : I believe partition 3: 489GB is the newly created one and Part 4 OS would be the Wind 8 partition. How can I know for sure that this is the wind 8 partition?
If I format the partition 3: 489GB will windows now allow for windows 7 to be installed?
Is there any way I can fix windows 8 partition to boot?
Lastly the basic question is how do I fix this error so that I Can install windows 7?
I don't have any pre-created OS discs of Windows 8. My current laptop is a toshiba win 7.
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Feb 15, 2013
I finally got Windows 8 installed on my Dell M4600 dual boot with the Win 7 install. This is my business laptop so I needed to maintain full functions to Win 7 (I will completely migrate to 8 in the future) and ensure I could continue to work with it. I have two SSDs: Drive 0 is a 2.5" 256 GB used for data as d:. Drive 1 (this is how the bios designates them) was originally a 128GB MSATA SSD. I cloned this to a newer 240GB SSD to provide more room for the two OSs (and provide a good fail safe). With the clone I cleared the Dell recovery partitions and added the partition for Win 8. Currently I have some wasted space at the front but I will sort that out in the future. It has taken a week to get Win 8 up and running properly (tracking down drivers, getting the fingerprint scanner to work etc) but it seems to be stable and I have started to use it. Now to the problems:
1. The boot screen is the old Win 7 type (not really a problem by itself). I have used EasyBCD to adjust the default to Win 8. If I do a "restart" from 8 and then select 7 no problem. On the other hand, any restart to 8 brings up the MS flag and twirling thing and stops. I need to power down and start back up. No problem if I shutdown and then restart. I've been working on figuring out how the whole process works and I suspect the problem has to do with the switching drive letters depending on which OS is started and/or the Resume parameters in the BCD. Additionally, during all the hassle with installing Win 8 the boot loader is on the Win 7 partition. I'm hesitant to start using BCDedit on this laptop as I would prefer not to mess anything up. I also will not go through the hassle of re-installing Win 8 again - 3 or 4 times was enough.
2. At some point I will delete the Win 7 partition and expand the space for the Win 8 (I'll need to use some third party tools to do this). My concern is that the boot loader is on the Win 7 partition so how to move it to the Win 8 partition if possible.
I've attached two screen shots for the disk management status (win 7 an 8) and attachedoutput form BCDedit /enum all for both OSs.
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Sep 29, 2013
I have a Dell 755 dual core, I loaded win 7 had a problem was with my CD rom, on boot up it was there, in devices it was there name and model, but as soon as I put CD in and opened the CD it would disappear off the machine sometime it would read what was on the disc and then disappear, I asked many question nobody gave me an answer. I installed it on a Dell 270 it works great.
Now on Win 8, the problem I have is if I have my mobile modem in the usb when I boot up my CD rom doesn't appear, if I take the modem out and boot up my CD rom is there with the drive letter G, when I put the modem in the CD remains and works correctly.
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Dec 15, 2013
I just got a refurbished ASUS K75DE laptop, and it came with Windows 8 on it. I am wanting to run a dual boot with Win7, so I disabled fast-boot just fine, and went into the UEFI BIOS and disabled the secure boot.
While I was there, I did like I have always done and set a BIOS boot-up password. I then proceed to boot to my Win7 installer USB Flash drive, but I was running low on battery power so I aborted the install and shut the computer down to try again later.
Now however when I get into BIOS to select boot priority, all options are grayed out except for system time and a few other non-essentials. At the bottom of the first BIOS screen it says "User Level : User" and I can't seem to find a way to reverse this issue. So now I'm stuck, can't boot to anything but the HDD because it is first by default.
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Jul 11, 2014
I recently felt the urge to experiment with Linux and installed Ubuntu Mint and tried to set up dual booting.
However I seem to have only suceeded in preventing Windows booting at all. I cannot get into the recovery drive to undo my wrong doing.
How can I reset the windows boot manager without access to windows or recovery partitions?
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Jun 28, 2013
I have installed Blue 8.1 on a separate drive in my system along side 8.0. When I restart the 8.0 boots unless I manually select the 8.1 drive in bios. How can I alter the Boot menu to add the option to boot from either OS?
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Feb 18, 2013
Late last Fall I bought a new Desktop, an HP H81414, with Windows 8 installed with the intention of installing Windows 7 on an SSD. I migrated Window 8 to an SSD, removed that from the system, installed new SSD and put Windows 7 on it. Both worked fine. I wound up with 2 SSD's. capable of running on the EFI BIOS machine with Secure Boot turned off. I later bought a new laptop with Windows 8. I found the Win 8 with Classic Shell to be very acceptable.
What I would like to do now ,if possible, is to mount both SSD's in the HP case and switch to either one of them at boot.
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Apr 28, 2014
I had windows 7 running on my computer. When windows 8 came out I used a second harddrive as the windows 8 installation drive. Windows 8 automatically setup a dual boot system where every time I started the computer it took me a windows screen where I could select either windows 7 or windows 8. This has been going on since Windows 8 was released.
I decided it was getting old so I decided it was time to remove the old windows 7 harddrive. I tried doing it inside the windows 8 dual boot screen but could not find an option. So I decided to reformat the windows 7 harddrive. I did this in command prompt mode. After doing so when my computer restarted it said it could not find any harddrive to boot. Windows 8 is installed on the other harddrive, the one that was not reformatted. So how do I get it to start using that harddrive as the boot drive? I checked my bios and even physically disconnected the old HD that had windows 7 on it, but none of that seemed to work even though the Windows 8 HD is definitely in the boot order in the bios.
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Jun 8, 2013
I am dual booting Windows 8 and win7. I actually have Windows 8 installed on its own hard drive and win 7 installed in its own hard drive. The win7 hard drive has been in use for the past 2 years and I have had Windows 8 running for about a week now. I purchased another hard drive for Windows 8 and left the old Win7 as it was.
I also have 3 other hard drives in the system. Everything is formatted NTFS.
So my system is as follows
Drive C - Boot Drive - I physically swap out the dedicated hard drive for Win 8 or Win 7
Drive D - internal 250 GB sata drive
Drive F - internal 250 GB sata drive
Drive H - internal 250 GB hard drive.
I have been running this config for about 2 years under Win7 with no problems.
The problem that I have now is when I swap the boot drive and boot up a different OS than last time (Like booting Windows 8, powering down system, swap boot drive, boot Win7) the system always says that there are problems on the 3 non-boot drives. It runs chkdsk(it least that is what it look like) and processes the 3 non boot disks one at a time which take about 10-12 minutes for all 3. Most of the time it finds no problems, but about 1 out of 5 boots will find a problem with one of the disks and then fixes it. The disks seem to be OK while I am running. I then power down and swap boot drive and reboot the other os and we start all over again. I am powering the system completely down for each reboot to make sure that the disk cache is flushed.So far the disk problems have been fixed by chkdsk at boot, but I am sure the day will come when the disk cannot be fixed and I will loose data.
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Jan 8, 2014
Is there any chance of dualbooting Dell Venue 8 Pro with Windows 8 and Android? I like Windows 8 but would also like to be able to use Android on this awesome tablet.If not dual boot, is there any other way of using Android as virtual machine or something that provides full touch and other sensor's support?
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Dec 11, 2013
I cloned my existing Windows installation (8.1 pro, 32 bit) onto my new SSD. I got everything up and running, and I still have my old Windows installation on one of the partitions of my HDD.
Can I turn this setup into a dual boot?
I think this could be useful, in case the new installation gets borked, or in order to run an effective malware scan on the SSD, etc.
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May 31, 2013
I have windows 8 to go on my 320 GB USB harddrive and I would like to be able to boot from the disk a choose if I waht to boot from windows 8 to go or another partition where I have my ghost.
I'm not sure how to go about making a dual boot when it is a USB harddisk.
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Sep 15, 2014
I have a Dell Inspiron 17, 5000 Series (1.7 GHz Intel Pentium 3558U, 4 GB Ram, 500 GB HDD). It came preloaded with Windows 8.1. I needed Windows 7 so I partitioned the main drive and installed Windows 7 in 100 GB of partitioned space. After swapping between the Windows 7 and 8 Boot manager. Ended up choosing the Windows 8 manager.
My problem comes in when I boot into Windows 7, then when I shut down and try and boot into Windows 8 it will hang prior to the boot manager (of Windows 8). I have to press and hold the power button to hard shut down. Once I do that and reboot, Windows 8 Boot manager and Windows 8 boot ok.
So Windows 8 will boot fine if I was last in Windows 8. However if I was last booted in Windows 7 then go to Windows 8 (or try and boot into 7 again, but using the 8 boot manager) it will hang at boot. I've used all the command checks with Windows 7 and 8. Found no errors. I can't reinstall Windows 8 as I don't have recovery disks, plus the computer came from Aarons Rent to Own (they had no issues me doing what I wish with it).
When I switch and use the Windows 7 boot manager I can boot back into Windows 7 even if Windows 7 was my last boot. But like when using the Windows 8 boot manager, I am unable to boot into Windows 8 if Windows 7 was booted last. But Can boot to Windows 8 if Windows 8 was booted last.
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Dec 12, 2013
How difficult would it be to dual boot / put Ubuntu on the Dell Venue 8 Pro as a secondary os?
Would grub work on this tab?
How stable would it be?
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Aug 30, 2013
I reformatted my Windows 8 partition this week and reinstalled Windows 8 and then Windows 8.1 beta due to a no sound and unexpected shutdown issue I had been having. All is well now with the new install, I have sound and it is no longer shutting down randomly. However, when the desktop view is first accessed after boot (whether from the desktop tile or by starting "control panel") I get 8 separate instances of Notepad that pop up, each with a dialog box containing a little yellow triangle with an exclamation mark and proclaiming "Access denied".
All instances of Notepad are blank, and once I dismiss the 8 dialog boxes and close the 8 Notepad windows, I can freely go back and forth between the metro and desktop interfaces without them launching again.
Full disclosure, during the reinstall of Windows 8, the machine still experienced unexpected shutdowns (3 or 4 times) during the early stages of getting updates. Once a certain point was passed in the update process, it has been rock solid, and has run continuously for the past 48 hours. The unexpected shutdowns could have certainly introduced some problems as above, but I don't know where to look.
This is a homebuilt AMD quadcore desktop dual booting Windows 7. No problems whatsoever on the Win 7 side.
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Feb 16, 2013
I have new pc that has windows 8 pro installed. I would like to dual boot with windows 7 because certain software for work is not compatible with win 8. I was reading that I can create a vhd from windows 8, boot to the windows 7 installation media and install win 7 to the vhd, then I have the option to select win 7 or 8. Am I missing something here or is it as easy as this? Also do I need Win 7 ultimate or will he professional one work? I do not want to partition the hard drive.
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Mar 16, 2013
I set up a dual boot with Windows 7 and 8 and it is extremely slow up until the Windows 7 and 8 appear. From that point on both load quickly. Also under the Windows 7 icon it says "recovered". Otherwise eveerything seems to be functioning normally.
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Jun 2, 2013
Well, I had a dual booted machine booting Windows 8 and Ubuntu.
Windows 8 was starting to play up so I decided to completely reset the computer. I backed everything up, booted to Windows 8 and hit the 'Reset PC' button.
After answering some questions (full erase, whole disc etc), it informed me that it was going to restart. I clicked accept.
Short Story:
- Corrupted Windows 8 partition
- Corrupted Windows 8 recovery partition
Long Story:
Instead of rebooting back to anything, I got left sitting at a grub rescue prompt. From there I told it to boot windows 8.
I then spent five minutes staring at the booting screen. Nothing happened.
I powered off and tried again, this time pointing grub rescue at the windows 8 recovery loader partition. Well, initially that looked like it worked. I got the nice metro UI, and chose 'reset this PC' It then informed me that the recovery partition was missing some files. The only other option was to shut down.
I tried booting just plain windows 8 again, but had the same problem as before (nothing happening), And now when I try to boot the recovery loader, Grub tells me the EFI file isn't where it expects it to be. (Interestingly, how are you meant to boot to this without having a non-windows bootloader?)
Additional Details: Computer: HP Envy M6-1206TX. Pre-installed with Windows 8. Bought about 1 month, 1 week ago.
The Questions:
Since windows 8 came pre-installed, I don't have a Windows 8 disc, are there any possibilities for me to get back windows 8? (other than contacting the store I purchased it from)
After going through the license agreement, my interpretation is that I still have a license for Windows 8, but I am not under their limited warranty (due to dual booting). I do not wish to buy another license, as I already have one.
One last question:
If you acquired the software on a disc or other physical media, your proof of license is the genuine. Microsoft certificate of authenticity label with the accompanying genuine product key.
Neither my laptop, nor the box, nor any of the paperwork provided in it had this 'certificate of authenticity.' I suppose that means I have no legal rights to the software. Who's fault is this, HP, Microsoft, or the store I bought it from?
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Feb 24, 2014
I have previously posted about the recommended Windows OS for my new laptop... and Then I decided to install Windows 8.1 Pro alongside my previously installed Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit)... Is it OK to install and dual-boot Windows 8.1 Pro with Windows 7 Ultimate?
And also tell me about the partition size allocations for both Windows, I have two partitions each of 24.7 GB for both the OSes, is this size worth applicable?
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Jul 30, 2014
I have created dual boots before but in each case I did it the "usual" way by doing a fresh install of a second OS on a new drive (or new partition) and then letting the newest installation figure out how to arrange boot loaders or boot managers or whatever, i.e to figure out the dual boot parameters for me.
In this case I want to set up a dual boot using what is now 2 separate drives each with its own complete install of Windows. Of course, I can boot to one or the other by disconnecting the drive for the one I don't want to start up, but that is obviously a hassle.
Is there an easy way to set it up so that one of them (Win 8.1 pro) actually recognizes the other and asks me which one I want at boot up. I know if I re-install one of them I can do it, but I want to just set up the dual boot, and not touch either of the OS installations per se.
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Nov 14, 2012
I have two hard drives One is a SSD and the other is a WD 64 MB cache 2 terabyte drive. I have Windows 7 installed on the SSD which works fine. I later, when I received it, installed Windows 8 on the other drive for a dual boot. It works, the screen comes up allowing me to choose between the OS's. Like I said picking 7 works fine but when I go into 8 it boots up, shows the Metro and is locked solid. I havent waited more than 5 mins but i get tired of it locking. I have 16 gigs of Kingston Ram, 2 ATI 6950 with combined 4 gigs. AMD 8 core and a ASUS motherboard. Everything was bought this year. Except for the Video cards. I am trying to update the ATI software but it is locked so i cant.
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Dec 2, 2013
I've been doing the above ^^ for some time now. I've been using W8.1 as the main OS for my notebook. Yesterday I rebooted into Win7 to poke around. Every time that it said 'Starting Windows' it bluescreen (very rapidly) and restarted.
I tried the disc auto-repair, and this cut the bridge to W8.1 of course. When I tried Win7 it then said that there was another problem. The logon screen appeared, as if in safe mode, then produced numerous errors about being untable to log on or start logon services. I could not resolve this.
I eventually decided to try the manufacturer inbuilt restore of Win7 while leaving data alone. This seemed fine until it says 'preparing Windows for first use', then it said that the installation was interrupted (not by me or power use). I tried this several times but no use.
Shortened, I could not get back into Win8, I tried all the repairs, though it should only have been a bootloader issue, right? The Win8 bootloader will look back and see Win 7 and offer both. I formatted that partition, reinstalled Win8 on that partition, removed all data from the Win7 drive and then tried a complete reinstallation of the entire hard disk with the manufacturer restore disks. This worked.
I would like to poke around with W8.2 when it comes in the Spring. I need to understand what happened. My top two guesses are:
1. Minitool Partition manager, I suspected that program of being ... ruthless in hard drive partitioning and resizing in the past.
2. Perhaps some incompatibility coming from Win8?
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Jul 26, 2013
Can you dual boot with Windows 8.1 Preview and OS X 10.8
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Dec 11, 2013
Id like to Dual boot linux onto windows 8
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Jan 19, 2014
Possible to install Windows 7 x64 on my laptop as a dual boot option? It's running Windows 8.1 upgraded from Windows 8. If it's possible(considering I'll be installing via partitioning my D drive), will I still be able to use applications installed on Win 8.1 on the newly installed Win7? (ie Microsoft Office '10; various Online Games) ...
And will I have to reinstall drivers? (ie Sound/Graphic Drivers)
Specs:
Asus K46CA
Intel i3-3217 1.8ghz
4GB Ram
500GB HDD
Intel HM76 Express Chipset
Intel HD 4000 Graphics
Windows 8.1 Single Language
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Apr 24, 2013
I bought a new laptop 350gb HDD with Windows 8 64bit preinstalled (no disc came with it) however I needed win7 32bit for my job since the softwares used are only compatible with old win version. I managed to back up my Windows 8 before I partitioned my HDD into 3 drives and installed win7 ultimate 32 bit on a different partition. I remember that my Windows 8 was installed in Drive C (100GB) while I have 80+GB for Shared files on Drive E and the rest of the memory are for Drive D where I installed win 7 and I labeled each drives accordingly. At first everything was working fine on both O.S, it was giving me the dual boot option at start up but I forgot if I really have tested running both O.S. before I gave my laptop to my supervisor and asked him a favor to intall the softwares for work purposes.
My supervisor then approached me and said that there might be some incompatibility issue with the updates I have on my win7 coz some applications don't install so he asked me if its ok if he reinstalls a new win7 so I said yes since Im confident that its will work fine and I have backed up my Windows 8 anyway, in short, I left everything into his hands. Later, he then got back to me and told me every job related softwares now work except that my Windows 8 now doesnt show and yes, dual boot option is not there anymore and it boots automatically to win7 like Windows 8 is not there.
I've read some forums how to check if your O.S are still there and it could just be a boot up issue and use of Easy BCD might work. I have attached images below for your reference. Now what I'm confused of is that my Windows 8 appears to be in Drive D and win7 could be in Drive C, which I'm thinking if they were exchanged when my sup reinstalled win7 or he may have overlapped my Windows 8. Im pretty sure he knows which drive is for which O.S since I labeled them. Now Im afraid to use EasyBCD on the wrong drive and I cant approach my supervisor anymore to bother him again since he worked on my laptop for almost the whole day at work.
- if both o.s. are still intact and recognized
- why the Drive letters got mixed up and how to check which drive has which o.s coz it seems like both drives has a part of my work related applications (didn't put personal files yet on win 8 when I had both o.s installed)
- is Drive D really is my Windows 8 now?
- does Easy BCD really work
- how to use Easy BCD to get my Windows 8 to boot up to or both of them to show at start up without corrupting my work related softwares
Attachment 20900
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Jul 30, 2013
I've recently installed a dual boot, Windows 7 and Windows 8. The installation went fine but then after a very short time my Windows 8 Screen goes black. I had to press the power button to exit.
I've checked the Power settings and ensured the "Turn off display" was "never". I also updated my Video drivers thinking that might be the problem. Both to no avail. I've done a "Refresh" and a "Reset (which took 3 hrs). Again, all was fine for a short time, but while exploring the OS, again the black screen.
I followed... re-formatting the hard drive during the new installation, trying generic video drivers and doing Resets and Refreshes. None of that worked and still doesn't. The installations do complete as before, but I don't have enough time to download new updates to perhaps correct whatever problem(s) there are before all goes black after a few minutes. As I stated before I have to hold down the power button to exit.
If this is a clue, once the screen goes black and I revert back to Window7, before loading, the File System on ALL drives, including C and the Windows 8 partition has to check for consistency before Windows 7 boots up.
I've been quite busy and haven't had a chance to try re-installing again until now. Thinking the problem might have been the actual drive I used for previous attempts (it was a SATA external drive which by the way I previously used for a dual boot Vista/with Win7), I then created new partitions on 2 different USB connected external drives and attempted to install. It wouldn't do the install on either one. I received messages "Setup does not support disks connected through USB or Firewire,.... my USB drives are connected directly to computer not a hub. So I'm forced to use the SATA created partitions for the installations. (Disk 1)
If it makes a difference, through Disk Management, I've deleted the Windows 8 installs from those partitions then re-created a "New Simple Volume" before trying again. I even tried creating another partition on C but it wouldn't allow an installation saying it was a dynamic drive. Prior to me creating that additional C partition all were Primary but now they're all Simple Volumes as per the color codes.
I have two OEM Windows 8 installation disks, I've tried both.
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Jan 5, 2013
just want to check that i can duel boot win 8? in short unplug my win 7 drive and install win 8 on a separate new drive. plug back in and choose between 7 or 8.
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Jul 13, 2014
So I have a Toshiba laptop with win 8 preinstalled in it I want to dual boot it with win XP However I managed to boot to the CD after some research but when I reach to installing win xp to my virtual partition I can't seem to find it I just see my HDD as one without a partition... what can I do?
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Feb 18, 2014
I have ASUS laptop which came with pre-installed Windows 8.1 X64.
When I try to install a second copy of Windows 8.1 X64. I get the following message
"Windows can not be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style"
I found suggestions at
#1 - How to "Clean" or "Clean All" a Disk with the Diskpart Command ... [URL] ...
#2 - ANOTHER TUTORIAL
I would like to know
1. Clean command of Diskpart will mark data on the HDD as being deleted. How do I recover my original Windows 8.1?
2. Does this command change GPT partition style to something else?
3. I have 2 HDD,
Disk 0- empty (1 TB)
Disk 1- OS and recovery partition etc (1TB)
Can I use clean command on Disk 0 (which is empty) . Will mix and match work?
4.Can I have more than 1 boot partition on GPT partition type?
I do not want to change Disk 1 due to my service warranty conditions.
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