which partition holds Windows 8 on my Dual Boot 7/8 system. I want to delete Windows 8 64 bit and reinstall Windows 8 32 bit, then update to Windows 8.1. I'm doing this because the system's old enough that 64 bit 8.1 won't install but maybe 32 bit will. I won't know unless I try.
I need to figure out which partition Windows 8 is on so I can format the drive and reinstall.
I have made my Windows 8.1 DVD, but I haven't committed to installing it yet.
I'd like to just install it on a separate partition on my second hard drive.
Normally I wouldn't hesitate to just go ahead and install it, but I'm not sure if the new Uefi bios will just except it and automatically set up the dual boot menus etc, the way that it did in the past.
Are there extra steps that I need to take before going ahead with the install.
I definitely don't want to replace my current Windows 8 install until the final version comes online at that time I will probably do a complete new install of all my software.
Dual install without using VM?
I dual-booted Vista and Win 8. I created a small ~20GB partition where I have my Windows 8 Release Preview. Now I really like it, because Vista is really slow compared to any other OS. Windows 8 is blazing fast, but I have programs on my Vista partition. I make music so I use Ableton Live for that. When I tried to launch Ableton in Windows 8 by browsing through the Vista partition, it wants to install itself and authorize again. If I was on Windows 7 64-bit I would use the Laplink PCMover but I am on Vista 32-bit. Is there a way I could transfer my programs to Windows 8? (They're all 32-bit if it matters...) Like use some backup & restore thing or anything??
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have dual-booted Windows 8.1 and Windows 7. I have managed to free up a significant amount of space on Windows 7 and was wondering if it's possible to add some of the freed space to my Windows 8.1 partition?
If pic won't resize, cope and paste: "[URL] ....."
Didn't plan ahead Dual boot Windows 7 and 8. I only initially allowed 100 GB for my primary Windows 8 on a 2 TB drive. I'm hardly using the W-7 and now find myself out of space on the W-8 (C) I'd like to repartition to give (C) 1 TB and 1 TB for (D)
View 9 Replies View RelatedSo, previously I had Windows 8 and a system image of that drive. I want to dual-boot it with Win7, so I replace my Win8 with Win7, and reinstall Win8 on another partition. Can I restore my Win8 with the previous system image, or will it affect my Win7?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI am the same person who posted a thread about needing drivers for Windows 7 after dual booting it with my preinstalled copy of Windows 8. So, I was on Windows 7 today, and my screen randomly blinked on and off for 5 seconds, and then came up with a message saying my system display driver crashed but had recovered. Then, about a minute later, it crashed again and came up with a BSOD saying that the display driver had crashed but failed to recover. I do not have the error code from it, as I only saw this screen once, and forgot to copy down the codde because I got freaked out But anyways, I have copied the system report to this post from the Seven Forums System Tool. I am currently running in safe mode on my Windows 7.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI am running a cleanly installed standalone Windows 8 Pro X64 system which is not creating system restore points for updates, installations, and Revo Uninstaller uninstalls (despite the requisite setting being on in Revo).
I have being doing quite a bit of installation and updating over the past week or so but apart from one manually created restore point the only other was for an installation of Power DVD yesterday.
It seems MS is sitting on its hands on this one.
I am unable to move my boot data to another partition. Please have a look at the following picture-:
As you can see I have created a separate a partition before my C drive and formatted it.
I have used the following command to copy the boot data from my C drive to the System partition(S:)
bcdboot C:Windows /s S: /f BIOS
But as you can see C drive is still marked as "System" which means my PC isn't actually booting from drive S:.
How do I force my system to boot from drive S: and not drive C: ???
How to edit the boot entries manually?
I have triple boot - win8, win8.1, win7 with EFI system partition on GPT disk, there is no problem with win8(installed first), but on win8.1 and win7, the boot manager pointed it to windowssystem32winload.exe, and it should pointed to windowssystem32winload.efi in order to work, how can I change that?
I have moved my boot files to the "C" drive using EasyBCD. In so doing, is it now safe to delete the System Reserve Partition? I realize it does no harm the way it is but I have no intention of using Bitlocker and I have a recovery disc. So, to me, it serves no purpose and I'd like to get rid of it.
View 9 Replies View RelatedWhile I was messing around with my laptop, I decided to add on a fourth operating system, Arch Linux. I suppose I was pushing my luck a bit . Anyways, during the installation, I accidentally deleted the EFI system partition from my laptop, which contained the Windows Boot Manager and necessary files to boot. Great. I only made things worse by trying to troubleshoot, and broke grub as well.
I have a Windows 8 repair disk I made using the Windows 8 built in utility, but it does not boot: the computer turns on, and just hangs at the Toshiba splash screen.
I also can obviously not access the Toshiba recovery partitions, as they are booted into just like Windows itself.
I found a bootx64.efi file on one of my system's recovery partitions (Toshiba seems to have some really complex system going on) and placed it in EFIootootx64.efi. According to this site, FGA: The EFI boot process., I need to place the bkpbootmgfw.efi (on my system, that was what it was called, but I suspect boot-repair (ubuntu tool) messed something up when I was first setting up grub and the ESP and the bkp stands for backup) back onto the EFI System Partition.
Where to look for in the various Windows Imaging Format .wim and .swm files I have laying around my recovery partition(s) in order to extract the necessary EFI files. Any Windows Repair iso that works.
I used to have System Reserved on separate partion to C: but on my last fresh re-install, I decided to make C: and System Reserved in one partition. Here's what shows on Disk Management:
My question is, which is better. System Reserved on the same partition with C: or on a separate partition?
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.
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?
I have win 8 pro installed & two HDDs with two partions each , I want to migrate the boot partition to another partition on the second drive .
It would have been easier if i would have just cloned the complete drives but one of the partions on the 2nd drive has data which cannot be deleted .
So I have Drive
1 - Partitions C: ( boot partition ) & D:
Drive 2 - Partitions E: & F:
I want to remove Drive 1 from my PC so i want to copy C: to E: then remove drive 1 & boot from E:
I tried "Easeus todo backup" , did not work, it does not make the copy bootable , to make it bootale the whole drive has to be copied .
I tried making an image of C: using Windows 8 inbuilt backup feature then removed drive 1 , installed Windows 8 on E: then tried restoring the image of C: but i got some error.
I am trying to create a system image backup and I keep getting this error message
[COLOR=#FF0000]'Threre is not enough disk space to create the volum shadow copy on storage location. Make sure that for all volume to be backup up, the minimum disk space required for shadow copy creation is available. this applies to both the backup storage destination and volume included in the backup. Minimum requirement for Volumes less than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 50 megabyte of free space. for voulimes more than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 320 megabytes of free space. Recommended at least 1 gigabytes free of disk space on each volumes if volumes size is more than 1 gigabytes (0x80780119)"
I am backing it up to a external HDD with over a tb of free space but I understand its not letting me perform the backup because the hidden 100mb hidden system partition is full...if i create a larger partition how can I copy that system partition to it? if that is possible....
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?
View 3 Replies View RelatedLate 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI 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.
View 9 Replies View RelatedWell, 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?
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?
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.
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.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI'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?