Windows 8 & Windows 7 Dual Boot Problem

Topic

New Reply

I installed Windows 8 Pro as a dual boot from my Windows 7 install. When I did this I put Win8 on a different drive than Win7. The problem is that now the Win7 drive has failed. After a Win8 “repair”, the system finally boots, but is very slow like it is always trying to use the bad drive. If I replace the drive, the system will not boot properly.

What I would like to do is “undo” dual boot feature and boot Win8 from the drive it is installed on. Perhaps this would be a good topic for a future article, but I would hope there is a solution that does not require me to re-install Win8 and all of my applications (which is even harder).

The bad drive is still on my system, but all its data and Win7 installation is gone. The drive shows up in File Explorer as “Local Drive G:”, but can not be accessed.

Any and All HELP is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Hdtvman
Royal Oak, MI

Reply | Quote

Replies

The reason that win 7 has failed is that win 8 installations are upgrades–all of them. You lose the rights to use or transfer win 7 after the upgrade. Only the System Builder OEM version is a full version.The license agreement says:
Windows 8 EULA

What about upgrading the software?
The software covered by this agreement is an upgrade to your existing operating system (XP SP3, Vista, or Windows 7) software, so the upgrade replaces the original software that you are upgrading. You do not retain any rights to the original software after you have upgraded and you may not continue to use it or transfer it in any way. This agreement governs your rights to use the upgrade software and replaces the agreement for the software from which you upgraded. After you complete your upgrade, additional software will be required to playback or record certain types of media, including DVDs.

Reply | Quote

That may be true, but that is not the problem. My original installation of Windows 8 gave me the Win7 dual boot option and I used it. The problem is that the hard drive containing Win7 and the dual boot option has failed. So I would like to UNDO the Win7 Dual Boot option. I operated the system in Dual Boot mode for 8 or 9 months before this hardware failure caused a problem starting yesterday, 10-02-2013.

Reply | Quote

Can I use this “repair” option to correct the “dual boot from a dead disk” problem I have? I’m concerned that the Win8 disk partition I am using is not set as “bootable” and that if I attempt a “repair” it will only make matters worse. Note, the Win8 option to create and format hard drives will not start. The message “connecting to virtual drive..” just sits there and no drive info is ever displayed.

Reply | Quote

Have you tried to fix your MBR. This can at times fix a non-bootable PC. The procedures listed here should rebuild the MBR onto the Win 8 disk.

you might find that if you remove the Win 7 disk, Win 8 will still boot as I believe Win 8 will replace the Win 7 MBR with it’s own MBR.

note: I moved the posts from the other thread pertaining to this problem to this thread. It is better to always post all info in one thread rather than dividing in 2 separate threads.

Reply | Quote

Medico,

Yes I tried several MBR fixes to no avail. I gave up and re-installed Windows 8 on a new drive replacing the defective one. I will try re-formating the bad drive and see if I can get it back to life. I think the problem is that the old Windows 8 drive that I was dual booting into never had the “system partition” of about 350 MB that the Windows 8 install puts on a new drive. Any way I was up most of the night and things are working as they should now and I didn’t lose any data except the data on the bad drive.

Thanks for your suggestions. Also I don’t know how the second thread got going but I may have done it by accident.

Reply | Quote

1. When you put Win 8 on a different drive than the boot drive, the boot files stay on the original drive. So if that drive fails, the Win 8 drive has no boot files.

2. When you installed Win 8 on the second drive, did you do it in a Primary partition?

3. Remove the bad drive from your system.

4. If the answer to #2 is Yes, boot the system from your Win 8 install disk and use the Repair option to install the boot files on the Win 8 drive. You do not need to reformat the drive.

5. If the answer is No, you will need a 3rd party partition manager to convert the partition to Primary. I use Parted Magic (http://sourceforge.net/projects/partedmagic/).

Reply | Quote

Star Lounger,

I couldn’t figure how to “install boot files on the Win8 drive”. The system would not boot from a HDD without the bad drive being there. I don’t understand that but I think it has to do with the Windows 8 install creating a small 350 MB “System Partition” at the beginning of the drive. The old WIn8 drive is still in tact and on the system and I could experiment later, but things were bad and I finally decided to start over with a new Windows 8 install. This went pretty well and I still have a lot of work to do to get back all the apps I normally use.

Thanks for your comment.

Reply | Quote