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Everything with the second drive went smoothly… I’ve switched my Libraries on Win 7 to the now secondary drive. I haven’t had a chance to do that with the Win 8 Libraries yet, but hope to have the time to do that shortly. I was able to get my documents, photos, and music from my old desktop settled into their new home…I’ve a installed a few of my programs and have plenty more to still install but it’s coming along. This is fun part… the playing. Thanks so much bbearren, for all of your guidance throughout this process. I truly couldn’t have done it without your instruction and answers to my questions.

@bbearren Thanks so much for the info. I’m really pleased with everything I’ve learned doing this. Your help has been immeasurable, bbearren. I’ll let you know the outcome…

@Ben09880 Thanks for your help. Seems you know more than you think you do, eh? LOL! I do appreciate you reaching out.

To recap: I got a new HP Envy Desktop with a 1TB HDD with Windows 8 installed. I bought a 500GB drive and Win 7 Pro so that I could dual boot Win 8 and Win 7 on the smaller drive and use the larger one for my documents, photos, videos, music, etc. (It’s been a while since I posted here as life got in the way as it tends to do, now and then… lol)

The good news is that I finally have both Windows 7 and Windows 8 booting on my 500GB drive. However I didn’t do it the way I was originally doing it. I could not get Win 8 to boot even with manually adding Win 8 to the boot menu using EasyBCD. I also tried restoring the system files from the original FAT32 partition from my original backup restoration onto the smaller drive, but the partition I had created in diskpart was too small at 120MB. The original system partition was 320MB. In order to resolve the issue I needed to use an installation CD to repair the booting problem. I don’t have a Win 8 installation disc, only Recovery discs that I burned from the recovery partition. I do have a Windows 7 installation disc however so I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to do the process in the opposite order. I used my most recent ATI backup of Win 8 and restored it. I then used Disk Management and shrunk the Win 8 partition and created a second one the same size to house Win 7. I then backed up the Win 8 partitions and restarted the PC. At the boot menu, I made sure to select the UEFI: hp CDDVDW SH-216ALN and with the Win 7 disc in the DVD drive went through the steps of installation of Win 7 Pro. Aside from a few notifications that the location I had selected was not the typical spot for the installation, it went smoothly, and when it was finished both it and Win 8 were bootable.

Now the issue is the original drive. I need to reconnect it but it still has the original Win 8 installation and Win 8 Recovery partition… will Win 8 boot up when I reconnect that drive? I switched it out of the original bay and original cables when I installed the 500 GB drive. Is there anything else I need to do to prevent it from trying to boot?[/FONT]

Just a quick update… I’ve still got a long way to go but I finally found a wireless driver for my desktop so at least I’m online and able to do all the updates and possibly check on the status of the Win 8 recovery tomorrow. I still have to find an ethernet driver but the urgency of the that has diminished with the installation of the wireless driver. The difficulty is finding drivers for my hardware that is compatible with Win 7. Win 8 drivers are a dime a dozen. Tomorrow I’ll download EasyBCD and see what can be done for my “dual” boot…

Another snag and I’m not sure how to resolve it. I can’t access the internet with the Windows 7. The following screenshots show the Diagnostic window, the Device Manager window showing multiple controllers having an issue, and the error message I got when I tried to install a network adapter driver… which leads me to the question of whether I should go with a driver version for Windows 8 since it would be the most recent or for an older version to go with Windows 7? Should I reinstall Windows 7? I did recover the Win 8 partition in the meantime but it doesn’t boot. Of course I cannot resolve that yet because I can’t go online with Win 7 in order to use EasyBCD… ironically if I could boot Windows 8, I could get online… :rolleyes:

33631-Diagnostic-Capture33632-Device-Manager-Capture-233633-Error-Message-Capture

That did the trick! I’m installing the Win 7 Pro 64bit now… I’ll keep going until I succeed in the dual boot or hit another snag and let you know either way. Your help has been immense. Thank you. 🙂

I’m not really sure what it is that I should be looking for. I’m attaching a few photos showing the secure boot configuration window, the select boot device window and the boot order window. If you have a chance could you look them over and tell me your ideas?33612-Secure-Boot-Configuration33613-Select-Boot-Device33614-Boot-Order

Well I had to disable Secure Boot and enable Legacy in order to boot from the dvd drive… I’ve checked it a few times to make sure it hasn’t been switched back by anything I’ve done and it has remained that way… but I do believe the system is in UEFI. How would I tell exactly?

Thank you so much bbearren!! I was able to get both small partitions done as per your directions… I have hit a snag though.
(This is a 64bit Win 7 Pro DVD btw.) The snag being the “next” button remains grayed out after I tried formatting the OS partition. I did check details and it stated it being a GPT disk as the reason. I clicked ok out of that (the only selection) and “next” button is stilled grayed out. So in essence I cannot force Win 7 to install. Any way around this? This is a relatively new installation disc. I purchased it within the last month and a half, so I guess they changed it.

Ok! I sooooo need help… I’m in diskpart and can’t find the appropriate commands for the EFI and MSR partitions… I’m really not even sure how to make sure it’s a GUID disk, even though I’m in HELP FORMAT. I’m definitely in over my head with diskpart. My partitioning experience is limiting to using EaseUS over the years. My command of command line lingo is also limited. I’m really good at following directions though…LOL… if someone could please list the commands that I need in diskpart for following bbearren’s post that he linked in order to create all the necessary partitions, I would be forever grateful. Right now I’m in a holding pattern after having cleaned the disk!!! HELP!!:o:

OR…. could I use my ATI rescue cd and partition it with Acronis’ help???

Thanks to both of you for getting back to me. I really appreciate the help.

@F.U.N.
Thanks for thinking of it but the Secure Boot issue reared it’s ugly head early in my process when I was trying to change the Windows 8 from the 1.5TB HDD to the 500GB drive and couldn’t boot from my ATI disc, no matter how many times I ticked the DVD drive to boot… Lol… my first inkling that Windows 8 was going to be a bit of a pain to work with.

@bbearren
Thanks for the link. I’m going to give this a try. I do have a question though. You installed Win 8 from a thumb drive. My choices for installing Win 8 will be the 5 Recovery DVDs that I made from the recovery image partition or an Acronis True Image backup recovery. When I first was changing the hard drive out I had trouble getting the Win 8 to boot from the recovered backup until I did a disk backup and recovery rather than all the partitions of the original Win 8 installation. Is this going to be an issue after I am successful with my Win 7 Pro 64-bit installation and boot and move on to the Win 8 installation?

Thanks for getting back to me on this Clint… Your hard drive knowledge has been so helpful to so many people, I’ve enjoyed reading through different forums and picking your brain without you even knowing it!! LOL!

Also when cloning, any partitioning is overwritten on the target drive by the cloning process so don’t bother doing it ahead of time. Use partition software after cloning to make more partitions for other OSes.

If I ever knew this, I’ve forgotten it, so thanks so much for the info… I’m sure you just saved me time and frustration!!! Thanks for your help with my question… after I read it, I was like doh!

I have a question for Clint. I am awaiting delivery of a new desktop computer. As Clint had mentioned, it comes with a gigantic 1.5 TB SATA hard drive with Windows 8 on it. I had originally intended to get a smaller drive, partition it, then clone Windows 8 from the original drive in one partition, install Windows 7 pro (which I’m not ready to let go of yet) on another partition and possibly a Linux distro on a third eventually. I would then use the 1.5 TB drive for my documents, pictures, music, etc. My plans came to a screeching halt when I realized I may not be allowed legally to transfer the Windows 8 OEM to another drive. Would I be allowed to do that or not? Thanks… the various posts on this subject have been awesome and timely for me.

I’ve had a sort of mixed experience with Ubuntu 9.10… Just as I was starting to get past the different (non-Windows) way of doing things, I installed Windows 7 on another partition and now am unable to access the Ubuntu partition. I have several articles telling me to do something with GRUB and it all seems very complicated and involved to me… Just as every new thing I have tried on my computers once seemed to. I do not know any techies personally so I’ve had to geek up a bit. Nor can I afford to pay others to resolve my computer issues so I’ve had to learn how to do it myself. Luckily I take after my dad and actually like and eventually understand this stuff. My plan of attack is always research, research, research. Evernote keeps me sane.Then I study the heck out of it. Until I know it cold. (Which takes a bit due to short term memory issues!) Then I just do it and hope for the best… apologies to Nike… So while I would appreciate an easier way if anyone knows one, in the meantime, I’m in serious research mode.

I do like a lot about Ubuntu and look forward to learning more and more about it. I also run XP Pro and Home on older laptops and my desktop, as well as Vista on a laptop that also runs Win 7. As was mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, you just have to learn Linux one step at a time just any commercial OS. I was trying to reinstall XP when I finally got sick of the ridiculousness and installed Ubuntu from a LiveCD I had burned. The installation went incredibly smoothly. no muss, no fuss. (Although apparently I did miss something or I wouldn’t be unable to access it now!! ).

I had been slowly upgrading the hardware in the desktop to ultimately install Win 7 on it. So after taking delivery of an upgraded graphics card that would be capable of handling the aero effects — though admittedly eye candy, I find it productive as well… I seem to always have a zillion windows open..and aero makes it so easy to dig right down to what you need to see — I downloaded and burned Gparted.iso and booted from it to re-partition the desktop drive. I’m a big fan of EASEUS Partition Manager. I’ve used their home version….their pro version… It’s excellent. However, I read somewhere that Linux doesn’t do well on partitions created by Windows partition managers. I had heard of Gparted and even had installed it on Ubuntu, which of course was useless at the moment since the very partition it was on needed to be moved. Well suffice to say, now I am a big fan of Gparted. It was intuitive, therefore so easy to use it inspired confidence rather than finger-crossing. I moved the partition which was in the ext4 (no, not 3) format, then created a large partition to be FAT32 to house documents to be shared between the two OSes and then an NTFS partition to house Win 7 OS and programs. The rest of the drive was unallocated except for a small swap (?) partition for Ubuntu. It seemed to go relatively smoothly. The one thing that I left out at this point is booting into Ubuntu to make sure it was ok. I regret not having done that. I stopped working for the night after the completion of the re-partitioning. The following morning still over my first cup of coffee I started installing Windows 7 and haven’t seen Ubuntu since. EASEUS sees both of them but threatens me with deactivating the Win 7 partition if I go through with clicking on activate for the Ubuntu partition. So now you know how I got where I am…. Any non-GRUB solutions?

Thanks for listening….