You seem to know what youre doing and you've asked on other forums. Ive had multiple os boot problems before as well. My dual boot MBR ended up on the wrong drive to where I expected ! Its sometimes necessary to pull a drive out before installing so the MBR goes to C. I steer well clear now.matthewjumps wrote:well, several people in posts linked above have got it working, and the windows tech support guy didnt say it would be a problem, and other people on windows forums have said it can work.
so i think i can rule out 2.
which leaves a hardware issue with the laptop. but that seems weird since i have had no startup or disk read issues with my previous SSD/Data disk combo (running a single boot). it ran for years. i have done memtests, cputests, and long seatools disk tests on both HDs, all passed with no issues.
it seems to me the most likely thing is not that w7/w7 CANT work in dual boot, more so that i have either done something wrong in the setup, or the MBR has a problem somehow.
Windows 7 Dual Boot
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- KVRAF
- 6323 posts since 30 Dec, 2004 from London uk
Last edited by UltraJv on Thu Oct 23, 2014 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 534 posts since 22 Mar, 2006 from Adelaide, Australia
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- KVRAF
- 6323 posts since 30 Dec, 2004 from London uk
What got me was that Windows can write the dual boot MBR to a drive you don't want it on. You might even have 2 * dual MBRs. lThat caused me much grief. That's why you sometimes have to take a drive physically out to set things up.
Last edited by UltraJv on Thu Oct 23, 2014 11:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 534 posts since 22 Mar, 2006 from Adelaide, Australia
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- KVRAF
- 5810 posts since 27 Jul, 2001 from Tarpon Springs, Florida, USA
I had the dual boot W7 64 bit working on two partitions on the same HDD.
Actually I had three boots. The third boot was my restore partition to make sure that the backup restored properly and did not want to take a chance on trying to restore on the first or second boot just in case it failed. Ok a bit excessive but this served me well with WXP and earlier OS with Boot Magic and Ghost 2003. But never got this to work with Vista and W7 as the restore created some problems.
If you do not plan to backup then ignore that above paragraph.
Actually I had three boots. The third boot was my restore partition to make sure that the backup restored properly and did not want to take a chance on trying to restore on the first or second boot just in case it failed. Ok a bit excessive but this served me well with WXP and earlier OS with Boot Magic and Ghost 2003. But never got this to work with Vista and W7 as the restore created some problems.
If you do not plan to backup then ignore that above paragraph.
My Studio: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7760&p=7777146#p7777146
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 534 posts since 22 Mar, 2006 from Adelaide, Australia
Heres a couple of screens of my Disk Management util, run on both OS's
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
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- KVRAF
- 6323 posts since 30 Dec, 2004 from London uk
I thought I could have triple boot. I did for a while. I had separate GHOST of each OS partition. It worked for a while until one restore blew it and I couldn't get it working again. I never did know where the triple boot MBR ended up.Kalamata Kid wrote:I had the dual boot W7 64 bit working on two partitions on the same HDD.
Actually I had three boots. The third boot was my restore partition to make sure that the backup restored properly and did not want to take a chance on trying to restore on the first or second boot just in case it failed. Ok a bit excessive but this served me well with WXP and earlier OS with Boot Magic and Ghost 2003. But never got this to work with Vista and W7 as the restore created some problems.
If you do not plan to backup then ignore that above paragraph.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 534 posts since 22 Mar, 2006 from Adelaide, Australia
ok so Kalamata Kid, youre saying that 2 boots definitely can work, if i dont worry about the 3rd partition?
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- KVRAF
- 5810 posts since 27 Jul, 2001 from Tarpon Springs, Florida, USA
My memory is not 100%. In my Windows 7 setup I only had two boots but three should work just as well. I finally gave up on it because I could not restore a backup without screwing up things.matthewjumps wrote:ok so Kalamata Kid, youre saying that 2 boots definitely can work, if i dont worry about the 3rd partition?
some notes from 12-7-2009 (I did not check the links)
BCD Windows Management Instrument dual boot windows 7 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz= ... f&oq=&aqi=
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa468626.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... S.85).aspx
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz= ... f&oq=&aqi=
I have additional notes (.doc and .docx) that I can send to you as attachments if you like.
My Studio: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7760&p=7777146#p7777146
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- KVRAF
- 5810 posts since 27 Jul, 2001 from Tarpon Springs, Florida, USA
It' been a while but Vista and windows 7 multiboot with 2 or three partitions drove me crazy. For months because I wanted to backup the OS and restore. I believe I finally settled on dual boot on a HDD (7200 rpm) not SSD. But in the end gave this up. So I no longer dual boot. I clone the complete drive for a back up and thus do not need to restore.UltraJv wrote:I thought I could have triple boot. I did for a while. I had separate GHOST of each OS partition. It worked for a while until one restore blew it and I couldn't get it working again. I never did know where the triple boot MBR ended up.Kalamata Kid wrote:I had the dual boot W7 64 bit working on two partitions on the same HDD.
Actually I had three boots. The third boot was my restore partition to make sure that the backup restored properly and did not want to take a chance on trying to restore on the first or second boot just in case it failed. Ok a bit excessive but this served me well with WXP and earlier OS with Boot Magic and Ghost 2003. But never got this to work with Vista and W7 as the restore created some problems.
If you do not plan to backup then ignore that above paragraph.
My Studio: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7760&p=7777146#p7777146
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- KVRist
- 36 posts since 6 Jul, 2008
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- KVRAF
- 5810 posts since 27 Jul, 2001 from Tarpon Springs, Florida, USA
Sorry double double post
Last edited by Kalamata Kid on Sat Nov 01, 2014 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My Studio: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7760&p=7777146#p7777146
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- KVRAF
- 5810 posts since 27 Jul, 2001 from Tarpon Springs, Florida, USA
aitch gee,
I did not try Boot-us if I recall correctly.
If it works please let us all know.
I had a W7 multi-boot that worked. It got messed up
when I cloned one partition to the other or
Backed up one partition and restored to the same
or other partition.
I spent months on this and finally gave up in frustration.
I do believe however that a very skilled technician can do it.
Uhh. I remember the good old days with Partition Magic,
Boot Magic and Ghost 2003. Back then even a novice like
myself could multi-boot and ...
I did not try Boot-us if I recall correctly.
If it works please let us all know.
I had a W7 multi-boot that worked. It got messed up
when I cloned one partition to the other or
Backed up one partition and restored to the same
or other partition.
I spent months on this and finally gave up in frustration.
I do believe however that a very skilled technician can do it.
Uhh. I remember the good old days with Partition Magic,
Boot Magic and Ghost 2003. Back then even a novice like
myself could multi-boot and ...
My Studio: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7760&p=7777146#p7777146
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- KVRAF
- 2083 posts since 28 Feb, 2011
As I said in my first post, " What you are experiencing is characteristic of dual-boot systems running on a single drive. It is far less reliable." Yes, you can get it to work, but not reliably. It will NEVER be as reliable as separate drives per OS.
Here's an example of what can go wrong. Let's say you run out of power, and the laptop shuts off before Windows can power down, and the current OS was trying to write settings to the boot sector and corrupts the MBR. Now neither OS will boot. If the other OS were on a different drive, it wouldn't have to share the same corrupt files with the other OS.
Problems like this can be fixed from a Command Prompt with the bootsect /nt60 ALL command, and there are other ways as well. Google repair MBR.
When I used a laptop for my primary PC, I used an external bay to change OSs. I could slide the HDD out and pop the other in - that way there was no chance one OS could mess with the other.
So, be glad you got it working the way you want, and get used to significantly lower reliability. The one comes with the other.
Here's an example of what can go wrong. Let's say you run out of power, and the laptop shuts off before Windows can power down, and the current OS was trying to write settings to the boot sector and corrupts the MBR. Now neither OS will boot. If the other OS were on a different drive, it wouldn't have to share the same corrupt files with the other OS.
Problems like this can be fixed from a Command Prompt with the bootsect /nt60 ALL command, and there are other ways as well. Google repair MBR.
When I used a laptop for my primary PC, I used an external bay to change OSs. I could slide the HDD out and pop the other in - that way there was no chance one OS could mess with the other.
So, be glad you got it working the way you want, and get used to significantly lower reliability. The one comes with the other.
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- KVRist
- 404 posts since 12 Jan, 2008 from Sweden
In principle this should work. I used to have two Windows XPs installed on separate partitions of the same drive for many years and it worked flawlessly. What is more, that ancient Windows installer was smart enough to detect an existing OS installation and had no problems installing on another partition. After that it was a matter of editing boot.ini file to add meaningful description in the boot menu as well as setting the default OS installation.
I have never tried this with Windows 7, although I do have a dual boot with Kubuntu linux on my laptop. It's worked since 2012 with no issues whatsoever.
To be honest, I see no value in creating a dedicated OS installation for audio production. 8-10 years ago, with single CPUs every spare percent of processing power was valuable indeed. Today, running multiple background services on modern PC has negligible impact on the overall performance.
I'm running a Core i5 (Sandy Bridge, 3.1 GHz) with 8GB ram on Win 7 x64 (with all eye candy turned on) and use my PC for everything - gaming, audio production, web browsing, software development and it just works. Having antivir/firewall, active Internet connection and even some VMware services running in the background has no perceptible impact on the overall performance. I can still run my Focusrite Saffire via Firewire with 192 samples buffer size and approx. 9ms of roundtrip latency and just make music when I'm in mood.
I have never tried this with Windows 7, although I do have a dual boot with Kubuntu linux on my laptop. It's worked since 2012 with no issues whatsoever.
To be honest, I see no value in creating a dedicated OS installation for audio production. 8-10 years ago, with single CPUs every spare percent of processing power was valuable indeed. Today, running multiple background services on modern PC has negligible impact on the overall performance.
I'm running a Core i5 (Sandy Bridge, 3.1 GHz) with 8GB ram on Win 7 x64 (with all eye candy turned on) and use my PC for everything - gaming, audio production, web browsing, software development and it just works. Having antivir/firewall, active Internet connection and even some VMware services running in the background has no perceptible impact on the overall performance. I can still run my Focusrite Saffire via Firewire with 192 samples buffer size and approx. 9ms of roundtrip latency and just make music when I'm in mood.
