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Question

Dual booting question

Apr 20, 2020 2:16PM PDT

I am hoping to set up my computer for dual booting. I have a Dell Optiplex 9020 desktop. It came with Windows 10 Pro on an SSD. It is set up with a "cage" for 2 drives and "ports" for 2 data cords. I just finish adding Windows 7 Pro. At the present moment both drives are installed and operational with UEFI firmware but I do not have both data cords plugged in. I have Win10 in the SATA 0 port and when I want to have Win7 operating I unplug the Win10 data cord and plug the Win7 data cord into the SATA 1 port and Win7 becomes operational. I am afraid to take the next step which is to have both drives data cables plugged in at the same time. It has taken many hours to get things to this stage with quite a few errors since I really didn't know what I was doing. And I don't want to mess things up because I can live with things the way they are now.
So the question is how to do I get this to dual boot without screwing things up?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I don't think it's possible.
Apr 20, 2020 2:35PM PDT

You used a non-dual boot install method so you might be able to use the BIOS to select the boot drive. The keyword is "might." You would test it out. As to not screwing up what you have that's done with full backups of each drive so you can restore if there is an issue.

I would not have used your method as there are plenty of articles like https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=how+to+dual+boot+Windows+10+and+7 to get a proper dual boot and install.

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another post of mine helping hit forum bot.
Apr 20, 2020 4:42PM PDT

can you bring it back? Tired of that happening. May just quit posting in help threads unless that spam bot for the forum is adjusted to allow helpful links without killing the post.

Post was last edited on April 20, 2020 4:44 PM PDT

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Lee and company.
Apr 20, 2020 5:15PM PDT

Moderators have no power here.

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Probably not possible
Apr 22, 2020 5:24AM PDT

Thanks for the link. Some really good information there. I do have problems using You Tube since this ancient one is essentially deaf. Before I read your post I thought I would see what happens if I plug in both OS drives at the same time. And before I was through I had managed to screw up the Win7 drive by messing around in the boot manager. What happened was that the operating system split itself onto 2 partitions - Part on C: and Part on D. That's interesting. I am not too concerned about messing things up. It is just a matter of how much time I want to spend. My data is backed up on 2 different external hard drives. Several weeks ago I cloned the SSD and put it away for safe keeping. I have Dell's Win 7 DVD which I have used on 7 or 8 computers over the years. I thought what I would try to do is partition the SSD that has Win10 (using an installed app that does that) and then installing Win7 using the DVD onto the new partition. The SSD that currently has Win 7 I would use for storage after first removing Win 7 from it.

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update
Apr 22, 2020 5:37AM PDT

Just read this:"Note: Some users may ask dual boot Windows 10 and Windows 7 which to install first. Windows When installing Windows 7 and Windows 10 on the same disk, you need to install Windows 7 first. That’s because Windows operating system is backward compatible. The boot.ini file of Windows 10 will overwrite that of Windows 7, which helps to boot both Windows 10 and Windows 7 successfully." This makes things very difficult. Guess I will have to do more research.

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It's true that each windows system...
Apr 22, 2020 5:43AM PDT

...would see what's on the other windows system drive, except on UEFI type BIOS computers, but seems you don't have one of those newer type computers. It doesn't mean they've "split" just viewable from each system, no matter which you booted to.

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Answer
windows vs linux boot process
Apr 20, 2020 3:26PM PDT

In Linux I can add any drive, then run update-grub and it adds the extra system to that bootloader, so I have the choices on which OS to boot. Although the process is different in windows, it should have a way to add the second OS also to it's boot loader. Others who use windows 10 can probably tell you that process. If I have a linux distro installed, and have a drive with windows 10, another drive with windows 7, I can easily choose between the three, which I want to boot. If I want one of the windows to be the default boot, then in GRUB bootloader I can set that one to always boot, unless I choose another from the grub menu at boot time.
https://www.ostechnix.com/configure-grub-2-boot-loader-settings-ubuntu-16-04/
If you can't get windows to do that, but have to boot from BIOS, then might consider using the GRUB bootloader. The easiest way for that is to carve out a partition of about 10GB and install Ubuntu or Mint into it, set the BIOS to boot from there, run update-grub which will add the various other OS into it, then set the one you want to be default boot in following manner.
https://www.ostechnix.com/configure-grub-2-boot-loader-settings-ubuntu-16-04/

https://www.howtogeek.com/196655/how-to-configure-the-grub2-boot-loaders-settings/

Post was last edited on April 20, 2020 4:41 PM PDT