The immediate Christmas jollity now out of the way I've been able to return
to the question of Win 7 and Win 10 in the same desktop PC.

With each OS on a separate SSD, pressing f8 during bootup brings up a list
of installed drives and other gubbinses, ending in Windows Boot Manager,
which when selected lists both 7 and 10. So so far, so good.

Selecting 7 takes me straight to a Checkdisk check of drive C, the Win 7
SSD. This finds no problems and 7 then loads and runs.

Selecting 10 brings up a message to the effect that Windows has detected
unauthorised hardware or firmware changes (I quote from memory but that's
not far off) and I'm asked to insert a Win10 repair disk. I haven't tried
this yet, but it's next on the agenda.

Wish me luck...

Bert Coules wrote:
The immediate Christmas jollity now out of the way I've been able to
return to the question of Win 7 and Win 10 in the same desktop PC.

With each OS on a separate SSD, pressing f8 during bootup brings up a
list of installed drives and other gubbinses, ending in Windows Boot
Manager, which when selected lists both 7 and 10. So so far, so good.

Selecting 7 takes me straight to a Checkdisk check of drive C, the Win 7
SSD. This finds no problems and 7 then loads and runs.

Selecting 10 brings up a message to the effect that Windows has detected
unauthorised hardware or firmware changes (I quote from memory but
that's not far off) and I'm asked to insert a Win10 repair disk. I
haven't tried this yet, but it's next on the agenda.

Wish me luck...

On an Asus motherboard, you enter the BIOS setup screen (UEFI BIOS)
and set the OS Type to "Other OS". This effectively treats Windows 7
the same as Linux, no support for Secure Boot. (Linux actually has
some sort of shim scheme now, and this "Other OS" idea existed before
the shim method was known.) The Other OS setting enables both
Windows 7 or Windows 10 to boot, without entering the BIOS
constantly and fooling around.

https://www.cclonline.com/images/art....jpg?width=700

The NTFS file system version number is 3.1 on both OSes.
However, Microsoft reserves the right to add features
to the Windows 10 version of NTFS, via reparse points.
Reparse points are custom file system features. Linux
cannot keep up with these, resulting in Linux reporting
(incorrectly) "I/O Error" when working in System32 area.
Later Linux OSes report a slightly more correct technical
error, that "Linux cannot parse this...".

OK so far, but there is additional fun when CHKDSK comes along.
You might notice that some of your CHKDSK runs take half an
hour instead of a minute or two. I notice very slow
"Extended Attribute" checking going on.

Windows 10 also damaged $MFTMIRR and some flavor of $BITMAP.
BITMAP is likely there to keep track of which parts of the
partition are not used yet. Macrium Reflect Free, version
6.3, stopped making backups at one point, when it stumbled
on this sort of damage. Macrium released a new version which
could deal with these differences. In other words, Windows 10
is not a good corporate citizen. My wild guess is, these
changes are related to not "burning a hole" in SSD drives.
Microsoft do not usually admit to the monkey business
they've been up to.

I'm surprised the Windows Boot Manager entry, already knows
about both OSes. That could only happen, if some sort of
OS Upgrade happened while both hard drives were plugged into
the computer. It should have taken some EasyBCD or similar
work, to get both of them there.

Now, a guess would be, if the menu has a Windows Boot Manager
entry, and two OS lozenges show in the shiny GUI, then you
have no additional work to do. The UEFI BIOS has a tendency
to allow the Windows Boot Manager to run first (most of the
time, by random chance), so perhaps no further coercing
is required. I've noticed mine hopping on the Windows Boot
Manager and mostly ignoring the Linux entry. But there
have also been cases where the Linux one went first, perhaps
when it was attempting to Secure Boot.

You can modify the BIOS disk menu area to hint that a
particular drive should "go first", then not bother
with F8 steering.

There will be additional surprises, if Fastboot is engaged
and the computer uses Hibernation bit in the chipset. This
can cause attempts to multiboot, to end up in the same
OS each time (ignoring your wishes or ignoring any menu).
Disable Fastboot in Windows 10 to stop this.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

https://www.tenforums.com/attachment..._startup-3.jpg

Paul

Paul,

Many thanks for the detailed reply. This is the latest situation:

I tried booting from a Win10 recovery disk as asked. This brought up the
message, "The drive with Windows is locked. Unlock it to proceed". (Again,
that's from memory but it's not far out.)

I decided then to leave any further experimentation until tomorrow, so I
removed the recovery disk and rebooted without pressing f8 for the boot
menu, expecting to go straight into Win7 as usual. But instead I got
,"Windows has detected unauthorised hardware or firmware changes. Insert
recovery disk".

In went the Win7 recovery disk. Which got me nowhere, just the same
message.

So I tried unplugging every drive except the Win7 SSD (the C: drive). And
the computer would not boot. The BIOS listed the drive and identified it as
SATA 1, but it did not appear in the main BIOS screen boot options menu.
However it did turn up when I pressed f8 from the BIOS screen and I was able
to select it from there and move it up the list. Then I saved-and-exited
("You have not made any changes" I was told) and - eventually - the computer
loaded Windows 7.

So here I am back in Win7 but (at the moment) with no other drives
connected, where I usually have two 2TB hard drives and a BluRay deck.

I suppose the next step is to power down, reconnect everything else (though
possibly not the Win10 SSD), and see what happens.

But I think I'll have some dinner and watch Only Connect first.

Bert Coules wrote:


But I think I'll have some dinner

That's what I'm doing right now, thanks to computers :-)

Paul

Paul wrote:

That's what I'm doing right now, thanks to computers :-)

I got caught by all the Monday evening quiz shows, and was too settled into
my comfy armchair to hurry back to my desk. And now I think I might leave
the next stage of experimenting until the morning.

I solved the boot problem. I was getting the message, "The system found
unauthorised changes on the firmware, operating system or UEFI drivers...".
This led to the BIOS setup which showed no changes that I could detect.

A Google search turned up an article from 2016 describing exactly this fault
and attributing it to a then-recent Windows 7 update which changed the
Secure Boot setting of the BIOS - the fix is to change the setting from
Windows UEFI mode to Other OS.

It seems that this four year old update just recently hit my PC. I changed
the setting and it now boots up into Win7 as it used to.

My dual-boot question remains unanswered, but to be honest my attempts to
install and evaluate Windows 10 have given me so many headaches that I'm no
longer inclined to bother. I'm perfectly happy with Win7 and unconvinced
that any potential advantages of the later OS are worth the hassle.

Bert Coules wrote:

I'm perfectly happy with Win7 and unconvinced that any potential
advantages of the later OS are worth the hassle.

It's your can, and you're free to kick it down the road; but expect
software (it'll mainly be web browsers that matter) to stop supporting
win7 in a couple of years ...

Andy Burns wrote:

It's your can, and you're free to kick it down the road...

Nice expression: I've not heard that before.

...but expect software (it'll mainly be web browsers that
matter) to stop supporting win7 in a couple of years...

I suppose if I ever feel the need to update or change any of my key software
that could be a problem, but I haven't been inclined to do so for a good few
years and I'm not sure that's going to change. It's an excellent point
though. Thanks.

In article ,
Paul wrote:
On an Asus motherboard, you enter the BIOS setup screen (UEFI BIOS)
and set the OS Type to "Other OS". This effectively treats Windows 7
the same as Linux, no support for Secure Boot. (Linux actually has
some sort of shim scheme now, and this "Other OS" idea existed before
the shim method was known.) The Other OS setting enables both
Windows 7 or Windows 10 to boot, without entering the BIOS
constantly and fooling around.

I have a pretty recent GigaByte MB. Hoping it was more long lasting than
Asus.

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from the
Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert. Even with the other HDs (etc)
unplugged.

--
*Frankly, scallop, I don't give a clam

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from the
Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert. Even with the other HDs (etc)
unplugged.

That's hard luck; as I said, making that one change cured the problem for
me, though with a curious side effect: after the Win7 password-entry page
I'm now presented with a totally blank (blue) screen for quite a few seconds
before my desktop appears: that's something new.

Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from the
Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

Paul wrote:

On an Asus motherboard, you enter the BIOS setup
screen (UEFI BIOS) and set the OS Type to "Other OS".

As you might have seen from my earlier post I discovered this myself from a
Google search: for whatever reason, I'd read but not really taken in your
own explanation; my apologies, and belated thanks for posting the solution,
even if I didn't act on it.

In article ,
Bert Coules wrote:
Andy Burns wrote:

It's your can, and you're free to kick it down the road...

Nice expression: I've not heard that before.

...but expect software (it'll mainly be web browsers that
matter) to stop supporting win7 in a couple of years...

I suppose if I ever feel the need to update or change any of my key
software that could be a problem, but I haven't been inclined to do so
for a good few years and I'm not sure that's going to change. It's an
excellent point though. Thanks.

I changed to Win10 mainly because of online banking. And it being said it
would soon become even less secure.

Win7 will probably still be fine - provided you never use it for anything
that could end up costing you.

However, having now used Win10 for a few months, I no longer regret the
change (as I did at first).

--
*One of us is thinking about sex... OK, it's me.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Win7 will probably still be fine - provided you never use it for anything
that could end up costing you.

However, having now used Win10 for a few months, I no longer regret the
change (as I did at first).

I'm aware that I'm probably not giving Win10 a fair crack of the whip, but
the recent havoc it unleashed on my main PC has made me very wary. Possibly
if I had a separate machine running it I'd be able to give it a fairer
evaluation.

In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It worked
perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks pretty involved
to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so diminishes every day. ;-)

--
*Even a blind pig stumbles across an acorn now and again *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 29/12/2020 14:40, Bert Coules wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Win7 will probably still be fine - provided you never use it for anything
that could end up costing you.

However, having now used Win10 for a few months, I no longer regret the
change (as I did at first).

I'm aware that I'm probably not givingÂ* Win10 a fair crack of the whip,
but the recent havoc it unleashed on my main PC has made me very wary.
Possibly if I had a separate machine running it I'd be able to give it a
fairer evaluation.
create a virtual machine and run it from that
I am sure virtual box runs under win7
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads


--
€œIdeas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of
other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance"

- John K Galbraith

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It worked
perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks pretty involved
to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so diminishes every day. ;-)


I did an install here with Secure Boot disabled, and installed Windows 7 SP1 Pro x64.
Installed and boots with no problem (on "real hardware"). The Asus is four
or five years old or so.

Where problems show up, is if I do a P2V and take it into
VirtualBox. A red bar appears near the top of the Guest screen
and it stops before getting very far into boot. I presume this
is related to the stinko VirtualBox 6 graphics choices.

There was also no problem installing 20H2 from a USB stick booted
in UEFI mode. Does a UEFI install.

I didn't bother to put them both on HDD at the same time and
do further tests, because I don't think there's much point.
Unless someone needs this for some reason, I know it's going
to work. Adding a stanza to a BCD isn't exactly rocket science
at this point. Macrium Reflect could be used to repair the
two-drive setup and automatically generate a working BCD.

I already have W7 and W10 on the 3TB drive, running with the "Other OS"
setting, and being good citizens about it. I only did a couple test
installs, just to try (again) to get VirtualBox to work. They
changed the VirtualBox version to "6", but seem to have done
squat in terms of things that matter. VBoxmanage still doesn't
have fully orthogonal features - when I went to use modifymedia
it wasted my time by letting me enter the command, then emits
a "this feature is not supported" on my screen (classy - just
put the non-conformance in the damn manual, don't tease me).

I used the Hologram Win7 DVD for the install, as that's the
media I can trust to support UEFI and legacy. Some other procedures
for prepping media on USB sticks, only support one mode but not
necessarily the other. You boot the install media in UEFI mode,
to do a UEFI install.

And I only do 64 bit installs this way, as I don't know
what 32 bit Win7 would do for all these cases. If I needed
a 32 bit Win7, I'd do legacy partitioning.

The only situation that's really broken, is the level of
support for UEFI in VirtualBox 5 or VirtualBox 6.

Paul

On 29/12/2020 14:41, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It worked
perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks pretty involved
to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so diminishes every day. ;-)

One of the reasons we suggested sticking one OS inside a VM on the other!


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 29/12/2020 14:41, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It
worked perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks
pretty involved to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so
diminishes every day. ;-)

One of the reasons we suggested sticking one OS inside a VM on the other!

Yes. IMHO, it's likely my new MB which is the culprit.

--
*You're never too old to learn something stupid.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 30/12/2020 14:18, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 29/12/2020 14:41, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It
worked perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks
pretty involved to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so
diminishes every day. ;-)

One of the reasons we suggested sticking one OS inside a VM on the other!

Yes. IMHO, it's likely my new MB which is the culprit.

One of the difficulties you can run into a new hardware is the modern
UEFI supports secure boot, and if that is turned on it makes it
difficult to dual boot machines since it replaces the traditional BIOS
boot capabilities.

You normally need to turn that off in the BIOS setup screen when
installing multiple OSs


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 30/12/2020 14:18, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 29/12/2020 14:41, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It
worked perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks
pretty involved to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so
diminishes every day. ;-)

One of the reasons we suggested sticking one OS inside a VM on the other!

Yes. IMHO, it's likely my new MB which is the culprit.

One of the difficulties you can run into a new hardware is the modern
UEFI supports secure boot, and if that is turned on it makes it
difficult to dual boot machines since it replaces the traditional BIOS
boot capabilities.

You normally need to turn that off in the BIOS setup screen when
installing multiple OSs

Tried that from the start. I can remove everything from the MB apart from
the SSD containing Win7 - which worked with the old MB. And set it to
'other OS' Still won't boot.

--
*If you can't see my mirrors, I'm doing my hair*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 30/12/2020 18:59, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 30/12/2020 14:18, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 29/12/2020 14:41, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It
worked perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks
pretty involved to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so
diminishes every day. ;-)

One of the reasons we suggested sticking one OS inside a VM on the other!

Yes. IMHO, it's likely my new MB which is the culprit.

One of the difficulties you can run into a new hardware is the modern
UEFI supports secure boot, and if that is turned on it makes it
difficult to dual boot machines since it replaces the traditional BIOS
boot capabilities.

You normally need to turn that off in the BIOS setup screen when
installing multiple OSs

Tried that from the start. I can remove everything from the MB apart from
the SSD containing Win7 - which worked with the old MB. And set it to
'other OS' Still won't boot.

Are all the drives formatted the same way (i.e. GPT / MBR), and which
partitions have the active flag set?

You may find that you are using the Win 7 SSD as the only active
partition on a MBR drive.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 30/12/2020 18:59, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 30/12/2020 14:18, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 29/12/2020 14:41, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It
worked perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks
pretty involved to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so
diminishes every day. ;-)

One of the reasons we suggested sticking one OS inside a VM on the other!

Yes. IMHO, it's likely my new MB which is the culprit.

One of the difficulties you can run into a new hardware is the modern
UEFI supports secure boot, and if that is turned on it makes it
difficult to dual boot machines since it replaces the traditional BIOS
boot capabilities.

You normally need to turn that off in the BIOS setup screen when
installing multiple OSs

Tried that from the start. I can remove everything from the MB apart from
the SSD containing Win7 - which worked with the old MB. And set it to
'other OS' Still won't boot.

Are all the drives formatted the same way (i.e. GPT / MBR), and which
partitions have the active flag set?

You may find that you are using the Win 7 SSD as the only active
partition on a MBR drive.

The Win7 SSD was cloned from the original HD on the old MB. And worked
just fine on that. When I changed the MB, my priority was Win10. Fitted a
new SSD, since I wanted to keep the old Win7 intact (and also an XP HD)
Simply loaded in new Win10 Pro. The BIOS settings in the new MB are much
more comprehensive than the old - ie confusing. So I pretty well let it do
it's own thing. I've not made any changes to the Win7 SSD. Although it's
possible EasyBCD did so.

The instructions with the new MB ain't exactly helpful. Seem more about
tweaking things for gaming. It's possible I just bought the wrong MB - but
it does now work very well with Win10 - much faster than any other I have.

--
*Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Courtesy of a borrowed desktop PC I've now been able to spend some time
comparing Windows 7 and 10 side by side, and it's clear that though there
are certainly some look-and-feel aspects of Win10 that I like and possibly
even consider superior to their Win7 equivalents, overall, for my particular
uses and purposes, Win7 is the better choice for me.

Now I do make extensive use of the internet, I do use online banking, and
I'm aware of the possible security implications. And if I do experience any
problems which might not have happened with Win10 it's possible that I'll
regret the decision - and if and when I post a call for help here, please
feel free, one and all, to say that you told me so. But until that day I'm
content that I've made the right choice.

Many thanks to everyone who chipped in with thoughts and suggestions, all of
which were much appreciated.

Oh, one mild side effect of all my experimentation: as far as I can tell,
the computer is now in exactly the same configuration as it was before I
started, and runs with exactly the same speed and efficiency as previously.
Except that on boot up, after I enter my password and press return, I'm now
presented with a completely blank blue-grey screen which lingers for some
ten seconds before my desktop is generated.

It's no more than a mild inconvenience but I'd be interested to know what is
causing it. Any thoughts? Thanks.

On 31/12/2020 11:21, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 30/12/2020 18:59, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 30/12/2020 14:18, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 29/12/2020 14:41, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Setting it to Other OS makes no difference. If I set it to boot from
the Win7 SSD, I get the same error as Bert.

Was the win7 installed when the UEFI setting was set for secure boot? if
so it won't boot when secure boot is turned off.

No. The Win7 SSD was on the ancient MB - that wouldn't work with Win10.
Don't think UEFI existed when it was new.

EasyBCD does have quite a bit to say about dual booting Win10. It
worked perfectly with Win7 and the other OS I have. But it looks
pretty involved to dual boot Win10 - and the desire to do so
diminishes every day. ;-)

One of the reasons we suggested sticking one OS inside a VM on the other!

Yes. IMHO, it's likely my new MB which is the culprit.

One of the difficulties you can run into a new hardware is the modern
UEFI supports secure boot, and if that is turned on it makes it
difficult to dual boot machines since it replaces the traditional BIOS
boot capabilities.

You normally need to turn that off in the BIOS setup screen when
installing multiple OSs

Tried that from the start. I can remove everything from the MB apart from
the SSD containing Win7 - which worked with the old MB. And set it to
'other OS' Still won't boot.

Are all the drives formatted the same way (i.e. GPT / MBR), and which
partitions have the active flag set?

You may find that you are using the Win 7 SSD as the only active
partition on a MBR drive.

The Win7 SSD was cloned from the original HD on the old MB. And worked
just fine on that. When I changed the MB, my priority was Win10. Fitted a
new SSD, since I wanted to keep the old Win7 intact (and also an XP HD)
Simply loaded in new Win10 Pro. The BIOS settings in the new MB are much
more comprehensive than the old - ie confusing. So I pretty well let it do
it's own thing. I've not made any changes to the Win7 SSD. Although it's
possible EasyBCD did so.

The instructions with the new MB ain't exactly helpful. Seem more about

None of them are - quite often the help gives very limited expansion of
what the settings actually do.

tweaking things for gaming. It's possible I just bought the wrong MB - but

To be fair it sounds like most modern boards - lots of stuff that can be
tweaked to support overclocking etc.

it does now work very well with Win10 - much faster than any other I have.

UEFI systems normally require that the boot partition be on a GPT disk
and not a MBR one. So even if there is a MBR disk present, with an
active partition, the system will not boot from it.

(you may be able to coax it into working by by turning off UEFI support
in the BIOS - but at expense of then upsetting Win 10)

If you do a fresh install of Win 10 on to a SSD then it will usually
format that as a GPT disk rather than MBR.

The old Win 7 one was probably MBR with one partition set as active.
Tools like Acronis will allow you to clone and change the format to GPT,
but that is not the default setting.

The history is covered he

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ws-and-gpt-faq



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
Bert Coules wrote:
Courtesy of a borrowed desktop PC I've now been able to spend some time
comparing Windows 7 and 10 side by side, and it's clear that though
there are certainly some look-and-feel aspects of Win10 that I like and
possibly even consider superior to their Win7 equivalents, overall, for
my particular uses and purposes, Win7 is the better choice for me.

Now I do make extensive use of the internet, I do use online banking,
and I'm aware of the possible security implications. And if I do
experience any problems which might not have happened with Win10 it's
possible that I'll regret the decision - and if and when I post a call
for help here, please feel free, one and all, to say that you told me
so. But until that day I'm content that I've made the right choice.

Many thanks to everyone who chipped in with thoughts and suggestions,
all of which were much appreciated.

I had problems with online banking (Barclays) using Win10 and Firefox. It
wouldn't allow me to set up a new payment, using the PinSentry card.
Eventually sorted it by using Chrome. FireFox now works again, though.

With an older not supported OS you're bound to get this sort of thing in
the future.

I'd say you need to live with Win10 for more than just a day. I thought
the same as you - but am happy enough with it now. Although it is still
flaky talking to the other Win10 machines here.

--
*A plateau is a high form of flattery*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

With an older not supported OS you're
bound to get this sort of thing in the future.

I take the point, and as I said if I do ever find something for which
Windows 10 is unavoidable then I suppose I'll have to look at the situation
again. Perhaps a second machine running Win10 would be a solution: it would
certainly avoid having to complicate my main PC with dual booting or a VPN.

I have only very limited use at present for a laptop, but maybe obtaining
one, with the later OS, might be a feasible idea.

Many thanks for your thoughts.

"Bert Coules" wrote in message
o.uk...
Courtesy of a borrowed desktop PC I've now been able to spend some time
comparing Windows 7 and 10 side by side, and it's clear that though there
are certainly some look-and-feel aspects of Win10 that I like and possibly
even consider superior to their Win7 equivalents, overall, for my
particular uses and purposes, Win7 is the better choice for me.

That isnt really much of a comparison. You really need to use the
new one for a few months to be sure that it is worse for you.

Now I do make extensive use of the internet, I do use online banking, and
I'm aware of the possible security implications.

I do most of the online banking on the smartphone now.

And if I do experience any problems which might not have happened with
Win10 it's possible that I'll regret the decision - and if and when I post
a call for help here, please feel free, one and all, to say that you told
me so. But until that day I'm content that I've made the right choice.

I still use Win7 most of the time, but that's because a couple
of the things I use every day don't work on Win10 but I do
have a separate Win10 system available for what needs it.

Many thanks to everyone who chipped in with thoughts and suggestions, all
of which were much appreciated.

Thanks for the washup, not common enough imo.

Fred said:

I still use Win7 most of the time, but that's because a couple
of the things I use every day don't work on Win10 but I do
have a separate Win10 system available for what needs it.

That seems an ideal setup. You might not have seen my follow-up to my
earlier post, where I speculated on doing exactly that.

Thanks for the washup...

You rather baffled me with that, but now that I've looked it up, you're
welcome.

Bert Coules wrote:
Oh, one mild side effect of all my experimentation: as far as I can
tell, the computer is now in exactly the same configuration as it was
before I started, and runs with exactly the same speed and efficiency as
previously. Except that on boot up, after I enter my password and press
return, I'm now presented with a completely blank blue-grey screen which
lingers for some ten seconds before my desktop is generated.

It's no more than a mild inconvenience but I'd be interested to know
what is causing it. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Process Monitor has a "boot trace" option.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sys...nloads/procmon

It injects "procmon23.dll" or similar, into System32.
The file is hidden, so you need to adjust your File Explorer
view options to make it visible. (Only if, say, you wanted
to remove it at some future date.)

On the next reboot, Process Monitor collects ETW events from T=0
when the system boots up. After the desktop appears, you can wait a bit
before starting Process Monitor. It will ask you whether you
want to store the file.

You can enter filter events such as

"Operation" "Is" "CreateFile"
"Operation" "Is" "ReadFile"
"Operation" "Is" "WriteFile"

to see what programs are banging on the disk
at bootup. Which may give a hint where the
delay is coming from.

A popular means of messing up the boot, is
asking the OS to "map" a network share, and then
having the network share shut off so the OS
can't reach it. That can cost you five minutes wait.

There's more to using Process Monitor than this, such
as setting the usage of a backing file instead of using
RAM to hold traces. If you reboot while Process Monitor
is collecting a trace, and have also selected Boot Trace,
not only do you get to keep your shutdown trace, you
also get the benefit of a bootup trace. The program
can trace both, in the same session, and you have to
be careful to store both of them when the desktop
appears on the reboot.

ETW events do not have the granularity or depth of
WinDbg or GDB. Instead, it's more similar to strace
or truss on Linux/Unix, giving some I/O calls so you
can say "I see Notepad was busy". That's about
the level of picture it's about to paint. Activity
detection. Since the file calls include full path
and size info and offset, you can even tell what
it's reading :-) Some programs have the most
convoluted patterns.

You will see a ton of registry calls in that trace.
But they're of more interest at non-boot times.
You will find many registry items getting polled
once a second for example. It's a good thing the
registry is efficient.

Russinovich wrote Process Monitor. The MSFT staff
wrote WPA and friends, but that was more a matter
of showing off, than making something useful. You
want xbootmgr if using that stuff.

xbootmgr -trace boot -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP
wpa # Windows software development kit - 10.0.14393.33
# Windows Performance Toolkit directory

I like Process Monitor, as it gives you something
to work with, with relatively little mental load.
Yes, it takes a while to get used to it. A long
journey starts with the first step. It won't bite you.
The File Menu has the trace flag, and you toggle
the flag to off, to stop a trace. Edit has a Clear
to clear the screen of a capture trace. The events
in the menus, should be from the "pool" of stuff
in the trace. So if Notepad wasn't running, you
cannot select "Process" "Is" "Notepad", because it
won't be available unless Notepad was running during
the trace.

Paul

Paul,

Many thanks for that. We're definitely heading towards areas beyond my
experience there, and possibly my abilities too, but I'll take a look at
Process Monitor.

On 31/12/2020 13:09, Bert Coules wrote:
Courtesy of a borrowed desktop PC I've now been able to spend some time
comparing Windows 7 and 10 side by side, and it's clear that though
there are certainly some look-and-feel aspects of Win10 that I like and
possibly even consider superior to their Win7 equivalents, overall, for
my particular uses and purposes, Win7 is the better choice for me.

Most people find it takes a week or two of use to get comfortable with
10. So given the elapsed time, I think all you have succeeded in doing
is confirming they are different :-)



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 31/12/2020 13:09, Bert Coules wrote:
Courtesy of a borrowed desktop PC I've now been able to spend some
time comparing Windows 7 and 10 side by side, and it's clear that
though there are certainly some look-and-feel aspects of Win10 that I
like and possibly even consider superior to their Win7 equivalents,
overall, for my particular uses and purposes, Win7 is the better
choice for me.

Most people find it takes a week or two of use to get comfortable with
10. So given the elapsed time, I think all you have succeeded in doing
is confirming they are different :-)

I'd say that too, having recently changed. Against my will - rather the
same as Bert. I'm using the same 'screen saver' pics as I had on Win7 -
views around the UK.

--
*Aim Low, Reach Your Goals, Avoid Disappointment *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Most people find it takes a week or two of use to get comfortable with
10. So given the elapsed time, I think all you have succeeded in doing
is confirming they are different :-)

I'd say that too, having recently changed.

Yes, I accept that. Perhaps the pending acquisition of a laptop with Win10
10 will change my mind, or at the very least give me a chance to get better
accustomed to it.