Got another problem would like help with. And yes, I have Googled.

Gave up trying to get this PC to dual boot Win10 and Win7. Win7 is on its
own SSD. Win10 on a new SSD and using EFI boot.

So decided to install that Win7 SSD on another older machine that has
Win10 running on the older boot system. Expecting the usual problems with
windows seeing a hardware change. This older machine was already running
dual boot - Win10 and XP. Have got it all working using EasyBCD. But I'm
not seeing the Win10 'select an OS page' at start up, but the older text
only page.

I'm very confused about all this works too. All three HDs would have been
driveC originally. With them all installed, Win10 assigns different drive
letters to the other two HDs. Load Win7. and it does the same - but
different letters. Load XP, and the same happens. I've no idea how Easy
BCD sorts this out.

--
*Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have *

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

Dave Plowman wrote:

This older machine was already running
dual boot - Win10 and XP. Have got it all working using EasyBCD. But I'm
not seeing the Win10 'select an OS page' at start up, but the older text
only page.

which disk is the "active" boot device, the XP one, using boot.ini?

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
Got another problem would like help with. And yes, I have Googled.

Gave up trying to get this PC to dual boot Win10 and Win7. Win7 is on its
own SSD. Win10 on a new SSD and using EFI boot.

So decided to install that Win7 SSD on another older machine that has
Win10 running on the older boot system. Expecting the usual problems with
windows seeing a hardware change. This older machine was already running
dual boot - Win10 and XP. Have got it all working using EasyBCD. But I'm
not seeing the Win10 'select an OS page' at start up, but the older text
only page.

I'm very confused about all this works too. All three HDs would have been
driveC originally. With them all installed, Win10 assigns different drive
letters to the other two HDs. Load Win7. and it does the same - but
different letters. Load XP, and the same happens. I've no idea how Easy
BCD sorts this out.


Look in your "bcdedit" enumeration output. In administrator
command prompt, try:

bcdedit

There will probably be a line with "displaybootmenu"
in it, which gives the traditional black window with text.

This is how you add the black window with text.

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu True

Which suggests maybe something like

bcdedit /clear {bootmgr} displaybootmenu

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu False

Since you can enumerate right afterwards with

bcdedit

you can see immediately, what came of the commands.

*******

If you were to use the Macrium CD and the boot repair in its
menu, that also removed the displaybootmenu line.

If you were having trouble installing Windows 7 for some
reason, you have the option of cloning the partition
over to the Win10 disk drive. Then, add it to boot with
EasyBCD, or the Macrium CD and its boot repair (which
will rebuild the BCD).

That's how I got Windows 7 on my 24 partition GPT drive.
Just cloned it over, wired up the boot manager for it
as Win10 was already there. Win10 was installed conventionally,
and Win7 was added as "Accessory Luggage".

One thing to note:

The black page with text, is chain loading. It does not
care what the last OS booted was. You select an OS and
(chain) loading starts immediately.

The tile based fancy GUI menu, is not chain load. You will
hear the BIOS beep and the machine will go through POST
a second time, if you select the non-default OS. Thus the
tile based fancy GUI is a loser. This is one reason I have
the black page with text loaded on mine. Efficiency.

I have many OSes on the disk drive.

Step:

1) Power computer
2) Press F8 (Asus) for popup boot
3) Select "Ubuntu", presented with a dozen or more
Linux OSes in a GRUB window.

Select "Windows Boot Manager", get the black page with text.
Cursor to Win7, hit return, Win7 boots directly (chainload).

This is all possible, because the disk is GPT partitioned
and has lots of room for partitions. Unlike with MSDOS
partitioning, where all the fun would be happening in
a huge collection of Extended-Logical. With a traditional
setup, GRUB would run the show, and Windows would be
an item in it. GRUB would also be easier to damage on an
MSDOS setup. Whereas GPT, many times I've upgraded Win10
without screwing up the GRUB entry. Each one has its own
folder in the ESP partition, and there is no good excuse
for one procedure, to be altering the folder owned by the
second ecosystem.

Not everything will stay in a Ubuntu ESP folder. Some Linux
OSes could insist on creating yet another folder. I can't
really be sure how GRUB works, and in multiboot, there are
always surprises when something updates. Every time a kernel
version changes in there, something hits the fan.

Multiboot is its very own "skill testing question". You'll
become an expert, whether you wanted to or not.

Paul

In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

This older machine was already running dual boot - Win10 and XP. Have
got it all working using EasyBCD. But I'm not seeing the Win10 'select
an OS page' at start up, but the older text only page.

which disk is the "active" boot device, the XP one, using boot.ini?

The main one is the Win10 SSD, set to be the boot one in BIOS. And that's
where Easy BCD is.

--
*If horrific means to make horrible, does terrific mean to make terrible?

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

In article ,
Paul wrote:
One thing to note:

The black page with text, is chain loading. It does not
care what the last OS booted was. You select an OS and
(chain) loading starts immediately.

The tile based fancy GUI menu, is not chain load. You will
hear the BIOS beep and the machine will go through POST
a second time, if you select the non-default OS. Thus the
tile based fancy GUI is a loser. This is one reason I have
the black page with text loaded on mine. Efficiency.

Thanks, Paul. Think I had noticed when I got the OS start up page that
allowed the choice that it re-booted.

So I'll just leave it as is. 99% of the time I'll use Win10. Was more a
nice to have than must have to use Win7 and XP.

--
*A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well*

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

In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Paul wrote:
One thing to note:

The black page with text, is chain loading. It does not
care what the last OS booted was. You select an OS and
(chain) loading starts immediately.

The tile based fancy GUI menu, is not chain load. You will
hear the BIOS beep and the machine will go through POST
a second time, if you select the non-default OS. Thus the
tile based fancy GUI is a loser. This is one reason I have
the black page with text loaded on mine. Efficiency.

Thanks, Paul. Think I had noticed when I got the OS start up page that
allowed the choice that it re-booted.

So I'll just leave it as is. 99% of the time I'll use Win10. Was more a
nice to have than must have to use Win7 and XP.

Spoke too soon. Today, it booted straight into Win10 without showing the
black page. I don't understand how Easy BCD works - it seems to write to
each boot file on every HD.

So I changed the BIOS to boot from the Win7 SSD. And there was the black
page with the choices, all of which load the OS you select.

Tried it a few times during the day and seems to be solid. So with no
understanding of what's happening, will just leave it as is. ;-)

Only minor niggle is the black page has the OS not in the order my OCD
wants, (goes Win7, Win10, Win XP top to bottom) but that's OK as it boots
from Win10 if you do nothing.

--
*You sound reasonable......time to up my medication

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

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Paul wrote:
One thing to note:

The black page with text, is chain loading. It does not
care what the last OS booted was. You select an OS and
(chain) loading starts immediately.

The tile based fancy GUI menu, is not chain load. You will
hear the BIOS beep and the machine will go through POST
a second time, if you select the non-default OS. Thus the
tile based fancy GUI is a loser. This is one reason I have
the black page with text loaded on mine. Efficiency.

Thanks, Paul. Think I had noticed when I got the OS start up page that
allowed the choice that it re-booted.

So I'll just leave it as is. 99% of the time I'll use Win10. Was more a
nice to have than must have to use Win7 and XP.

Spoke too soon. Today, it booted straight into Win10 without showing the
black page. I don't understand how Easy BCD works - it seems to write to
each boot file on every HD.

So I changed the BIOS to boot from the Win7 SSD. And there was the black
page with the choices, all of which load the OS you select.

Tried it a few times during the day and seems to be solid. So with no
understanding of what's happening, will just leave it as is. ;-)

Only minor niggle is the black page has the OS not in the order my OCD
wants, (goes Win7, Win10, Win XP top to bottom) but that's OK as it boots
from Win10 if you do nothing.


You can get "bcdedit" to tell you about the menu
stored in any BCD file. Without arguments, bcdedit
will likely be looking in C:\boot\BCD .

bcdedit /store C:\boot\BCD # Look in the OS partitions, not the data ones...
bcdedit /store D:\boot\BCD
bcdedit /store E:\boot\BCD

If you have two hard drives, you can do BIOS directed boot,
and select OSes on the various hard drives. This is how
you can have "two different results" while booting - it's
done by the BIOS being inconsistent about which disk
it selects.

When you do that, you could be accessing the BCD on a different
drive letter, in which case, the presence of the black screen,
the listing of boot candidates, can be different.

It's possible, if you dump the current menu, you'll see
that the printout in Command Prompt, roughly follows
the menu entries in the black window. Could you change
the ordering ? I presume so, but I've not wasted the
time trying it :-) I'm not one of those people who
"makes everything pretty" on a computer. I'm pretty lazy.

Paul