Dual booting and windows 8

[veedubfreak]

I ran into this issue over the weekend actually. I installed win7 on my 120gb ssd and everything was peachy. Then I installed 8 to my 480gb ssd, and was no longer able to make win7 boot at all, even with the 480gb drive unplugged.

After playing around with win8 though, I probably won't bother to fix my win7 install. 8 is a lot faster than 7.

 

[maddangerous]

I ran into this issue over the weekend actually. I installed win7 on my 120gb ssd and everything was peachy. Then I installed 8 to my 480gb ssd, and was no longer able to make win7 boot at all, even with the 480gb drive unplugged.

After playing around with win8 though, I probably won't bother to fix my win7 install. 8 is a lot faster than 7.

Do you do any gaming?

If yes, then:

How does windows 8 handle it?

 

[veedubfreak]

All I do is game on the pc. It works just like win7 except that it's a bit faster. Once you install a program that simulates/brings back the start menu proper, it -is- windows 7 with additional features. It's also a bonus that I went from home premium on 7 to win 8 professional. Definitely worth the 15 dollar upgrade fee

 

[WinOutreach2]

My apologies, KSoD. It was my intention to only reinforce what you had already mentioned by providing links to the official explanation of Secure Boot and official tool for editing the BCD. There were also a few points which I did want to expand on, such as the fact that you can indeed use the Windows 8 graphical boot menus with multi-boot environments. Also, it is important to note that Secure Boot is not required by Windows 8 and while it is present on many new systems, it can often be disabled in the UEFI firmware as explained in this thread on the TechNet Forums.

I apologize for not having acknowledged that you had made similar points in your post. We are just here to help.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
The Springboard Series on TechNet

 

[WinOutreach2]

would this secure boot affect a second hard drive if someone decided to put another operating system on that which would have a separate boot loader on it's own drive?

From my understanding yes it would still be affected by it. You are still dual booting, and the OS still has to be validated by the security checks and such.

Yes, if you have Secure Boot enabled only the signed operating system will be able to load. The motherboard firmware literally keeps a checksum of the trusted operating system in secure memory and compares it to the boot files, if it passes, the operating system loads, if it is different, it gives you an error.

I ran into this issue over the weekend actually. I installed win7 on my 120gb ssd and everything was peachy. Then I installed 8 to my 480gb ssd, and was no longer able to make win7 boot at all, even with the 480gb drive unplugged.

After playing around with win8 though, I probably won't bother to fix my win7 install. 8 is a lot faster than 7.

If you have the secure boot option disabled in UEFI, which I suspect is the case if you had Windows 7 working before, you should be able to add the Windows 7 installation to the Windows 8 boot menu using Bootrec.exe. Simply boot from the Windows 8 installation media to the Windows Recovery Environment, launch the Command Prompt, enter

bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

and when it informs you of a detected operating system add it to the Boot Configuration Database (BCD).

That said, you seem to have already discovered that you likely don't need it, since what works in Windows 7 should work the same in Windows 8.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
The Springboard Series on TechNet

 

[maddangerous]

All I do is game on the pc. It works just like win7 except that it's a bit faster. Once you install a program that simulates/brings back the start menu proper, it -is- windows 7 with additional features. It's also a bonus that I went from home premium on 7 to win 8 professional. Definitely worth the 15 dollar upgrade fee

ill have to dig into this more too, play with my grandpa's laptop. i just don't like some of the extra crap that i've heard/seen that windows will do now. i can nearly 98% guarantee you that i could make windows 7 pretty much just as fast if i had the monies for a new rig trust me.

8 IS fast though. had to change my pants after i saw it on an E-2 APU @ like.. 1.7Ghz i think? with NO SSD either. it 's almost absurd and i was almost like NOT FAIR lol

 

[Joe C]

Yes, if you have Secure Boot enabled only the signed operating system will be able to load. The motherboard firmware literally keeps a checksum of the trusted operating system in secure memory and compares it to the boot files, if it passes, the operating system loads, if it is different, it gives you an error.


Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
The Springboard Series on TechNet

So what your stating is that Micro$oft and manufactures have locked the pc at the bios level to only accept the operating system that is on the pc (via Secure Boot enabled and UEFI Bios)

I can not say I like that idea, I purchase the hardware and lease the Windows Operating System. Now are we expected to lease our hardware at some point when we lose the option to turn off Secure Boot in the proprietary bios on oem systems?