Windows – Dual Boot Windows 7 and 10 partition

bootmulti-bootpartitioningwindows 10windows 7

I had Windows 7 installed on my C: drive. I only have one disk, so I followed the instruction on http://www.howtogeek.com/197647/how-to-dual-boot-windows-10-with-windows-7-or-8/ to install Windows 10 side by side with my Windows 7. I shrank my C partition and created some unallocated space where I installed Windows 10.

However, after Windows 10 was installed, I don't see any option to boot from Windows 7. If look at my disk management tool, I see the following Disk Management Tool Output

The partition where Windows 7 was originally installed is assigned the letter E. It was actually showing up without any letter so I decided to give it the letter E.

How can I dual boot? I need Windows 7 back. I think my old drive C was using McAfee Endpoint Encryption.

By the way, if I do bcdedit I see this:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=E:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {e6ed6719-4f3a-11e5-8bc7-d6b963c3fff5}
displayorder            {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 10
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {e6ed671b-4f3a-11e5-8bc7-d6b963c3fff5}
recoveryenabled         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {e6ed6719-4f3a-11e5-8bc7-d6b963c3fff5}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Standard

Best Answer

You can add easily a boot loader for Windows 7 using Visual BCD Editor.

In Windows 10 download and install Visual BCD version 0.9.3.1.

(For fixing .NET 2 requirement for utility to run - you don't need to install .NET 2, see How to enable a .NET 2 application for .NET 4, will be amended in next version of tool).

Run Visual BCD Editor, type "F9" key and confirm - tool will look for an installed Windows version without entry in BCD(Boot Configuration Data), Windows 7 in this case, and add it automaGically as boot choice ;)

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