Try again to load 8.1 and let it fail. Then load Win 7 but let it do the disk check if again offered. This will take a while.

Add your Win 10 install to the boot menu using EB just like with 8.1 being sure about the drive letter.

Try again to boot to Win 8.1. Try to boot to 10.

I wish that you had an 8.1 recovery disk. We would run the startup repair. Actually, mayhaps we can in a way. If the above fails open EB and go to the backup/repair section. Select to recreate/repair boot files. I know that we did this before but I'm not sure what drives were mounted, worth a try.

If still fails try putting back the other drive just to check. If it boots it MAY be easier in the long run to wipe the new drive and do another clone of 8.1 and 10.

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Sorry to be tardy, Jay; I was looking for a reply from you but on page 2 -- didn't know there is a page 3. So now I will do what you asked and will report back as soon as I finish doing all those things.

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Gerry

I'm on my iPod so excuse any typos. I rebooted and 10 now shows on the boot menu. When I clicked on it up came the blue Windows logo and checkdisk started under it. It is 21% complete at this point. More after it finishes.

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Gerry

No problem at all.

I saw your last post about trying to boot to 10 and the disk check while typing this.

The following is not really instruction of any kind, just making references for myself and giving some thoughts and advice.

A few times you have mentioned starting to a black page with white text. Is this the boot menu that you are seeing with the OS choices? If that is the case it is normal as we are currently using the Win 7 install boot menu. One might ask how we can use the Win 7 menu with more recent OSs? It really should not matter as all the boot menu does is point to the drive/partition to boot. If you will notice in EB Overview the last line of each OS entry is the path to the actual loader for that OS. Since the SSD is to be your primary drive I want to see the boot menu on that drive.

At this stage I must admit to being a bit concerned about one of your 8.1 installs. I can't remember if it was the new drive or old but you did attempt a repair of 8.1 with an 8.0 disk. That could have possibly borked that install which is why I suggested that you try the other disk if all else fails. That is also why I want you to add the Win 10 install. If 7 and 10 will boot properly from the menu but 8.1 will not than we no longer have a boot menu issue but an issue with 8.1. What version of 8.1 do you have? Home? Pro? If Pro I could upload an ISO image of the restore disk that you could download via Win 7 and burn. Depending on hardware conflicts (guessing that is the cause) a restore will sometimes work on another system than the one on which it created, in other cases it will not.

I really don't expect to need but do you have system image backups? Obviously don't need for Win 7 as it seems apparent that you are now booting to 7 without issue from the boot menu.

On the hot swap deal... Yes, your USB dock may be stated as to allowing hot swaps but do not do this. At LEAST still use Safely Remove Hardware to be sure that the drive is not being written to. Even with that I'd still power down the dock before swapping drives.

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You raise some good points, Jay. This computer is at 100% now and still telling me it's scanning and repairing my drive.

It was the new 8.1 drive I ran the repair on. I have 8.1 pro. I have a Macrium image of 8.1 from a week or so, but I don't have Macrium in Win 7. Don't know if my license will allow another installation or not, but we could try it. Still showing 100% complete 15 minutes later.

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Gerry

Alright now, it finished and booted into Win 10 beautifully. In Win 10's File Explorer I do not see a Win 8 drive listed, but it IS there in Disk Management, where it is listed as "Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)." I will now try to boot into Win 8.1 and report back.

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Gerry

I saw your post made while I was typing the following. OK, the results prove (if 8.1 still fails) that the issue is specific to 8.1. If that is the case put in the old drive and boot to 7. Make sure that the drive letters for 8.1 and 10 match what has been put in EB and go for it. Oh, if offered after the 8.1 attempt run the disk check again. Remember, it is a different partition.

Does not Macrium make a boot disk for recovery?

Anyway, let the disk check go for a while more, no more than a few more hours.

If all is still a failure put back the old drive and go from there.

This is probably my last post for the night as I need to eat, clean up and go to bed. I have to work in the morning. I won't be home until around 4:30 PM EST so don't expect any early replies.

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I booted to 8.1 and got the blue Recovery screen. It keeps coming up with no choice to boot from another OS. I am totally locked out -- can't even get into safe. I will try my Macrium boot disk to see if it works, and if not I will try to get the ISO again to burn an 8.1 rescue disk. Talk to you tomorrow. Should be safe mode above.

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Gerry

Change to the old drive with power off...

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Oh, if the old drive gives the same results unplug with power off and boot. If a load to 7 does not happen reboot and tap F8. It has been so long that I can't remember for sure but I think that 'last known good configuration' still exists, use it.

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Macrium boot disk got me into 7&10. Why not do an 8.1 image restore from that boot rescue disk?

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Gerry

If you have an 8.1 image go for it but first use EB to backup your boot loader to a location you can get to from any OS.

Heading to bed, see you tomorrow evening.

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Jay, I thought you had gone to bed and I wouldn't get an answer on restoring the image until Saturday, so I ran the Macrium restore disk before I saw your last reply. There was a repair boot selection available, so I ran that, hoping it would fix the problems. It gave me a boot menu for 7 and 10, but still not for 8.1 -- but at least I was back into my computer. I employed your previous instruction to delete 8.1 from EB and then add it back, but that didn't work either.

Finally, I bit the bullet and restored 8.1 from the Macrium image. It worked! I am back in 8.1 and it appears normal. I could now boot into 8.1 and 10, but now [b]not[b]into 7! I went back to 10 to start the booting process over again to be sure all three were really working, but I went down for dinner when I was still in 10 and while gone, my automatic update kicked in and 10 upgraded to build 10162. It was still in process when I came back up and it took another 90 minutes to complete. It looks very good, although I've just glanced at it.

To tackle the 7 problem, again I used your technique: removed 7 from the EB menu and added it back with the correct partition letter. I rebooted, chose 7 from the menu, and was into 7 within 30 seconds! I am again triple booting into the SSD and the new 2TB. I'm still seeing that small D: Data partition on the SSD and there are some programs popping up in 7 without my asking for them that I'm going to have to work on later.

Also, when I boot into 8.1 now, two dialog boxes pop up. The first reads: "System Properties -- Windows created a temporary paging file because of a problem with your paging file confiruration when you started your computer." When I click OK on that, the second pops up: "Performance Options," and gives me a choice in Processor Scheduling, either Programs or Backgroud Services. I chose Programs. It shows the total paging file for all drives is 1344 MB. I clicked OK on both of these each time I'm in 8.1, but they still pop up whenever I boot up the next time.

That's enough for now; it's 3:45 a.m. on the 4th of July and I haven't been to bed yet. Talk to you sometime this afternoon.
Gerry

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Gerry

WONDERFUL!

Once we had 7 up and running on the SSD I wish I had thought of the possibility of just restoring an image to the other drive as it would have probably saved a lot of time. Sadly I was looking at boot menu issues and not actual drive issues for most of this adventure...

On the paging file... think about it... you restored an image from when your 8.1 install was on D:. I don't really know but am guessing that the 8.1 install is still trying to use D: for the paging file. Your CURRENT D: partition is not large enough to handle a paging file. As a first step I would turn off virtual memory (paging file) then turn back on allowing Windows to decide what to do. Re-boot between each step. If that does not fix we may have to try to manually change the page file location. I just do not have time at the moment to track down all the paths to do this.

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OK, I'll try what your suggest. That D: drive is the one holding the boot information, never before seen on this computer until I cloned the Windows 7 HD to the SSD. D: before was always assigned to whatever OS I was not in at the time, e.g., when in 8.1, C: was 8.1 and D: was 7. Windows 10 always stayed as T:, the drive letter I assigned when I first installed it, a partition on the 8.1 HD. When I was in 7, it showed as C: while 8.1 was then D:. I'm now afraid to re-label the D: drive for fear of messing up the boots again, so I'm going to leave it alone. Right now I'm in 8.1 and 7 is showing as K:. The other partitions are labeled the way I want, so I'll just leave well-enough alone.

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Gerry

I searched around until I found Advanced system settings/System Properties/Advanced which showed me that 8.1 had no paging file turned on. I clicked on the "System Management" or words to that effect radio button and confirmed my OK, rebooted and did not see either of those two dialog boxes that came up before. Now I am getting a WinPatrol warning that a change has been detected in my Auto Update setting, telling the computer to "Never check for Automatic Updates." I have rejected that four times, but each time I boot into 8.1 it comes up, so now I will endeavor to find the source of that change, which I did not consciously make. Now where the heck do I find how to change Automatic Updates?

Found it, and changed it back to Automatic Downloads.

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Gerry

Go to your control panel then Updates. Here is where you change your settings. I suggest that you go with notify only. Go to Action Center and tell it to not notify about Update settings.

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Why notify only, Jay?

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Gerry

Because I like to wait about a week before installing updates so any issues can be resolved that show up.

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OK -- I've just changed mine to that also; makes sense to me.

Jay, I want to thank you again for the invaluable assistance you have given me the past three days. My frustrations during that time were tempered by gaining new knowledge from you as you walked me through a great many steps to eventual success, on the Fourth of July yet! I also remembered that I haven't made my annual donation to CH, so in lieu of paying you, I shall make that donation to help keep this site available to tinkerers like me.

Incidentally, I notice you are in Sheridan, WY. One of my good friends and fraternity brothers at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA was from Sheridan. He talked a lot about his growing up there. He went on to become a renowned ophthalmologist in the Seattle area, now retired.
Gerry

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Gerry

You are welcome Gerry. As to the donation I don't know where to have you send it. There is no longer any expense involved with the site as I now host it and my hosting cost is the same with or without these forums. If you really feel a need to donate I'll talk to Patty to see how it should be handled. While I DO have a donation page for my own sites I never considered it applying to this site.

Sigh, every time I see or hear the word retired I get a sort of wistful look on my face. As it stands now I intend to fully retire toward the end of next year. I figure to take early SSI at age 62. I know I won't get as much but some of the loss will be recovered by getting it longer. I also get a small military pension that will offset the loss of SSI income. It is still at least 16 months away so I really have not researched the ins and outs yet.

Now, who said that we were done?

This is optional but something that I do when I do multiple boots. I isolate the OS drives/partitions. I do this for a few reasons.

1) It helps keep me from messing up by accidentally doing something to the wrong partition/drive.

2) It simplifies things, just not as many drives to look at in File Explorer, Windows Explorer, etc..

3) For security. Say you are in your 8.1 boot and something gets through as to a bad guy. The chances of the infection spreading to the other OSs is less if they are isolated. This is probably not totally foolproof but if Windows cannot write to or read from the drive it is unlikely that the bad guy can.

Isolation is super simple. Remember that this is optional, it is not something that you MUST do.

1) I know that you know the path but the following for others that may not. Go Control Panel => Admin Tools => Computer Management => Disk Management.

2) In Disk Management right click on the graphic for the other OS. In other words, if in Win 7 you would right click on the graphic for Win 8.1, select to Change Drive letters and paths. Select to remove the drive letter. Do the same with the graphic for the Win 10 partition.

3) The drive graphics will now show with hash marks and no drive letter. Windows and applications can no longer read/write from/to these drives/partitions.

4) Do the same with Win 8.1 and 10. In 8.1 you would remove the drive letters for 7 and 10. In 10 you would remove the drive letters from 7 and 8.1.

The cool thing about this is that it does a good job of isolating the different OS partitions/drives yet the rest of the drive is still in use. Say that, on your SSD you have the Win 7 OS partition and also a data partition. On the other partition you have 8.1 and 10 along with another data partition. All of the OSs will still see the data partitions and be able to share.

Totally your choice but I recommend doing. As a note keep a record of all the drive letters between the different OSs. This is just so that you restore a drive letter if a recovery situation demands. Of course this would not be needed as I'm sure that you have already made system images of the current successful setup.

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Oh, oh -- I didn't know about the change in CH ownership. I donated $50 this morning using the button right under the CH logo on the first page of this Forum. PayPal will send the money to Patty. I have always donated from the CH beginning and didn't know it was no longer needed. I'm sure Patty will allocate it someway.

Interesting you mention hiding drive letters. Earlier today I couldn't find one of mine and discovered the letter was missing somehow. I never thought of doing it intentionally, but I will certainly consider doing it. I retired and took SSI at age 62 and that was 20 years ago! I think I have made up the difference by now.

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Gerry

Ownership has not changed. It is still Patty's. I just host it.

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Did you get my email I sent you, Jay?

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Patty MacDuffie
Computer Haven Administrator

Live Long and Prosper
Mr. Spock