GPT Win 8 Dual boot installation killed Win 7 MBR boot opt

Cymbal Man Freq

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20
Location
Geneva, NY
I've had Win 7 Pro on my laptop for over a year. I installed a 2nd hard drive to it recently and today I installed Windows 8 Pro on the 2nd hard drive. It's been a roller coaster of good & bad luck.

The first install went fine, until I tried to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade from the Windows store, then things went bad and I had to go into Windows 7 and eventually delete the Windows 8 volume and change it from MBR to GPT because of UEFI (no secure boot enabled thankfully). Gawd what a stretch of error messages telling me I can't install Windows 8 on the blank hard drive because it was or wasn't MBR or GPT, or the automagically made partitions weren't in the right order.

After spending over 7 hours twice in a row installing Windows 8, I finally find out that there's no boot option for Windows 7 anymore.

The only clue I have is to use a Windows 7 repair disk and use diskpart.exe and make the Win 7 drive "active" but that's a little foreign to me at this point.

*****************************************************************************
I'm looking in Computer Management / Disk Management from within Windows 8.

Disk 0: SYSTEM D: 438 MB NTFS (lengthened from 199 MB with EaseUS because Acronis 2014 thought it too small while crashing), Healthy (Active, Primary Partition); Win 7 E: 930.98 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition); HP_TOOLS F: 102 MB FAT 32 Healthy (Primary Partition)

Disk 1: 300 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) {no letter}; 100 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition) {no letter}; C: 931.00 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

And several other external disks which don't deserve mention today.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Home Premium, Win 8 Pro DVD
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP m7-1015dx Laptop
    CPU
    2.3 Ghz - 3.3 Ghz
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon HD 4000
    Monitor(s) Displays
    LCD
    Screen Resolution
    1600 x 900
    Hard Drives
    1 TB 5400 RPM
    Keyboard
    External USB
    Mouse
    Optical Mouse
    Internet Speed
    15 mbps dl / 1 Mbps ul
    Antivirus
    Avast!
Set the UEFI/BIOS firmware to LEGACY OS boot & Secure Boot DISABLED, see if Windows 7 x64 LEGACY will boot.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
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