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=== UPDATE 03-17-20: I received some very useful comments but they did not address the actual question. I re-state it for clarity:
I have two hard drives on my Win10 system. Both contain bootable, activated copies of Windows (Win10 and Win7).
How do I set up to dual boot from either?

=== END UPDATE

My development machine (Win7) recently died. I purchased a new Win10 machine and transplanted the C: drive from the Win7 machine to the new machine (as a 2nd hard drive). I now want to be able to dual-boot to either drive.

Most of the answers I've found involve new Windows installation(s) on one or both partitions. But I've already got two activated, bootable drives.

I have two questions:

  1. How can I set these up as a dual boot configuration?
  2. If I succeed, will I have a problem with "Authentic Windows" validation when I boot from the old Win7 drive?
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3 Answers 3

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Duh, this actually was a no-brainer. I simply installed the second drive and it automagically showed up on the boot menu (F12 on BIOS startup).

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Run msconfig and check the boot options. If you don't have a boot option for Windows 7 , use bcdedit command to add it.

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Yea - has to be done from BIOS settings. So you have to pick an initial preference (in the unattended boot order sequence), and then if you want the other drive then have to attend to the boot and pick in the bootloader. Some Bios you can set to automatically (without pressing F keys) boot into the boot choice screen. But of course this means that you can never have an unattended boot: so be careful when you are upgrading windows since the bios will have no idea what drive is being updated.

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