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I have desktop PC (with 3 normal SATA hard drives, each with multiple partitions).
Windows 7 64 are already installed on one partition of one of the drives, in MBR mode.
I want to install Windows 10 (64 Pro) on first partition of another drive. The drive has 2 partitions total. The destination partition is empty, NTFS, ready for the installation.
I do not mind installing the 10 in MBR mode too, if that is possible.

When I boot into Win10 installer from USB, it says it can not install Win10 on selected drive, because hardware of the computer does not support starting from that disk (translated for Czech version).

All I figured is it's maybe actually complaining about that disk not being first in BIOS boot sequence. I may be completely wrong. If so, please tell me what is actually going on.
If I am right, that in what boot order should I put the drives and the install USB ?
For the installation I put USB first than the "old" Windows 7 drive.

And that also led me to a question, on which drive is the Win10 installer going to put the boot manager.

I do not want to mess anything up, so I rather ask here for advice.

Progress: I was at least partially right that the installation drive has to be first in BIOS boot order.
When I set it so, the Windows 10 installer stopped complaining and installed the system to the desired partition.
It did not try to detect existing Win7 installation on the other disk and did not include it into boot manager / did not activate boot manager though.
So now my only way to boot into the Win7 is by switching boot drives in BIOS. (My BIOS apparently does not support multiple hard drives in boot sequence, so I can switch them via BIOS/UEFI boot menu at boot time (F11).)
Now I will have to figure out how to activate boot manager for one of the windows installations post-install.

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  • This question should include more details and clarify the problem.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 8, 2020 at 22:11
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    @Ramhound I am not sure what more details I can provide on this. I described and explained all I know. D oyou see any specific thing that need clarifying ?
    – Riva
    Commented Oct 8, 2020 at 22:44
  • How many partitions do you already have on your destination install drive? MBR disks only allow 4 primary partitions. You could try deleting the empty partition and try to install Windows 10 in the unallocated space, where the installer will format a new partition there. There's no danger of data loss deleting an empty partition. Also, if your motherboard is capable of UEFI, be sure you're booting into legacy mode to install on an MBR disk.
    – Blaelph
    Commented Oct 9, 2020 at 1:58
  • @Blaelph The destination drive has 2 partitions total. Both NTFS. The first partition is clean formated for the installation. The second partition contains data. I tried to delete the partition completely, but it led to the same error. I have BIOS set to "Legacy & UEFI" (since the time of installation of the first Windows 7). I hope that's enough, because I did not find any other option to disable UEFI in the BIOS settings.
    – Riva
    Commented Oct 9, 2020 at 10:52
  • This is just a suggestion, but maybe try physically disconnecting your other HDDs before you boot from the Windows 10 install stick so only the install HDD is visible to your BIOS. If you can get the install to work, you can always reconfigure the BCD on any of your HDDs to boot whichever way you want. Another aspect to consider is Windows only boots from partitions set to ACTIVE, but I would assume the Windows installer would do that for you.
    – Blaelph
    Commented Oct 9, 2020 at 20:09

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