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My computer has 2 Harddrives in it. One of them is relatively new and has a few windows installations on it which I can access through the dual boot menu. The other has some old data and a really old version of Windows on it.

Recently the old one started making some awful noises, so I decided to remove it, but the problem is that if the old drive isn't connected, I can't boot up any installations from the new one.

It won't even enter the dual boot menu unless I have both drives connected. Wtf?

It seems almost like the bios is booting up the old drive which then boots up the dual boot menu allowing me to boot the newer drive up. This doesn't make alot of sense to me though. Seems like the dual boot menu should be part of the bios, not part of the boot sector of a hard disk right?

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  • "Seems like the dual boot menu should be part of the bios, not part of the boot sector of a hard disk right?" -- Wrong. The BIOS will read only read the Master Boot Record (consisting of at least 1 sector) from the designated boot drive.
    – sawdust
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 0:39
  • Ohhhhh. So if I change the boot order while both drives are connected I should be good?
    – cody
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 0:42
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    You can change the boot order to any drive that is connected. The old drive would not have to be connected. The real problem is ensuring that the new drive has an active partition that contains the multi-boot loader program.
    – sawdust
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 1:05
  • Right, the old hard drive is definitely detected, it just doesn't detect any boot device. How do I go about changing the partition or hard drive the multi boot loader runs from?
    – cody
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 1:29
  • You'll have to wait for someone else to answer that. I haven't repaired a Win dual boot in ages, and that was with Win 7 and XP. You should probably add details to your post as the layout of your new disk to get a concise answer/instructions.
    – sawdust
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 1:47

1 Answer 1

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You can place Windows 7/8/10 boot files on a MBR disk as follows:

  1. Ensure there is an active partition on that disk - use Disk Management to check and eventually set a partition as active (only primary partitions can be made active)

  2. Use bootsect.exe to write MBR and active partition boot records to Windows 7/8/10 format

  3. Use bcdboot.exe to write boot related files and data to system partition.

See details - How to move Windows boot files to another partition/drive.

Select newest Windows OS when creating BCD.

Later you can add boot loader entries for other Windows OS's using Dual-boot repair tool or Visual BCD Editor from same site.

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