I had a setup where I had 7 x64 & & x32 on SSD and upgraded 10 x64 on HDD. The triple-boot worked fine & when I removed x32 from boot menu, the 2 remaining OS worked fine. I've since deleted x32 partition and moved 10 to its partition on SSD and 10 will not boot. I've tried a repair with USB but it doesn't work like 7 and results have been few. At least now I get a boot screen and the spinning dots.........then the screen goes dark (not black) and the cursor arrow moves with the mouse. I've tried everything I can think of including EasyBCD, cmd to repair boot, repair tools on boot. Can anyone help where 7 installation isn't jeoparised as it still works.
How did you move the Win10 partition? Without using something like AOMEI Partition Assistant or EaseUS Partition Master you probably made it unrecoverable. I am a big believer in Acronis to save my ass. Restore from backup if you have one. Considering using one from now on, if not.
I used EaseUS Partition Master and it has just found Boot in the complete search (as well as the new partition that I made after moving the OS), so I hope that it's recoverable. What do I do now? It's still searching because I chose the complete (slow) option.
I assume the bootmanager had been previously on the separate HDD coming from w10. And I assume it's been a UEFI installation of w10. Moving the w10 partition to the SSD would mix up the installation types. OP should think about the original partition layout and the kind of installation (MBR or GPT or both)...if anything should have been MBR, a bootmanager on the moved w10 MBR partition should do the trick...if w10 is originally a GPT installation one would need to convert to MBR since MBR and GPT does not run together on the same drive...also GPT needs a extra ESP.... also consider the Microsoft® Reserved-Partition (MSR-Partition)...to clone the OS partition only may lead to issues...
I'd assume that it's MBR as the OS was upgraded from a w7 install (if that makes sense). I also did a boot repair with cmd and everything reported OK. I currently have a bootmgr in the PCAT folder (387kb). Yes......screen is dark but illuminated and arrow cursor moves around. W10 was moved from HDD to SSD where w7 had been all along.
No hardware changes partition movement only? Strange....the symptoms look like an USB plugged device that 'retards' boot..does it boot to safe mode? Can you try booting with SSD only (unplug HDD)? Also try unplugging any USB device... So the layout of your SSD is: Primary partition 1 (MBR) w7 64 and primary partition 2 (MBR) w10 64? The bootmgr comes from w10 and you can choose at boot?
I have continually been able to choose between w7 and w10 as I've used EasyBCD consistently. I prefer the w7 choice (faster), though I get the W10 choice when I make 10 the default; no safe mode in w10 and I'll try unplugging the HDD in bit. Another thing is that the recovered boot partition that I've copied over to SSD now differs in size between disks and had been getting the offline sfc along with the other disks. I've deleted the dat files (and also from $Recycle when unhiding), but the moved partition is 9.76Mb while the recovered partition on HDD is 2.69Mb. Is this in any way significant? I did a boot fix with Macrium late last night that froze the w7 boot screen and later BSOD, but after final offline sfc everything OK again, minus w10 login screen.
EaseUS, and yes I've tried a w10 USB but doesn't seem to offer much help, or possibly it has and that's why I'm only a step away from the login screen.
Try goto boot usb then recovery with command line and do /bootrec fixmbr and /bootrec fixboot ps login on your windows 10 partition with /ScanOs Normaly it should work
I've done that earlier before recovery and move of the boot partition, so that can be an idea now. Can you give me the exact command lines, please.
Hello @ Dreadbeat: Boot from the Windows 7 installation DVD, navigate to the Command Prompt, and run these commands in the following order: 1.) bootrec /fixmbr 2.) bootrec /fixboot 3.) bootrec /rebuildbcd 4.) bootrec /scanos
Thanks John Well, I did the USB from w7 with cmd lines and nothing much happened except that when I tried w10, I got a win10 repair option for the 1st time mentioning a USB repair. I manually restarted and ran the cmd lines again from a w10 USB repair. No login into 10, but mention of recovery environment appeared for 1st time and I took some screengrabs and of VisualBCD. It's running offline sfc, so I'll post from laptop when sfc ends.