Why is my Windows 7 installation failing when a new bootable Linux drive is inserted? [closed]

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Ok so I just got a new SSD for my laptop. I have installed Windows 7 on the SSD and can successfully boot into Windows 7.

I took the SSD out and put in the normal hard drive and installed Ubuntu onto it. So now when I add the other SSD back into the laptop I go into the BIOS and boot override into the SSD to try and get to my Windows 7 install.

I at least make it to the "Starting Windows" screen for about a second. Then it starts saying "Loading files" like its doing a recovery. It opens up recovery and tries to repair forever but then after 5 minutes will say that it can't repair.

If I try to boot override into the Ubuntu hard drive it works just fine.

If I take out the Ubuntu hard drive I can then boot into Windows 7.

The expected behavior is that I will be able to use the BIOS to boot into either hard drive.

Answer 1

You should configure the master boot record of one of the two hard drives to point to both operating systems, and then use it as a primary for booting.

I recommend using grub2 on the SSD with linux, primarily because it is the easier to configure and less risky than modifying the boot partition of the Windows hard drive.

Here is the documentation for grub: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB2

I ran into an issue once where there was a competition between two hard drives because they were in master/slave configuration, and Windows was not configured to recognize itself as a primary boot, even when specified in the bios, if it was in a slave position.

It is possible however to boot linux from a slave position relatively easily.

Also, whenever you insert two hard drives, with both expecting to be booted, it changes the partition and hard drive numbering: see the paragraph titled "GRUB Notation" here. Be aware of this, because this can also effect how a OS boots.

My guess is that the reason Windows fails to load, is because the MBR was installed and configured with the assumption that is would be booted without changing its hard drive number. Thus, windows may attempt to load, but actually be pointing to the wrong hard drive when searching for whatever core files it loads at start-up. However, this seems less likely to me than the master/slave issue.