Windows 10 causing disk errors on Windows 7(dual boot)

[Rafael Mestdag]

Every time I try to dual boot Windows 10 and Windows 7, whenever I pick Windows 7 again it prompts me with disk errors after the loading logo.

Why is it? Why doesn't Windows 8.1 cause the same problem?

Any help appreciated!

 

[Tom Tancredi]

It is never a good idea to 'dual boot' Windows OSes simply as each demands to being "THE" OS and in turn tells the BIOS/UEFI to rewrite the BOOTSEC towards that Windows and NOT the 'faker' which causes disk errors.

If you wish to run MULTIPLE copies of Windows (why for the life of me I have no idea, as W10 runs everything better than 8 did and is as backwards to 7 that it runs many things 8 refused to out of the box) the best thing to do is run VIRTUAL sanboxes of the other OS's.

So you have a PC with W10 on it, then install https://www.virtualbox.org/ (make sure you have plenty of HDD and RAM to do this) then using the LEGAL ISO of the other Windows (7 or 8) you setup the 'virtual image' of the OS being installed and then saved to be run in a 'sandbox'. It will have access to all the same hardware connect to the Internet, etc.

But again, any software you want to run from W7 or 8 can be run using the simple compatibility tab on the application and I have really YET to find something that doesn't work on W10.

 

[santeyahgo]

I have the same issue, the answer was not really an answer. I don't want to virtualise my OS, I want to run it directly from my hardware, if that makes sense?

As for the reason why, I have my whole work setup on Windows 7 exactly how I need it, I just need to run a few apps from Windows 10 that won't run on Windows 7. To avoid messing up my W7 setup i simply put a new HD in and installed W10 to that.

Now the only semi-stable solution I have is to trail the power/sata lead to the outside of my PC case and plug the SSD with W10 on it whenever I need it. If I leave it plugged in eventually W7 fails to boot and I must do a system restore or startup repair.

With the current "system" I have the only issue I have is whenever I boot W10 then after W7, W7 will go through the chkdsk. Annoying.

 

[BFG-9000]

Hmm, I've triple-booted XP-Win7 and Win10 since Win10 came out, and only ran into the problem you describe if XP touched the other disks at all, as it then marks their volumes dirty-bit enabled. I chalked this up to slightly different NTFS used in each Windows.

How I fixed this problem is by setting XP to never chkdsk those other drives on startup. You can also do this in Windows 7 by going into regedit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
In the right hand pane, double click BootExecute.
The default value of the key is "autocheck autochk" which means every drive is checked for consistency.
To disable autocheck on E: and F: drives at Windows 7 startup, change the value to look like this:
autocheck autochk /k:E /k:F

Note that the dirty bit can still get set, but the checkdisk only runs if you boot into Windows 10 which should cause no damage because Windows 10's checkdisk obviously understands its own NTFS. 7 should also check its own C:\ just fine, but I had the XP one kill Windows 10 a few times until I found this solution.