dual boot an uefi system

[shrirangbhavsar]

hi
I have an dell vostro having win8 installed in uefi GPT partition. My question is that if I install windows 7 on a non gpt partition and boot it in legacy bios mode rather than an uefi mode will it effect the win8 which is in uefi mode.

pls reply

 

[Ascendant001]

How to Dual Boot Pre installed Windows 8 with Windows 7

before doing anything read the "Considerations before you start" section carefully.

 

[shrirangbhavsar]

I know that using uefi windows7 I can dual boot but I don't want a dual boot menu instead I want that when I selected the boot option to harddisk or say legacy boot it should boot windows 7 without effecting the windows8 installation

 

[Ascendant001]

how will you boot win 7 without installing it first on a hard disk(assuming you have only 1) which already has win 8 without altering the win 8/hdd partition size?it seems like you don't know but a disk/hdd can be either gpt or mbr but not both(all partitions on a hdd are simply division of hdd size not type).since your disk is already gpt you can only use UEFI for win 8 which means you have to use it for win 7 too.

 

[shrirangbhavsar]

I have 2nd partition though it is a gpt if I load a win7 disc and format it using it then the partition gets converted into an plain NTFS I only want to know that if I make a mbr and use legacy mode of booting will it conflict with the uefi or not?

 

[Ascendant001]

to make a mbr you have to first format your entire hdd,as simple as that.

 

[gagan_kumar]

[MENTION=126812]whitestar_999[/MENTION] can u tell how to see where our boot files are located i mean in which drive if we have multiple windows OSes ............

 

[Ascendant001]

in default install win 7 creates 2 partitions,a 100mb system partition which contains critical boot files & C/system/boot partition.100mb system partition is not allocated a drive letter to hide it from user to avoid accidental file corruption.in win 8 there is a similar scheme but with an ESP & MSR partition.for details see this:
Windows and GPT FAQ (Windows Drivers)