Windows 10 AU boot parameters/behavior and EASYBCD

[bochane]

A multi-boot consisting of an SSD with a new and clean installed W10-AU and an HD with W7.
The W10 SSD is booted from the BIOS, the W7 HD is added with EASYBCD

Once I installed the multi-boot, I see weird behavior:
I get a blank screen with a busy marker for about 2 minutes, before the boot selection menu pops up. Strangely, it is not on the first time you boot this configuration, but after some time. It slows down the starting up unacceptable

And the boot selection menu contains an extra line from where the boot options, which you normally see on a W10 repair disk, can be selected.

This is different from the pre-AU behavior, in the old W10 was every thing as expected.

It looks to me that W10 AU boot parameters/behavior have/has been changed?
Does someone know how to set up this configuration without EASYBCD?

O yes, and the current version of EASYBCD is 2.3

Henk

 

[Neemobeer]

You can use bcdedit.exe to add boot entries. Post your current BCD store. Open an elevated command prompt and type bcdedit /enum active

 

[bochane]

Thanks!

To be sure I will first re-install Windows, because I have seen weird things with all kind of boot screens....
I will be back shortly,

Henk

 

[Neemobeer]

Shouldn't need to re-install. It's easy enough to delete the EasyBCD boot entry.

 

[bochane]

But once I could not boot W10, the only entry in EASYBCD, without going through a boot selection. Strange things happen.....
What the FXXXXX has EASYBCD touched...
And I am almost through..

 

[bochane]

And here it is:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.14393]
(c) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. Alle rechten voorbehouden.
C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /enum active
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
description Windows Boot Manager
locale nl-NL
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {115020f8-6945-11e6-a30c-eb95c8d30abc}
displayorder {current}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 10
locale nl-NL
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence {115020fa-6945-11e6-a30c-eb95c8d30abc}
recoveryenabled Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {115020f8-6945-11e6-a30c-eb95c8d30abc}
nx OptIn
bootmenupolicy Standard
C:\Windows\system32>

 

[Neemobeer]

Ok so lets assume for the example that Windows 10 is C: and your Windows 7 disk has two partitions E: (System Reserved) and F: is the C equivalent for Windows 7 while logged into Windows 10. Hope that makes sense.

• Open an elevated command prompt and type bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows 7"
• Copy the {XXXX-XXXX...} guid it creates into the clipboard you will need it for the next few commands
• Now you need to change two fields on the new bcd entry
• bcdedit /set {GUID} device partition=F:
• bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice partition=F:
• bcdedit /displayorder {GUID} /addlast
• Now if you run bcdedit /enum active you will see the newly added entry
• Reboot and test your Windows 7 install

 

[bochane]

And that did the trick!!
Thanks.

Below the choises of W10 and W7 I see what I think to being a new line which something like

"Change standard options or chose a different option", which allows access to a repair disk like menu.
Is this new or am I wrong?

 

[bochane]

And EASYBCD 2.3 does not like the Anniversary Update!!!

 

[Neemobeer]

I believe it's always been there, typically you don't see the bootmgr since most people only have 1 entry

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Good thread fellas! AU seems to be fraught with issues. I only have the one with the automatic update failing to install the AU on pre-AU W10 machines. I've only got the one W10 AU on one of my Test Machines, and I haven't yet tried the multi-OS boot. I'll probably try W7 on there or Ubuntu. This will be good to know when I get around to trying it.

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[bochane]

Again problems!

Now, not even the boot selection menu pops up. Just a blank screen telling that some process did not react.
Before I see the boot selection manu I usually l see a busy marker for about 2 minutes and that is not good either.
To make things even more weird it only happens the first time, subsequent times it looks more or less normal.
I also see an option line with opens a repair disk like menu. I don't remember I saw this in pre AU version of W10.

Looking further into it

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi Henk,

Uggghhh! If you don't have a Brand Spanking new HDD in that PC; I suggest you order one up and do a Clean Install on it, and see if the problem persists. Even if SPECCY and GSmartControl (ISO Linux-UBCD boot disc) say that drive is ok, if it's got an read sector errors or even 1 Reallocation Sector Count error, and more than 1,000 Power On Hours, it could be causing you some problems in this regard.

Give it a try and see if you get a better result.

Hey, Hey, Hey, from the U.S.A.!!

Marc

 

[bochane]

I finally got it right.

There were a number of problems with my W7/W10 multiboot:
- Boot parameters in a multiboot environment:
Neemobeer helped me through, great job, thanks a lot.
- A blank screen with a busy marker for about 2 minutes, before the boot selection menu pops up:
This was not so straight forward. I did a clean install, thinking that this was my best change.
Wrong!!
I tested that drive (thanks Bigbearjedi) and went back to a pre AU version of W10, that on its turn was updated from W8.1, and I waited patiently for the AU version being installed by the update process.
It was installed last week, yes so soon...
And all problems gone.
My guess is that with doing a clean install I receive fresh MoBo drivers and with doing an update install I inherit these drivers and that I need those old drivers for my old MoBo.

Henk

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi Henk,
Cool! Glad to hear that. That's another project I intend to mess around with on my W10 test machine. Right now I'm fighting with getting all my machines on the AU v1607 b14393.187. I did however have a post a month or 2 ago, about doing a dual-boot on my little Acer AspireOne netbook with W10 (pre-AU v1511) and Ubuntu. It turned out whatever I did I couldn't get the newest Ubuntu version, v16.04LTS to dual-boot with my W10 on the Acer netbook. I wiped the drive clean, tested it and all was fine. It just refused to go. I decided to fall back to the 30-yard line and punt the football--I reinstalled the Ubuntu partition after another W10 reinstall and ran with the Ubuntu 14.04LTS from 2014 and it worked!!

I haven't messed around with that as I have been busy painting the outside of my house before the snow gets here, and handling the crush of folks with scrambled computers (W7, W8x, & W10) that I've had for the last 2 months. Both here and my Clients computers too. I was going to try it again with the W10 AU v1607 and Ubuntu v16.04LTS (new version) on my big Sony Laptop, but I have a small 128GB SSD in there so I don't have enough room on that drive to add the partition needed. But, I got another new internal HDD in the mail a bit ago for my W10 test machine, so maybe I'll give it a go there. I think it's a 320GB HDD, so I should have plenty of space to do a test install.

If you've been reading the threads lately, we've have a few other people try the dual-boot with W10 and various versions of Linux including Arch and Mint, and they've had lots of problems too. I'll post back if I have any success there. We could start an entire subforum just devoted to all the work needed to fix people attempting dual-boot and multi-boot OS issues. Thanks for posting back your solution--that should help some people too.

Talk to you soon,
BBJ

 

[bochane]

Thanks BBJ.

Now that I found that this MoBo apparently needs drivers not available in W10 the logical conclusion should be to stay in W8.1 or W7! This is a golden rule you should obey.

I however will continue playing with W10, because I like sorting out problems and finding solutions...

That is what I want to add to my previous answer.

Henk

 

[Neemobeer]

@BBJs last post. I put together a dual boot vm Windows 10/Ubuntu 16.04 and it went off without any issues. This was on a MBR boot scheme and not EFI though so maybe the reason. Although Ubuntu should work fine with secure boot/EFI. It does not like Intel fast boot if you do have that.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Thanks for testing that neemo! Coincidentally, I just threw in a new spare HDD I got last month into my W10 test machine; I installed W10 AU from new USB media (via MCT tool) v1607 b14393.187 along with a new download and fresh install of Ubuntu 16.04.1LTS in dual-boot mode *64bit* and it worked perfectly! I have a 320GB HDD and partitioned it for 200GB for W10 and 97.5GB for Ubuntu. My W10 test machine is almost 10 years old, a Dell dimension desktop. The main difference between this machine and my Acer AspireOne netbook, is that of course the Acer netbook is only a 32bit machine running the Intel Atom processor, and the Dell is running a 64bit Intel Core2 Duo processor. Perhaps it's a bug with the Ubuntu 32bit distribution? Both my machines, in fact all my computers do not have UEFI BIOS on them, they are all tool old, so that's not applicable to that failure of W10/Ubuntu on the Acer netbook mini.

Cheers!
<<<BBJ>>>