lexone
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Article: Exploring Alternate Bootloaders
Glad I was able to help you out. If you want to do away with using the "System Reserved" partition entirely, and your not scared of command line, you could prep/format your Windows HDs with DISKPART commands from a WinPE4 disk. If you google it you can find instructions on how to make a WinPE disk. Once you boot into the WinPE4 disk you can use the DISKPART commands to prep and format the HD so when you go to install windows, the disk is ready and you don't need to reformat having windows create the "System Reserved" partition. By formatting with DISKPART, you are actually making it so your writing the boot records and the OS to the same disk/partition.
Problem solved. You gave me the answer without mentioning it specifically. The key is the "System Reserved" partition that Windows 8 apparently installs. In the past on my other systems I always had the option of choosing the Win 7 installed partition on the hard drive from the Chimera boot screen and it would boot to Win 7 on all these other systems that did not have Win 8. On this system it installs that partition with Win 8 and the answer to get it to boot was to choose the System Reserved partition from the Chimera screen to get into Win 7 and 8. When you choose that, you get a screen which lets you choose Win 7 or Win 8. You telling me the boot loading file was there was the key. Thanks
I hope this helps others who may run across this.
Glad I was able to help you out. If you want to do away with using the "System Reserved" partition entirely, and your not scared of command line, you could prep/format your Windows HDs with DISKPART commands from a WinPE4 disk. If you google it you can find instructions on how to make a WinPE disk. Once you boot into the WinPE4 disk you can use the DISKPART commands to prep and format the HD so when you go to install windows, the disk is ready and you don't need to reformat having windows create the "System Reserved" partition. By formatting with DISKPART, you are actually making it so your writing the boot records and the OS to the same disk/partition.