Cloning and Dual Booting Win 7 + Win 7

Can you verify if you're using TI 2011 and DD 11 Home?

Yes I am

It sounds like you need to correct the BCD settings for the copy and may also need to adjust the drive letters so everything points to the correct places.

To make these corrections in Windows, makes sure that the System Reserved partition and the Windows partition of the copy are visible to the first Windows and then boot into the first Windows.

• Go into Disk Managment (or use DD) and assign a drive letter to the copy's System Reserved partition. The Windows partition would already have an assignment. In this example, I will be using S: for the System Reserved partition and W: for the Windows partition.
• Open an Administrator Command Prompt: Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
• Run the following commands at the prompt:bcdedit /store s:\boot\bcd /set {default} device partition=W:bcdedit /store s:\boot\bcd /set {default} osdevice partition=W:bcdedit /store s:\boot\bcd /set {bootmgr} device partition=S:
• Next, start DD 11 to check the drive letter assignments in the copy.
• Click the Disk layout link in the upper-right corner of the DD screen and select the Windows 7 OS on the "copy" drive.
• DD will display the partitions as assigned by that OS. You need to make sure that C: is assigned to the Windows partition of the copy. This will be the one that is assigned W: when booted to the first Windows. If it's not, use DD to change it to C:.

Just wanted to add that you should also check that the Disk Order option for the Windows 7 entry should probably be unchecked (disabled). Swapping drives doesn't work correctly with Vista and Windows 7 and isn't needed.

Tried your suggestions above it doesn't work. (Just Goes to Black screen on bootup and flickering cursor).
Disk order is unchecked.

Added screenshots of my current DD layout and the OSS after initial setup and restoration of the backup to what is effectively the 2nd OS.
You can see from the OSS screenshots what I believe is the issue.
OSS_Initial_Install
--1st OS working ok. You will see partitions for 2nd OS (Sys reserved and local disk), but they were empty at this point
OSS_2nd_Cloned_OS
--After restoring image to the 2 partitions noted above.
--You can see the 2nd OS detected (partion #3-3), but note that the selected partition (#1-1) is marked as active, thus why even running the os in (#3-3 / #3-4) still boots to the 1st OS

Hope that makes sense

If I have done something wrong I'm happy to go back and change things around, but need to have a solution where I can start from scratch if required and restore my clean backup creating 2 independant OS's.

Would it be better / easier to install OSS and recover my backup twice onto a single drive? I.e. Just have disk 1 to contain these ?

Thanks Lee

3-3 should also be showing as Active when selected in OSS for the second Windows. This is normal because you have multiple drives. In your screenshot, 1-1 is selected.

I would suggest that you disconnect the first drive and get the second drive booting into Windows by itself. This way you can be certain that the BCD is set correctly and that the drive letter assignments are correct. Then reconnect the first drive and see if it works.

Thanks for the help MC I'll give that a whirl. (Can see your in high demand on here, you must be very busy!)
(Am Sure when I had this (Dual boot) working with XP though, that OSS would only show 1 partition as active. It would mark the alternate os as hidden and NON active?)

Do you have any advice for a long term strategy on what's the best way to achieve the desired result from scratch? When os's get full of crap and start to slow down I like to go back to my "Clean" image.
(Ignoring my "Non OS" partitions for the time being )
I want to have a potentail starting position of No os installed. Boot from acronis recovery CD (I'm ok with that bit I think) and get 2 bootable os from my "Clean" backup image.

It seems the best way to do this is to have the os's on seperate drives so I can disconnect 1 whilst OSS is picking up a new installation?
Thus seems the best way would be as follows
Disk 1 Small primary partition with OSS installed and the remainder partitioned for "files" Image backup stored within the "files" partition
Disk 2 a 100m system partition and a 50G windows partiton, the rest partitioned for "Files"
Disk 3 a 100m system partition and a 50G windows partiton, the rest partitioned for "Files"
Achieved by following your advise above and resoring 1 at a time with disk 3 then disk 2 disconnected
Any views?

In my experience, the best setup for restoring images (clean or otherwise) when using OSS is to get the multi-boot system setup and booting and then image it. This gives you the clean base. After that, just image the partitions normally. If you must restore an image that wasn't setup with OSS or that was setup differently (originally existing on a different partition or location), keep in mind that OSS will have to add it or modify things to adjust for it. This is why I recommend using a clean image of the entire setup. OSS tracks each OS by an ID. If you setup OSS and then copy a partition, OSS has to adjust because the ID on the imaged partition matches an existing ID. This can cause problems.

Having OSS on its own little partition is a good idea. However, it's not necessary for OSS to still be available when installing an additional OS. For example, OSS could be on the first drive with Windows 7 #1 and be disconnected when setting up Windows 7 #2 on a separate drive. Just make sure to add one OS at a time and let OSS find it before adding another one.

My personal preference regarding OSS and Vista/Windows 7 is to try and keep them all on the booting drive if at all possible. This is because some systems don't correctly boot Vista/Windows 7 from OSS when they're on the non-booting drive.

Remember that an OS needs to be correctly setup and booting. OSS can't magically fix anything if something is wrong. This can be done even with everything on one OS. For example, install Windows #1 and OSS and get that working. Then setup Windows #2, but use the Windows DVD to reset the MBR back to standard and use DD to hide any partitions that need it and to set the correct partition Active. Basically, pretend the new OS is the only OS. Once finished, boot back to the Windows with OSS installed and reactivate it.

Copying any existing Windows (by cloning or by restoring) requires that the drive letters be corrected and that the BCD pointers be corrected. Don't count on TI or DD to do this. They may in fact get it wrong. It's best to verify that everything is correct before trying to boot into the OS.

Cheers Mate, I think that all makes sense.
I also like the idea of having all my os on the 1 drive but wasn't sure how to achieve this having the need to "unplug" HDD between setups?

If I'm reading this correctly I should do the following? (to get all os related stuff onto 1 drive.)

Install os on disk 1 make sure its running un-aided
install OSS and let it pick up OS1
deactivate OSS and hide partitions for OS1
install os 2 on drive 1 and make sure its running un-aided
re-activate OSS and let it pick up the 2nd OS.
This should work?

Once this is fully up and running then backup OS1 & OS2 seperately so the can be restored at a later stage? I believe it would also be possible to image the entire drive if I have OSS & all OS's on drive 1

That's the general idea. Imaging the entire drive is also a good idea as it gives you an easy way to return to a working multi-boot setup since you have everything.

Needing to unplug the other drive when setting up isn't always necessary, but it can help. It can also help with troubleshooting because if it can't boot correctly by itself, it won't boot correctly from OSS.

That didn't work either, but I did find a solution. (Inc using my backup)
Restored the image to D1, then booted into it.
Restores the image to D2, then ran EasyBCD to configure windows boot loader, this all worked fine and I gould get into both os's.
Installed OSS, but it still didn't quite work right
booted into OS1, ran EasyBCD and let it repiar boot sector, rebooted
This time OSS picked up 2 genuine win7 os's and they both seem to work fine.

Thanks for your help and I hope our trials / tests can be of use to others

Didn't get it all on 1 drive though as win7 requires 2 partitions, thus 2 os's on the same drive takes up all the available primary partitions.

If you create the Primary/Active partition before you install Windows 7, the additional System Reserved partition won't be created and the booting files will be placed in the Windows partition. This would allow you to have the two setups and use just two partitions. Note that I recommend doing a quick format with the Windows installer when you get to that step in the installation (this makes sure the formatting is absolutely correct).

I suspect that when you ran EasyBCD the first time and configured booting of both installations, you probably "joined" them and unisolated them (made them boot from the same BCD file). Did OSS not pick them up at that point (before running EasyBCD)?

For how it's currently setup with OSS, does OSS show each OS booting from its own System Reserved partition?

No OSS did not pick them up correctly the first time I ran EBCD.
It detected 2 "Unknown" OS, but when I booted them the windows bootloader then launched and OS2 wouldn't load correctly. Thats when I loaded OS1, opened EBCD and ran boot repair. OSS does seem to be showing that the 2 installations are sharing 1 Sys Res partition. Any issues with this?

Is there an easy way to take my 2 partion os and merge it into 1 without setting up the partition 1st and re-installing.

The booting files can be moved from the System Reserved partition to the Windows partition. It would need to be done for each Windows installation.

NOTE: The instructions below assume that C: is assigned to the Windows 7 partition and D: is assigned to the System Reserved partition when booted into Windows 7. Use the drive letters that are correct for your system. --- These instructions further assume that the Windows 7 partition is a Primary partition. If this is not the case, the instructions would be different.

1. Create an Entire Disk Image backup of the drive. This is just a general recommendation before making partitioning changes.
2. Boot into Windows 7.
3. Start an Administrator Command Prompt and run the following commands to fix the BCD file:bcdedit /set {current} device partition=C:

   bcdedit /set {current} osdevice partition=C:

   bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=C:

   bcdedit /set {memdiag} device partition=C:

4. Copy the Windows 7 booting files to the Windows 7 partition by running the following commands:reg unload HKLM\BCD00000000

   robocopy  D:\  C:\  bootmgr

   robocopy  D:\Boot  C:\Boot  /s

5. OSS should detect it now. Make sure the entry has the Windows 7 partition Active.
6. Reboot the computer and make sure Windows 7 boots.
7. Start Disk Management and verify that the Windows 7 partition is now both the System and Active partition. The System Reserved partition should now just be a Primary partition.

You would need to repeat the procedure for the second Windows. Make sure to copy the booting files from whichever partition Disk Management reports as System.

Once finished, you can now delete the System Reserved partition. This can be done using DD or Disk Management. Please note that I have not tested this procedure on a Windows 7 dual-boot setup with OSS. If you run into any problems, let me know.