Additional Win 10 Install on drive with existing 10 install

[rwebb616]

Hi,

I am a new user to BIU and have been asking questions about windows 10 and UEFI in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3221.

I decided to go ahead and install BIU as it was mentioned that it gets installed in the EFI system partition. That went well although initially it booted back to my Windows partition but after booting once with F9 to choose the boot item and choosing BIU it then booted to BIU every time. Great!

Next in another post it was mentioned that all you have to do to do another Windows install is create a partition and then reboot to the install media and install to that partition. Ok sounds easy enough - created a partition and booted my Windows 10 install media and chose that partition for install. Now I have a situation that I'm not quite sure how to fix. These are the things that happened:

a) Windows 10 installed on that partition but automatically encrypted it with bitlocker... not sure why this happened as a DEFAULT but it did..
b) BIU got overwritten and I had to boot from the installer to reactivate BIU. Once reactivated I had to f9 boot it again to select Boot IT as the boot item
c) BIU did NOT create a new boot entry for the OS. I still have the single entry and if I choose to boot that entry I get the windows boot menu
d) Both installs of 10 are shown on the Windows boot manager menu. If I choose one I get my original install (but only after a reboot). If I choose the other it boots into the fresh install.
e) In the EFI system partition there is no "Microsoft.002" folder... just the "Microsoft.001" original folder.
f) It doesn't appear that it created another WinRE (Recovery) partition for this new install

How do I get to one boot entry for my original 10 install and another for my new 10 install and get rid of the windows 10 boot manager?

And... why did this happen this way? According to what I have been reading in the forum it should be as simple as creating the partition and installing?

Thanks,
Rich

[Brian K]

Rich,

To install an OS, there are instructions in the manual, page 58.

[rwebb616]

Brian K wrote:
> Rich,
>
> To install an OS, there are instructions in the manual, page 58.

Yes, that is helpful. I'm still not making the connection yet on how to set up the menu so that the two OS's are completely separated from each other. I know it requires making the new boot menu entry and attempting to boot - that is where I went wrong. I just created a partition and then installed Windows to it. I was basing that on this article: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2871 which said nothing of creating a new boot menu entry. Probably always a good idea to RTFM

So it seems that I may be best of deleting the new windows partition and using BCD Edit to clean up the additional menu entries to get back to where I was to start with?

Then it seems as though I need to create the partition again, create a menu entry with the items I need (which I'm not sure what those are), perform a virtual boot so it sets up the system with that entry and then start the OS install.

If I'm using the same EFI system partition will it automatically create the microsoft.00x directory for the second one? Or do I do that and specify the boot file?

Rich

[Brian K]

Rich,

Good idea to start again.

Yes, the install will create a new Microsoft.00x

When creating the new Boot Item, in GPT Details, Hide your current Win10 entry. No other Hides are required.

When the installation is complete you might see an extra item in the Boot Menu, called Windows. Open Boot Edit and check the Boot Item you created and also the Windows item. Delete the one you don't want. At least my BIU always creates an extra Item.

After the install and successful boot of the new Win10, Hide the new Win10 entry in the old Win10 Boot Item.

[rwebb616]

This worked! Now I have another issue... trying to do this again with a third partition.

I go to create the menu entry and I get "The data could not be written to disk" .. EFI partition full? that doesn't seem likely with only 3 entries does it?

Also tried to resize efi partition and it won't let me. Gives me an error saying I am trying to resize it to larger than the available space. I get this error even if I try to resize to 101MB. So I am unable now to create additional menu entries in Boot It.

Rich

[Brian K]

Each Microsoft.xxx consumes around 25 MiB of space. If you install BIU to a blank disk it creates a 400 MiB ESP in anticipation of numerous OS. An ubuntu.xxx only consumes 4 MiB.

Are you creating Free Space after your ESP prior to resizing the ESP? Create Free Space by resizing and sliding partitions. I suggest resizing the ESP to 400 MiB. Can you post a photo of Partition Work if issues remain?

[rwebb616]

Yes, there is 300MB of free space after the partition but it will not allow me to resize.

[Brian K]

Can you resize if you use a BIU flash drive rather than installed BIU?

[rwebb616]

Nope. Here is the message I'm getting: "Calculations based on the new size you have entered indicates that the size is not possible. This can be due to insufficient free space and/or cluster expansion. However, it may be possible eventually resize to that value by preforming multiple resizes. Please try a different value"

I have tried only 101MB and I get the same message.

Rich

[Brian K]

Rich, any news for us?