Problem with Windows Dual-boot

I have a dual-boot system where Windows 10 Pro is installed on an m2 SSD drive and Windows 10 Home is installed on a SATA SSD. Whenever I update Windows 10 Home, I then find Windows 10 Pro won’t boot and the usual start-up repair fails to work too, forcing me to restore from a system image. Can you suggest a fix please?

BRIAN HARDING

Nick Peers replies: Ordinarily, dual-booting Windows shouldn’t be an issue because the existing version of Windows should be smart enough to detect the other version and create a proper dual-boot setup. Brian, however, appeared to have installed the second OS while the first hard drive was disconnected, then used EasyBCD to marry the two together.

After updating Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro would start to load, but then fall over, with start-up repair unable to fix things. The boot files were stored on the Windows 10 Pro drive, and Brian had been experimenting with various settings – ‘hiding’ the Windows 10 Pro OS by removing its drive letter prior to updating Windows 10 Home, for example.

We pointed Brian to a couple of boot repair tools: the Dual-boot Repair tool (see bit.ly/

2CUgUZR) revealed that thanks to the way EasyBCD had set up each partition, each partition thought it was the C drive after each boot, so only one copy of Windows was visible. Brian also uses Macrium Reflect ( www.

macrium.com/reflectfree), so we pointed him towards its rescue disc, which includes a tool for fixing boot problems via Restore.

Ironically, Brian reported he had no problems with a subsequent update, so for now it’s a watching brief. There’s a possibility the problems may come back, in which case we’ll reveal what we did in a future edition of Q&A.