How to Quickly Boot Between Dual OS Windows 10 and Windows 7 or 8.1

Updated: 07, 2021
Looking for a way to quickly boot between Dual OS Windows 10 and Windows 7 or 8.1? Windows 10 released just few days ago and it has reached to millions of users already. As you know, Windows 10 is a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, users of course with a genuine Windows key.

Now some people may not want to upgrade their current OS to Windows 10. In such situation, you can always dual-boot between OS by keeping Windows 10 as well as Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 in the different partition in the same PC. Now if you are dual-booting between Windows 10 and Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 you might have felt the need to have a shortcut, which can allow you to boot between OS quickly.

That’s why today here we will show you a workaround using a batch (.bat) file to quickly boot between dual OS with a simple click.  Follow the steps as mentioned below.

Quickly Boot Between Dual OS Windows 10 and Windows 7 or 8.1

For this, we will be creating a batch file by entering a few simple commands. You can read more about creating and working on the batch file here.

Step 1: Create Batch File in your Current OS (Windows 7 or Windows 8.1)

Open notepad, click on File and select Save As. Next, in Save as, enter a name for your file and the end type (.bat) without bracket. For example, if you enter the file name as Go to Windows 10 then it should look like GotoWindows.bat. Select All files as Save as type else your file will be saved as .txt instead of .bat.  Click on Save button to save the file.

Step 2: Find Identifier for  Windows 10

Next, you need to find the identifier for Windows 10 or for the OS to which you want to switch from your current OS. To do this, open Command prompt Window  (in Windows 10) by pressing Windows + R key and type Cmd or search cmd in the search bar after clicking on the Start button.

In the command prompt Window enter “BCDedit” (without quotes) and hit enter. Now you will see the information for the Windows Boot manager and Windows bootloader. Under Windows, Boot Loader section look for the identifier and note it down. In this case, it is {Current}.

Step 3: Enter Commands in Batch file

Right-click on GotoWindows10.bat file or whatever you named it as and select Edit. When the file opens, enter the following command.

TITLE BOOT TO WINDOWS 10
bcdedit /default {identifier}
bcdedit /timeout 0
shutdown /r /t 0

In the above command, Title is optional. Enter any name after Title.

The identifier is the identifier you found in step 2. So replace Identifier with “Current” or whatever you found in step 2.

Leave the other two commands as it. Just for the information, keeping timeout to 0 would skip the boot menu screen. Allowing you to switch quickly between the OS.

After making the modification, the command would look something like this:

TITLE Go to windows 10
bcdedit /default {current}
bcdedit /timeout 0
shutdown /r /t 0

Next, press Ctrl  + S key or go to File > Save to save the file. Next, create the shortcut for a newly created batch file. Right click on the shortcut and select Properties. Select Run as Minimized and from Advanced check Run as Administrator.

One-half is done. Now boot into Windows 10 and follow all the above steps to create a shortcut to switch to Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 or your current OS. don’t forget to insert the identifier for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. At last, create the shortcut and you will be ready to quickly switch between dual OS with a single click. Now whenever you want to boot between the OS, double-click on the created shortcut and you are in.

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