Windows 7 and Windows 10 dual boot SNAFU

[tarael1]

I recently bought a new Dell XPS 8900 with a 1TB drive and only 8GB of RAM. It was loaded with Windows 7 but came witha Windows 10 disk and license. My intention was to put in an SSD to install Windows 7 then upgrade the original HDD to Windows 10 ( I have to learn this new OS in order to help local clients who continue to have problems).
After numerous attempts at installing Windows 10 from the disk, I contacted Dell Tech Support chat and was grafeful to have their help. They gave me instructions that still did not work but then offered a Windows 10 ISO to download to create a bootable USB drive - which I did.
I had disconnected the SSD which was cloned with Windows 7 and was working fine, during the Windows 10 installation (which was likely my next mistake) . The install from a USB 3.0 flash drive took 4 hours then the Updates, program installations, etc., and I still had to download drivers from the Dell support site. If you have done many installs you understand.

I had to go back into the BIOS to turn off Secure Boot in order to get Windows 7 to boot again. The UEFI boot loader has a conflict with that it seems.
Now each time I boot into Windows 10 then back into Windows 7 (which is the default boot drive) it insists on running scandisk and lo and behold scandisk finds and fixes thousands of errors that go by so fast I cannot read until it is about finished. Th end error reads: Deleting extended attribute set due to the presence of reparse point in file 687314. It freezes for a while at file 752802.

If I continue to boot into Windows 7 this does not happen again until after I boot to Windows 10 then boot into Windows 7 again. It even forced a scandisk for a backup USB 3.0 external drive that I had plugged in.

It seems to me that Windoze 10 is sabotaging any other drive that it sees. Here is my question: Is there any hope for a dual boot system with windoze 10 or should I get another computer to dedicate to it? What about dual boot with Win10 and Suse Linux? Has anyone tried that?
Mahalo for your help from the Big Island of Hawaii
Tarael

[rproffitt]

Wow. Reading your woes over the years at https://www.daniweb.com/members/565624/tarael1/posts I fear the answers are not going to be easy.

I can't guess how you get this far after so many years of troubles with booting. I'm going to write the issue of scandisk is well done and you would have to change Microsoft to stop that from occuring.

Maybe you should pick your poison (OS) and just run that with the others in a Virtual Machine.

[Reverend Jim]

I agree. Save your data to an external drive, then wipe and install Windows 10 from scratch. Make the SSD your primary drive. You could allocate about 120 gig to your C partition (more or less depending on how many apps you intend to install), then make the rest D and the remaining drive could be E.

After you install a base WIndows 10 system, relocate your

My Documents
My Pictures
My Videos
Downloads
etc.

to E

Install Macrium Reflect (free) and take a full system image of C. Then you can install your drivers and all Windows updates. Take another full system image. Now you can throw away the first image as you'll never have to go back to it. Save the one you just made. It will be your armageddon (when all else fails and you want to go back to square one) image.

After you install your default apps, apply app updates, and do all your configuration you can take one final image.

With all of your user files on D (the ones you want fast access to) or E (for slower access) you can easily restore an image to C without losing anything important.

I have set Macrium Reflect to do an automatic full image of C on the first of every month, and a differential on every other day. Whenever something screwy happens (like a driver update problem that screws up my video - thanks Radeon) I just restore the previous day's image (20-25 minutes) and I'm good to go. I don't bother troubleshooting anymore.

[Reverend Jim]

You can continue using your computer while images are being created (but not restored, obviously).

[Reverend Jim]

I also keep a log file (changes.log) in my image folder. Every time I make a change (install/uninstall/major config) I add a line to the log file with the date/time and a quick note. It helps me to figure out what might have gone wrong, and also what to reapply if I reload an older image.

[tarael1]

Thank you both for your input. It sounds like my fascination with a dual boot system is something to let go of. I can do that. After I upgrade my RAM to a bit more perhaps I'll try the virtual option. I will definitly try the Macrium Reflect. It sounds like a prudent way to get over all the diagnosing. Mahalo.
tarael