rEFInd not booting/Straight into windows

[Daniel Birchall]

Hi,
So I recently installed Windows 10 on a seperate partition so now I'm dual booting Windows 7 and 10.
I installed rEFInd that the main website told me to, but that didn't work, windows boot manager was still loading instead. (Note that I installed it while running windows 7)
I did try renaming and moving the efi files around and that worked, but it didn't have the GUI (so just text) and I would prefer it if it had its own folder.
Note that this is my first time multibooting (but pretty competent with computer tweaking and such) but I'm pretty sure I've done everthing right.
Thanks!

[Roderick W. Smith]

Your problems getting rEFInd to appear at startup are probably related to a buggy EFI, but I can't be 100% sure of that.

By default, all (EFI-capable) Windows versions install their boot loaders in the same locations. They then rely on the Windows boot loader to enable you to choose which version to boot. If you're booting nothing but different Windows versions, that's probably the best way to do it, and leave rEFInd out of the picture -- rEFInd will just serve as an added step in the boot process, while adding little or nothing of importance to the boot process.

If you really need a rEFInd feature, or if you're booting both Windows and something else, you can have rEFInd present different menu entries for the different Windows versions. The only way I know of to do this requires careful planning and flawless execution during installation, though:

1. Pre-partition the disk with all the partitions you want; however, create two EFI System Partitions (ESPs), but change the type code on one of them to something else so that Windows will ignore it. For instance, if you were to use gdisk, you might set the second ESP's type code to 8300 (Linux data).
2. Install Windows A.
3. Using a partition table editor, change the type codes on the partition(s) used by Windows to something else (for instance, in gdisk, you might set them to 8300), and "flip" the type codes on the ESPs -- that is, the one that you marked as something else, set as the ESP (EF00 in gdisk); then set the type code on the ESP you used initially to something else (say, 8300 in gdisk).
4. Install Windows B.
5. If you're installing any other OSes, do so now.
6. Install rEFInd.
7. Change the type codes of the partitions so that all the Windows partitions have their native type codes (0700 in gdisk) and so that both ESPs have the ESP type code (EF00 in gdisk).

The point of this process is to hide the Windows A installation, including its ESP, from Windows B when it is installed. After installation, you must change the type codes and install rEFInd. Thereafter, rEFInd will show two Windows icons. (You can change one installation's icon as described here, if you so desire.)

Note that future Windows upgrades and repairs may become confused by this configuration. You may need to re-hide Windows A if you're doing such work on Windows B, and vice-versa.