I have two exact copies of Windows 10, one on drive C: and one on drive D:. These are two internal drives in the same laptop.
How can I know which Windows is running?
How can I select the one to launch during boot?
46 Answers
The drive letters like C: are only assigned during Runtime of a Windows installation, so they will usually be both C: for both your installations.
Open an elevated cmd.exe or Powershell.exe (as Administrator), then type:
diskpartafter a moment, type:
list volumeYou get something like this:
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- Volume 1 WinBOOT FAT32 Partition 350 MB Healthy System Volume 2 D Win1 NTFS Partition 31 GB Healthy Volume 3 C Win2 NTFS Partition 33 GB Healthy Boot Volume 4 S Data NTFS Partition 380 GB HealthyIn this case you can see that the Windows on Volume 3 is currently running, there is another one on Volume 2, Boot in the Info column on the far right indicates that this is the current Windows Drive.
you can see the same by open Disk Management:
diskmgmt.mscand look for Boot in the Status column of volumes.
When setting up a dual boot Windows you should use descriptive names for each boot entry.
1There are a few ways, and I'll mention the quickest ways that come into my mind.
Open Run dialog (Winkey+R) and type the below command and Enter, it'll open your current Windows installation directory
%windir%Open Task manager and select a system process (something like svchost.exe or winlogon.exe) in Details/Processes tab. Right click on that and you can see Open File Location, which will also open your windows directory.
Some other ways
- Open the run dialog with Win+R, type
\then Enter. That'll show your Windows drive. (Tip: running.will show your home folder and..will show your users folder) - Open start menu, type "system info" and open System Information. You'll see the Windows Directory under System Summary
- Open start menu, type "disk management" or press Win+R > diskmgmt.msc > Enter. That'll list all the drives in your PC. The system drive will be listed with the Boot flag, most likely along with "Crash Dump" and "Page File"
Simply press Win+R and run cmd. The path to cmd.exe is often shown on the title bar by default. On some systems it simply shows "Command Prompt" but in that case you can look at the prompt string which often points to your user folder in the system drive
This is quick but not reliable either, so while you're at the commmand prompt just run the commands in other answers or you can run
echo %systemroot%orset sysC:\>set sys SystemDrive=C: SystemRoot=C:\WINDOWSPress Win+Pause or right click My Computer > Properties > System Protection. Your system drive will be listed with the word "System"
That said, nowadays Windows often shows its system drive always as C: regardless of its system volume position in a drive, so a drive label or device name is more useful than a drive letter
Open CMD an Type in wmic OS GET SystemDrive /VALUE
This Will Return System Drive Letter.
Press Windows+R to bring up the Run command box.
Type in the command msconfig and press Enter,
This will bring up system configuration settings. Click on the 'Boot' tab.
There are many options to do as others users told
A simplest option I use to identify OS in drive in multi boot is to right click the Windows start menu and click explore and the profile directory opens for the user and I got to know the drive letter from which I booted the OS
I have 2 Windows 10, 2 Windows 7 and 3 Windows XP installed and modified boot menu and categorised it and named it like Windows 10 for C drive (study), Windows 10 for D drive (games), Windows 10 for e drive (banking), Windows 10 for f drive (downloading)
You can modify boot menu with the following way
Secondly I run CMD which to opens in the default directory system directory where windows installed
Thirdly as told by other users following ways and commands and variables to know it
diskmgmt.msc%windir%3.echo %systemroot%wmic OS GET SystemDrive /VALUE
