Prev: FYI - dual boot Windows 7
Next: problem with drum kit
From: John Braner on 16 Feb 2010 07:46
Hi,

I just thought I'd share some more fun I had with Windows 7 dual booting yesterday. I'm not talking
about the Microsoft dual booting - I'm talking about booting one windows partition and hiding the
other (one or two).

I'm using the Acronis OSS (Operating System Selector) which doesn't really support Windows 7 - so
that doesn't help.

Windows 7 seems to be *really* eager to see all the partitions on your PC, no matter what *you*
want. I would suggest that any time you change anything with your dual boot partitions, that you
deactivate your boot manager, and manually use your favorite utility and make one Win 7 partition
active - and then hide all the rest. Then you can use the Win 7 DVD to "repair" your partition to
boot properly.

Windows 7 uses a command line utility called BCDEDIT, and when things are set up correctly, it seems
to be set to boot from "C:" rather than is disk1/partition0 etc (like in boot.ini on XP). Whenever
there are references to a disk or partition in BCDEDIT (just type BCDEDIT from a command line to see
how it's set up) - that seems to mean that Win 7 has found some other partitions that you want to be
"hidden" - and is sticking it's nose into them.

I had a situation where *all* my Windows partitions (2 x Windows 7 and one XP) were hidden, so Win 7
just sat and stared at me trying to boot. It seems to be able to see c:\boot even on a hidden
partition, so it can *begin* to boot, and read it's config files - but then it stalls when it's not
happy.

So inshort - if you're having problems setting up a boot manager with Windows 7:

- disable your boot manager temporarily
- use your favorite disk manager, booting from CD, to set one active partition and hide the rest
- use the Windows 7 DVD to "repair" the partition and make it bootable
- repeat for each partition
- then enable your boot manager and try to get it to boot each partition in turn.

Is anyone having any luck with a boot manager with Windows 7? EasyBCD? anything else?

--
===========
John Braner

jbraner(a)NOblueyonderSPAM.co.uk
http://cdbaby.com/cd/JohnBraner
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
From: John Braner on 17 Feb 2010 05:14
On 16/02/2010 23:11, kitekrazy wrote:
> On 2/16/2010 6:46 AM, John Braner wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I just thought I'd share some more fun I had with Windows 7 dual booting
>> yesterday. I'm not talking about the Microsoft dual booting - I'm
>> talking about booting one windows partition and hiding the other (one or
>> two).
>>
>> I'm using the Acronis OSS (Operating System Selector) which doesn't
>> really support Windows 7 - so that doesn't help.
>>
>> Windows 7 seems to be *really* eager to see all the partitions on your
>> PC, no matter what *you* want. I would suggest that any time you change
>> anything with your dual boot partitions, that you deactivate your boot
>> manager, and manually use your favorite utility and make one Win 7
>> partition active - and then hide all the rest. Then you can use the Win
>> 7 DVD to "repair" your partition to boot properly.
>>
>> Windows 7 uses a command line utility called BCDEDIT, and when things
>> are set up correctly, it seems to be set to boot from "C:" rather than
>> is disk1/partition0 etc (like in boot.ini on XP). Whenever there are
>> references to a disk or partition in BCDEDIT (just type BCDEDIT from a
>> command line to see how it's set up) - that seems to mean that Win 7 has
>> found some other partitions that you want to be "hidden" - and is
>> sticking it's nose into them.
>>
>> I had a situation where *all* my Windows partitions (2 x Windows 7 and
>> one XP) were hidden, so Win 7 just sat and stared at me trying to boot.
>> It seems to be able to see c:\boot even on a hidden partition, so it can
>> *begin* to boot, and read it's config files - but then it stalls when
>> it's not happy.
>>
>> So inshort - if you're having problems setting up a boot manager with
>> Windows 7:
>>
>> - disable your boot manager temporarily
>> - use your favorite disk manager, booting from CD, to set one active
>> partition and hide the rest
>> - use the Windows 7 DVD to "repair" the partition and make it bootable
>> - repeat for each partition
>> - then enable your boot manager and try to get it to boot each partition
>> in turn.
>>
>> Is anyone having any luck with a boot manager with Windows 7? EasyBCD?
>> anything else?
>>
>
> I had problems with this once. One work around is to remove all
> additional drives. This seems to be only a problem with SATA drives.
> EasyBCD was the fix.

My drives are internal - actually all partitions on the same 500GB drive.

I'm gonna have a look at easybcd. Does it do the same kind of thing? ie hide partitions and just
make the one windows partition active?

--
===========
John Braner

jbraner(a)NOblueyonderSPAM.co.uk
http://cdbaby.com/cd/JohnBraner
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
From: John Braner on 17 Feb 2010 05:27
Easybcd seems to use the Win 7 bootloader and adapt it.

I'm not sure if I want to go this way - I'd rather completely hide each partition from the other(s).
Part of the problem, though, is that I don't understand (yet) how BCD works.

I'll keep reading...
--
===========
John Braner

jbraner(a)NOblueyonderSPAM.co.uk
http://cdbaby.com/cd/JohnBraner
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
From: kitekrazy on 17 Feb 2010 22:23
On 2/17/2010 4:27 AM, John Braner wrote:
> Easybcd seems to use the Win 7 bootloader and adapt it.
>
> I'm not sure if I want to go this way - I'd rather completely hide each
> partition from the other(s). Part of the problem, though, is that I
> don't understand (yet) how BCD works.
>
> I'll keep reading...

I only used it because W7 botched up it bootloader. I tried other
options, even bought a 3rd party app and BCD fixed it.
From: John Braner on 18 Feb 2010 05:40
On 18/02/2010 03:23, kitekrazy wrote:
> On 2/17/2010 4:27 AM, John Braner wrote:
>> Easybcd seems to use the Win 7 bootloader and adapt it.
>>
>> I'm not sure if I want to go this way - I'd rather completely hide each
>> partition from the other(s). Part of the problem, though, is that I
>> don't understand (yet) how BCD works.
>>
>> I'll keep reading...
>
> I only used it because W7 botched up it bootloader. I tried other
> options, even bought a 3rd party app and BCD fixed it.

yeah - it looks like easybcd is just a nice way to manage bcd - but you're still using bcd. So you
have to get an addon to hide partitions, then boot and "unhide" them, edit a grub file etc. It's messy.

With Acronis (and whatever else I'd want to use) you actually isolate the partitions - so the Win 7
BCD knows *nothing* about a XP partition, and vice versa.

--
===========
John Braner

jbraner(a)NOblueyonderSPAM.co.uk
http://cdbaby.com/cd/JohnBraner
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
 | 
Pages: 1
Prev: FYI - dual boot Windows 7
Next: problem with drum kit