Question about EasyBCD in Windows Xp and more?

[ghosty1212]

Ok so I need to partition my HDD and I don't know how to do it within the Disk management of Windows XP. So I want to do it with EasyBCD, but no builds work for me... Is it Vista only and up? If anyone could respond, that'd be awesome.
My second question is how I would go about dualbooting XP/7. I currently have XP installed and my CD/DVD drive doesn't work so I'm going to install via flash drive (I have a 4GB one) and was wondering how I could go about dualbooting that in general. Any answers/questions to my answers please ask!

Thanks!

[Coolname007]

Originally Posted by ghosty1212

Ok so I need to partition my HDD and I don't know how to do it within the Disk management of Windows XP.

Hi Ghost! Welcome to the forum of NST (does it look invisible to a ghost?).
EasyBCD is not a partitioning tool, so you can't use it to partition your HDD (you'll need a separate utility for that; try Gparted). It is a tool for manipulating the Vista/7 BCD, and configuring all the bootloader stuff.

So I want to do it with EasyBCD, but no builds work for me... Is it Vista only and up? If anyone could respond, that'd be awesome.
My second question is how I would go about dualbooting XP/7. I currently have XP installed and my CD/DVD drive doesn't work so I'm going to install via flash drive (I have a 4GB one) and was wondering how I could go about dualbooting that in general. Any answers/questions to my answers please ask!

Thanks!

Ok, first of all, EasyBCD will run in XP, provided you have .Net Framework already installed.
If you're going to install W7 via flash drive, then I would suggest making it bootable with EasyBCD's External Devices | Create bootable external media option. Once you get W7 installed, its just a matter of using EasyBCD 2.0 to add an entry for XP, and letting it auto-configure. Then you'll have your dual-boot.

[ghosty1212]

Originally Posted by Coolname007

Hi Ghost! Welcome to the forum of NST (does it look invisible to a ghost?).
EasyBCD is not a partitioning tool, so you can't use it to partition your HDD (you'll need a separate utility for that; try Gparted). It is a tool for manipulating the Vista/7 BCD, and configuring all the bootloader stuff.
Ok, first of all, EasyBCD will run in XP, provided you have .Net Framework already installed.
If you're going to install W7 via flash drive, then I would suggest making it bootable with EasyBCD's External Devices | Create bootable external media option. Once you get W7 installed, its just a matter of using EasyBCD 2.0 to add an entry for XP, and letting it auto-configure. Then you'll have your dual-boot.

Thank you very much for the response!
The reason that I'm going to install via flash drive is because of the fact that I don't have a CD/DVD drive that is operational . I was wondering if you could offer me up some suggestions for partitioning my HDD?
Also I have the latest 3.5 network installed but it won't work. I'm going to try your method though. Thanks a lot!

[Coolname007]

Are you trying to use the latest beta (or 1.7.x)? If not, then you may want to get that one, and use it instead (1.7 is way outdated now).
Concerning partitioning, its just a matter of getting a Gparted usb (since your CD drive doesn't work), booting it, getting to the partitioning GUI, and then its pretty straightforward. You can find the manual at this link.

Best to shrink the last partition on the HDD however, however, so the free space is at the back end of the disk (not in the middle, which might introduce problems later on down the road). Once you got free space, then you just create an NTFS-formatted partition in the free space, and install W7 into it.

[ghosty1212]

Originally Posted by Coolname007

Are you trying to use the latest beta (or 1.7.x)? If not, then you may want to get that one, and use it instead (1.7 is way outdated now).
Concerning partitioning, its just a matter of getting a Gparted usb (since your CD drive doesn't work), booting it, getting to the partitioning GUI, and then its pretty straightforward. You can find the manual at this link.

thanks a bunch! I'm about to try it. and yes I have 1.7 installed, I'll try out the latest beta.

[Terry60]

You might find a problem running any EasyBCD on XP if you installed .NET 3.5 assuming that it would automatically include all previous levels.
You need to install .NET 2.0, which seems to have necessary bits not included in later releases.