Easy BCD & Windows 7 Beta

Ex_Brit

Ex_Brit

SuperMod
Staff member
I managed to lay my hands on a copy of Windows 7 Beta build 6801 and it accepted my old Vista beta 2 key...amazing. Installed it in my spare partition after Vista.

Anyway I have EasyBCD installed in my C (XP) drive which is also the default. I also have Vista of course.

Windows 7 tried to make iteself the default which I changed once back in XP but I noticed that there was new entry "Previous Windows Version pointing to C: NTLDLR or whatever it is.
I also had my entry for the same under XP Pro SP3 so I deleted the "Previous..." one.

Hope I did the right thing. I haven't tried booting back in there yet...LOL

Regarding Windows 7 it installed the right video and audio drivers right away, but I had to go looking for keyboard and mouse for the Bluetooth dongle. I used the Vista ones.
The problem now is to find a compatible protection software.
 
Only time well tell with this backwards compatible thing. I get excited when I hear all Vista drivers should be compatiable and that it well run backwards compatibility mode where it'll actually work, but let's face it, not everything is going to work right from the start like we want it to. Knowing MS, I wouldn't be surprised if EasyBCD doesn't require a few changes to work with their next installment of bootmgr and the bcd store approach.
 
Yes it is confirmed that EasyBCD is fully compatible with Windows 7 Build 6801. I have confirmed it on my install.
 
Yes everything boots OK so far. I'm so surprised that Windows 7 has no mail programme but I guess it's early days yet.
 
You have to install the Windows Live Beta stuff. The newest stuff.

Downloads - Windows Live

They are trying to incorporate some of the new Live stuff with Win7. Since this is a pre-beta and that is still in beta they have it not included right now.
 
Well thats good to hear about EasyBCD. You never know when their gonna decide to screw things up.

Yeah I heard about them moving to the live service. In other words they want everyone to sign up for live... I like it for the fact that I don't use win mail anyway and would perfer that it not be included, but in another way I'm disappointed. Maybe I didn't want a live account, but now its sign up for one and deal with it or use something else :frowning:
 
You dont have to use a Hotmail or Live email account. I use a GMail account for all my Connect and MVP stuff. I have my GMail account linked to the Live stuff. It can be done easily.

The good thing about this Live Mail Beta. If you do have a hotmail or live email with them you can connect it to the account for free without using any add on unlike Windows Mail or Outlook.
 
I'm also pleased to report that IReboot and IE New Window Maximizer both work fine. Although I do occasionally get IE has stopped working and has to close, but usually that only happens once in a long while.

Getting a rather rocky reception both video and sound-wise in Windows Media Center (TV) but I may have to try uninstalling the ATI drivers and reinstalling in compatibility mode with Vista RTM (The only Vista version listed). Edit: worked fine after reboot.

I installed Incredimail as the mail client (licensed so no ads) and it works fine.

Other things like Flash, Java etc installed OK as did Google Toolbar 5 in IE8 & FF.

I'm impressed so far and noticed that W7 seems to have a lighter footprint than Vista, although many components are not yet included as it's pre-beta.
Not sure I like the fading Start Menu though.
 
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Heck... sound is still rockey in media center/media player sometimes in Vista :frowning: I wish they'd jump on fixing that.
 
The Windows 7 bootloader has a number of new features I'm itching to integrate into EasyBCD - but it's confirmed that all of EasyBCD's existing functionalities will run just fine on Windows 7.

Cheers! :grinning:
 
Windows 7 Problems

Easy BCD does need updated for Windows 7.

Windows 7 now uses a hidden partition for its boot manager, it will seem like easy BCD is still functioning if you keep Vista installed, I just removed Vista and am using Windows 7 RC [7100].
I have a test install of Leopard OSX86 on my PC and since removing Vista have been unable to get Easy BCD to add it to 7s boot manager.
The entry appears but OSX86 will not boot. This worked perfectly with Vista still present.
I replaced Vista with 7 and OSX86 is on another drive, there are 2 drives on my system layed out like 1- [Win7-40GB] [Storage 200GB] 2- [OSX86 30GB] [Storage 200GB]

Is there a beta version of Easy BCD for 7 available yet (I'm using 1.7.2) or can anyone tell me how to fix this problem, It worked fine with Vista on the first drive and OSX86 on the other before.
 
You don't have to let W7 create its own boot partition. It only does that because it's "ultimate" and thinks you might want to use bitlocker. You can make it install the bootmanager into the W7 partition as long as you tell it where to go and don't let it default to doing its own thing.
Support for the latest Linux builds and for OSX is included in EasyBCD 2.0. You can't use 1.7 except on earlier releases.
 
How do you prevent W7 from creating its own boot partition? I just installed W7 RC1 into an empty logical partition on a system that I have XP, and 2 instances of Vista installed on. It successfully installed and I do not recall seeing anyway that I may have manipulated it otherwise. By instructing it to install itself in the logical partition, did I avoid its creation of its own boot partition? I'm still being presented with the same OS boot selection menu, just with W7 added as the default.
 
Windows does not allow booting from a logical partition, so the W7 boot files won't have been installed in your logical partition. The W7 install would have to be able to find some unallocated primary space to create a secret boot partition. If your only available space was the logical drive inside the extended partition, W7 will have installed its boot entry into the pre-existing Vista BCD. If you'd only had XP as your previous OS, it would have installed the W7 BCD into the XP partition marked "system" and taken over the boot process from XP, placing an XP dual-boot entry into the W7 BCD automatically.
You can verify where things are in Control panel\ Admin Tools\Comp Mgmt\disk Mgmt by looking at the flags on each partition
 
Terry60 said:
If you'd only had XP as your previous OS, it would have installed the W7 BCD into the XP partition marked "system" and taken over the boot process from XP, placing an XP dual-boot entry into the W7 BCD automatically.
Click to expand...

I can cofirm this !
If I had read this forum before installing W7 RC1, my XP partion would still be untouched... :rage:
I don't like at all when one OS put something within another OS partition.....
 
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