Install BCD onto any partition (Including Logical)

[Panarchy]

Hello

Please add this feature.

Thanks in advance,

Panarchy

[Terry60]

It's a design feature of the architecture Panarchy, nothing to do with EasyBCD.
The MBR searches for the "active" primary partition. A logical partition cannot be "active".



See Vista Help

1. Notes
2. 
   
   • You cannot make a logical drive or an extended partition active. Only a primary partition can be made active.

• There can be only one active partition per physical hard disk.

• If you have multiple hard disks installed on your computer, it is possible for each hard disk to have a partition set as active. However, the active partition on the first hard disk that your computer's basic input/output system (BIOS) detects is the one that will start the computer. For more in-depth information, go to the Microsoft website for IT professionals.

You can put a BCD on a logical disk, but you can't boot from it.

[Panarchy]

Even if I setup my computer to use GRUB &/or GRUB2 &/or Chameleon?

(would set it as an entry in any/all of those boot-loaders)

[Terry60]

You can use 3rd party boot managers instead of MS which can boot from Logical partitions, but then you have no need of EasyBCD anyway. The other app will be locating partition boot records for the individual OSs and handing control over. Each partition contains its own boot files which you won't need to manipulate, since they're required to nothing other than boot the OS they belong to.

[Coolname007]

If you run grub and have bootmgr and such installed on the logical partition you want you should be able to tell it to go there, where no MS boot code needs to be installed, but thats creating a two stage boot if you want to add additional entry's to Windows bootmgr.

Most people who use Grub would just add entries to boot all their OSes in their menu.lst.
And that is only one-stage (at least in the terms of menus, if that's what you're getting at). Of course me personally though likes to have multiple ways to boot into my OSes, and dislikes depending on just one solution for booting. And so I use a 3rd party bootmanager, but I still have entries in my BCD to boot into the other two OSes if necessary (and now that I have added Win 7 to the mix in a VHD, that means I have an entry in my BCD to boot that too). Plus, I also use Bootpart to boot into Ubuntu from the XP side of things, should I change my mind after already selecting a boot entry to boot into in my 3rd party bootmanager's menu about which OS I want to boot into.
But then again, that's just me...

[JustinW]

I realized that. figured Terry answered it just fine, and deleted my response. You're too quick to notice lol

[Panarchy]

I've been told on another forum that it's possibles, is very complicated though.

Can GRUB4DOS boot Vista/Server2008/Win7 directly from Logical Partitions? - Boot Land

Multibooters - Dual/Multi Booting With Vista

Will do research, and probably will enventually work it out.

Still, it would be extradonarily useful if EasyBCD could do it for me.

So, if after looking at the MultiBooters website and the other forum I posted on you decide that you know how to do it, could you please implement it within EasyBCD?

Thanks in advance,

Panarchy

[Terry60]

EasyBCD is a tool for manipulating the BCD. i.e. Vista's boot configurator.
If you're using a different boot manager to boot Logical drives, then what's in EasyBCD has no relevance to you.
If you want to use the Vista bootmgr to control your multi-boot, you're stuck with the Windows architecture.
(I have recently reorganized my HDDs, and have a tiny B:\ partition at the front of my first HDD containing only the HnS version of grub4dos and a menu.lst and grub default file. I have a single level boot menu (HnS's) which chains my Vista / W7 / XP / Ubuntu partition boot sectors, all of which contain their own boot files with just a single entry defaulting to the OS in that partition. All of my OS's are in primary partitions, but they could have been logical if I'd needed to. (I keep my data and apps in logicals)
The point is, I had to abandon the Windows boot architecture to do what I wanted. The Vista BCD just won't do what you want, and EasyBCD is constrained by that.

[Panarchy]

EasyBCD is a tool for manipulating the BCD. i.e. Vista's boot configurator.

Can't EasyBCD also be a tool for install the BCD to a different partition?

[Terry60]

You can put the BCD wherever you want, but you can't control the boot process from it unless it's in a primary partition.
That's nothing to do with EasyBCD, that's the Windows architecture.
EasyBCD is not the boot manager. It's a tool which can't even run until Windows is fully booted.

In XP you can use Notepad to edit the boot.ini file for controlling the XP boot process. You can't use it to alter the XP architecture and put boot.ini and NTLDR in a logical partition.

Like EasyBCD, Notepad is just a utility program which runs after the boot process is complete, when the OS is fully loaded. It's not part of the boot process.

[Panarchy]

Hello

Can't you build on EasyBCDs BCD Repair feature (the same which allows installation of BCD onto XP) for installation onto a Logical Partition?

Thanks in advance,

Panarchy

[Coolname007]

Hello

Can't you build on EasyBCDs BCD Repair feature (the same which allows installation of BCD onto XP) for installation onto a Logical Partition?

Thanks in advance,

Panarchy

As Terry just said, the Windows bootloader can not chainload into a logical partition. Period. Also, there is no such thing as "installation" of the BCD. The BCD is a Vista file equivalent to the NT systems' boot.ini file, in which entries to boot the OS are stored. You don't "install" it. At most, you would copy or move it to the logical partition, but since there is no way for the standard Windows IPL to chainload into a logical partition's PBR, doing that would be pointless. Since EasyBCD is a tool intended to be used primarily with the Windows MBR controlling the boot, it would be stupid to have a feature to move the BCD to a logical partition, because then the system wouldn't boot.
As Jaclaz pointed out over at the Boot Land forums, if you want to boot from a logical partition, you need to take the time to read (slowly) the links he pointed you to, and make sure you fully understand how it works, before you attempt to do it. Grub4Dos can be used to directly call up the bootmgr, regardless of which partition it is stored in, whether primary or logical, but you need to read (yes, read) the specifics of booting OSes from logical partitions. As stated before, I will state it again. The Windows MBR is not capable of handing the boot process over to a logical partition's PBR, it can only chain to an active primary partition with Windows boot code in the boot sector. There is no way to force it to chain into a logical partition's PBR. It is a limitation of the Windows architecture, and if you want to get around it, and boot from a logical partition, you will need to use another boot manager to control the boot process.

[Panarchy]

Hello

Thanks for your reply.

Don't you think it would be helpful having a BCD on all Logical NTFS Partitions which contain an OS?

As that would provide redundancy, especially if the Windows Recovery Disc doesn't work, eg the primary partition is corrupted.

Please try and implement the feature which copies across the bootmgr (etc.) onto a Logical Partition, then changes it so that it will work.

Thanks in advance,

Panarchy

[Terry60]

No Microsoft boot Manager can boot from a logical partition !!

The BCD is a part of the Microsoft boot process.
Take your request to Microsoft, we're not responsible for their design.


If you want a spare copy of the BCD sitting unusable (through Windows) in a logical partition, there are a thousand ways you can copy it there, without needing EasyBCD to do it for you.
EasyBCD operates on the permanently open version of the BCD on the "system" partition which must be primary.

thread closed