Dual Boot Win7 (Ultimate + Home Premium), Ultimate from USB

[Refuge Denied]

Hello all, first post, perhaps a strange request.

I have a laptop and two copies of Win 7 (Ultimate and Home Premium). Would it be possible to have the laptop boot in to Home Premium by default, but also be able to boot into Ultimate only if a particular USB thumb drive is inserted before boot?


Let me try to explain further ...
- The laptop's BIOS boot order is "USB > DVD > HDD"
- Both Win7 installs would be on separate partitions on the same HDD
- The laptop would have a boot loader that only boots into the partition containing Home Premium.
- However, a USB thumb drive contains another boot loader that can boot either the Ultimate partition or the Home Premium partition


I hope this makes sense. I do not own any NeoSmart products yet. I wanted to see if this was possible and if NeSmart software (ie. easyBCD) could help me achieve this before I buy anything.


Right now the laptop has XP Pro on it ... so I would be starting from a freshly wiped drive.


Thanks a million in advance for any help offered,

- RD

[Terry60]

You don't need to buy anything. EasyBCD is free for non-commercial use.
Grab a copy and experiment to your heart's content.
You should be able to do what you want, though a default to Home with a timeout of (1) on the normal HDD BCD will give you almost the same effect where Ultimate will only be accessible by speedy intervention at the opportune moment and virtually invisible otherwise.

[Refuge Denied]

You don't need to buy anything. EasyBCD is free for non-commercial use.
Grab a copy and experiment to your heart's content.
You should be able to do what you want, though a default to Home with a timeout of (1) on the normal HDD BCD will give you almost the same effect where Ultimate will only be accessible by speedy intervention at the opportune moment and virtually invisible otherwise.

Hi Terry,

Thanks for the speedy reply

I'll have to look through the documentation to see how to accomplish the second boot loader on USB drive (I'm fairly clueless about these things).

Thanks for pointing out the software is free for non-commercial use! I was ready to buy it.

- RD