XP Pro Legacy Comment/ Wishlist /One Question!

xfiles

Member
First of all Hi to All,
great idea to have this Forum and thanks to the makers of EasyBCD!

I just wanted to drop a line regarding my experiences and commenting:

My Setup:
Asus P5B Deluxe, 2.3 GHz Duo2Core, 6 GB RAM
SATA and IDE HDD

Triple Boot: openSuse 11.1, XP Pro SP3, Win7 RC1

SATA layout:
1st Part.: prim. ntfs /Win7,
2nd Part prim. Fat32 (rw data exchange with Linux)
3rd Part.---7 Ext .. swap, root .... /openSuse --->> BOOTING GRUB fromm ROOT Part.

IDE:
1st Part.: prim. Fat32 /XPPRO SP3
2nd Part: prim. NTFS (backup)

Ok, my setup is as above and I am booting into grub from openSuse root partition.
I could create an entry to boot into SATA Part 1 -> to access the boot loader of Win7 RC1

It took me a while to that due to the constantly changing drive letters and (sorry) EasyBCD 1.72 messing up the BCD entriey and bootloader!
Finally and only EasyBCD v2!!! did fix all issues regarding legacy support.

After reading through the very well documented Guide and notes about installation of Multiboot and Bootloaders ... I still had some problems to get XPPRO to boot from

COMMENTs:
- beside in the guide mentioned XP needs in the root of the "active " drive the follwing files:
1) boot ini, 2) ntdetect 3) ntldr (in my case on SATA Part1, where BCD starts!)

as well as the --- bootsec.exe!!!

In my case it did not work without it and I only got the XP startup menu (like pressing F8) and the screen frooze up.

- ideally I would like to boot from grub (of Linux ROOT PArt.) directly either into
Win7 or XP PRO --> but I haven't gotten this to work yet ..
My guess is I need to set in grub -> makeactive for the XP Paretition, but am hesitating at the moment as it already works as is.

- the commands mentioned for BCD from a Admin CMD console do not apply for Win7
they are somehow different from what is described in the guide ...
>> Could an expert look into it and update the guide accordingly.

- EasyBCD 1.72 messed up my BCD ID for the HDD and did not writte the correct ID's into BCD menue. EasyBCD v2beta fixed this all nicely. Well done.

Keep up the good work.

My wishlist as a feature:
a) The possibility to edit the BCD Menue like textfile e.g. like the boot.ini to mannually add or manipulate entrys.
b) a simple util/feature that lists the correct ID for each device to be used for editing
(the BCD commands did not do the job)


Finally a Question I could not figure yet ---

Can I install WIN7 RC1 onto an external HDD and boot from it.
I tried but it does not work ... any input on this is appreciated :smile:

Cheers
xfiles:grinning:
 
Hello xfiles, welcome to NST

For listing your disks/partitions you can use diskpart or disk management in Windows or "fdisk -l" in linux. The bcd cannot be editied via a text file like boot.ini or menu.lst is/was. This isnt the fault of EasyBCD but of the new way MS wants to do things. Not being able to have this capability and lack of a full graphical tool users could use to easily edit thier bcd is why EasyBCD came about. The guide is a little outdated, however EasyBCD 2.0 is still in the beta stage. The developer is working hard to make it a hit so updates to the guide well come later when it has been completed and one of us has time to sit down to update.

Anyway, glad you have found EasyBCD useful :smile:
 
Finally a Question I could not figure yet ---

Can I install WIN7 RC1 onto an external HDD and boot from it.
I tried but it does not work ... any input on this is appreciated :smile:

Cheers
xfiles:grinning:
Yes, indeed you can. :smile: Please post a screenshot of Disk Management, along with the Detailed (Debug) mode details found on the View Settings page of EasyBCD. I'm assuming you already installed it?
If its a USB HDD, you wont be able to put it there with the installer since it doesn't support USB, but you could always install it first on your internal HDD, clone it, and then paste the clone on your USB HDD which should work fine (providing you still boot from the internal HDD).
 
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Actually, the WIN7 installer stopps with an error stating that Win7 cannot be installed on USB HDD.

I tried did try to install it by hooking the IDE drive first into the machine -- do the install -- then placing it back into the external USB case. Then I tried to boot from that disk -- no go!

Then I tried fixing that install using the DVD -- no go either. Same error message as before using the direct - USB HDD install approach.

cheers
xfiles
 
Actually, the WIN7 installer stopps with an error stating that Win7 cannot be installed on USB HDD.

I tried did try to install it by hooking the IDE drive first into the machine -- do the install -- then placing it back into the external USB case. Then I tried to boot from that disk -- no go!

Then I tried fixing that install using the DVD -- no go either. Same error message as before using the direct - USB HDD install approach.

cheers
xfiles
Right, as I said in my last post, the Windows installer can not install to USB HDDs. If you want Win 7 on a USB HDD, you will need to first install it on a non-USB HDD, then clone that partition, and paste the clone onto the USB HDD (into free space).
 
It still won't boot even if cloned. The only way around this is to create a .vhd on the usb drive, mount, and install or create a VM that you store on your usb drive (probably best if you want to take it and use it in another computer).
 
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