EasyLDR and EasyBCD 2.0’s New XP Support

At NeoSmart Technologies, we’re not just about making cool software that makes your life easier – we also like to share the how and why behind our work, to make things all the more beneficial for one and all. While the EasyBCD documentation has been out of date for a while now (we’ve been too busy working on the code and support), we’re making a real effort to bring things up to date.

We’d previously finished the tutorials for dual-booting Windows 7 with Windows XP and with Ubuntu 10 (complete with picture-by-picture steps!), but now we’re getting started on the real meat: the technical details of just what exactly is going on behind the scenes. The normal OS boot process is one of the most complicated parts of an operating system with just one OS in the mix – with multiple operating systems, each that works in its own way, things get that much more complicated, and it’s always good to have a nice, illustrated guide to refer to.

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Don’t unplug your boot drive before installing a new OS! Please!

Please, please, we beg you, don’t do it! Even if it seems logical, like it’s the right thing to do, we urge you not to change the boot/primary drive, or otherwise disconnect other drives when installing another OS!

Seriously, we had no idea so many people engaged in this activity until EasyBCD started spreading like wild fire. Here’s a fact for you: 95% of all support requests for EasyBCD in our forums come as a direct result of users disconnecting their Windows Vista/XP drive before installing Linux, Vista, BSD, OS X, Windows 2000, XP, etc. It’s one thing to reinstall the bootloader when you’re done, and quite another to have to recreate the required boot files to make them point the right drive/partition combo.

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