Boot Server 2012 with OEM Windows 8 (sort of)

anothercalifornian

anothercalifornian

Member
I am having fun with EasyBCD at work and trying to tame XP with Seven. And if that's not enough fun then...

Now that I have a new 16GB i7 screaming MSI laptop with Win 7 Home (arghh)

I plan to get my Microsoft Partner DVD's out and over-write it. Mainly I cannot use the OEM set to restore it to the secondary drive, so I will use my membership media.

But with this new Dual SSD C: drive setup I hesitate. I know even speaking the word 'server' usually ends a discussin in most support calls, forums etc. - but I work with them all.

The MSI as is:
The C drive currently has two SSD's as C Raid 0 I believe and runs Seven Home Premium (arghh again). Its fast but I digress.
The D drive is a ~ 750 GB SATA I presume. Its just been backed up to an iso set, DVD's etc and a repair disk to go back in time...

However I want to Install Server 2012 Standard as the main OS and have Windows 8 Pro (NOT HOME..) either as a VHD mount on the 750 GB secondary ATA drive or a downright installation. I do not need to partition that ATA drive up.

I know we all are talking client side mostly in this forum, and I also know I am dealing with common code and a fresh set of MSI Windows 8 drivers etc. - so if this needs to be posted elsewhere, please forgive my EasyBCD moment.

Anyone have a good feel on how to accomplish Server 2012 on this rig and then pop Windows 8 on the secondary?

Is the Beta EasyBCD better suited than the released EasyBCD? Will I encounter some sort of mutant rig destined to be a topic of comedy relief?

I have backed up the OEM set up (C:smile: and have gobs of USB drives standing by for a USB 3.0 fest Server 2012 Data storage pool!

My intent is to build a virtualization tool of sorts to have as a System Center 2012 test lab and when necessary slide back to Windows 8 boot to just surf the OS for friends & family support. I want these two OS's seperate from each other and to both use C: as their drive letter (and perhaps hopefully hide each other from themselves..for too many good reasons)


Is this a dream or can it be done?

Any Lewis & Clark types? I am set to blast off into uncharted water I am sure.

Thanks for such a nice utility and an informative group..

M
 
I don't see anything especially out of the ordinary with your request. Be sure to use the just-released 2.2 version, as it supports Windows 8/2012.
 
There's no facility in any of the MS boot managers to use the MBR "hide" bit, but you can effectively do much the same thing after the OSs are all installed, by "offlining" the other OS drives in the registry, like this hack to hide Vista/7/8 from XP to protect their restore points.
Even more simply, remove the letter for any other OS drive in Disk Management and it will disappear from Explorer's view and be out of reach of any user who doesn't know how to put the letter back.
 
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