Dual boot involving RAID

S

svenks

Member
Hi Guys
New to EasyBCD, but not to messing with computers... :smile:

My wife really need a faster PC, and so I revived my old gaming rig. It has an Intel ICH5 RAID controller, which caused me some headaches trying to install a Windows 7 for her. On the array I have 2 primary partitions, XP and WIN2003 server + a logical prttition where my games used to be. Some time ago,I installed an 80GB IDE but never had any use for it - until now.

I had planned to boot the WIN7 DVD, but it turned out I couldn't. Instead I booted WIN2003, and tried to make a custom install to the IDE disk - but that failed at a late stage (maybe unable to write the BCD partition), even if I had supplied the ICH5 driver.

In the end I got it installed this way:
Cloned my XP partition to the IDE disk.
Changed the boot sequence to start with the IDE disk.
That booted fine, then got WIN7 installed as a custom upgrade.

So now I have (when WIN7 is booted):
WIN7 on disk C:
XP on Disk F:
Win2003 on disk G:
The games on disk H:

Now, if I want to boot XP or WIN2003 I should be able to change the boot sequence to RAID first, and it should work. But then I got greedy, as I had heard of EasyBCD: Why not us that to multi-boot at least XP and WIN7 (the WIN2003 is obsolete).

I thought it would be as easy as "Add a new entry", but no - I get the dreaded "Failed to detect a valid installation" whether or not I use auto or point it to F:. This is strange, as the partition on F: is quite straight forward - I have ntldr, ntdetect.com and a Windows folder. Any ideas after looking at this bootgrabber list?

C:\Program Files\NeoSmart Technologies\EasyBCD\bin>bootgrabber /tlist

BootGrabber utility.
Copyright NeoSmart Technologies 2009-2010 <http://neosmart.net/>

Unable to get volume information for \\?\Volume{829fca0a-41d2-11e0-bccb-806e6f6e
6963}\
D0,3,3,1,122941865984,1
P1,F:\,7,17215478784,4336058368,Yes,multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1),Yes,NTFS

P0,,15,88051622400,0,Yes,,No,
P2,G:\,7,17667901440,9191362560,Yes,multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2),No,NTFS
P0,,5,88051590656,0,No,,No,
P3,H:\,7,88051590144,9799475200,No,multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3),No,NTFS
D1,1,1,0,81964302336,1
P1,C:\,7,67110027264,43984023552,Yes,multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1),Yes,NTFS

BRGDS
Sven Sorensen
Denmark
 
Computer Guru said:
Hi Sven,

That is indeed odd. There shouldn't be any issues with RAID and BootGrabber - I have a RAID0 setup on my development machine myself.

Can you please try EasyBCD 2.1 beta from EasyBCD 2.1 Beta Builds - The NeoSmart Forums
There's a huge number of BootGrabber improvements there.
Click to expand...

Hi and thanks for a quick reply!

Of course, the cause may be an old ICH5 driver - apparently, Intel has not made one for WIN7. On the other hand, I am able to see the volumes on the RAID after I installed the driver - so it seems to work.

I'll try the beta version, but I do think it is time for 2 full backups first :S: One from WIN7 and one from XP.

I'll be back & thanks again, BRGDS
Sven
 
BootGrabber wouldn't do anything to damage your system, but back up away!

Let me know what happens and good luck.
 
Ok, problem solved!

Installed latest beta of 2.1.0137 and it added the correct entry automatically.
However, just to make sure it had got it right, I added yet another entry, this time manually choosing the disk (F:smile:. So now I got 2 entries doing the same, but I only have an "Add New Entry" button - there is no "Remove Entry" button. How can I remove one of these entries?

Thanks for a great product - a donation is on its way :smile:

/Sven Sorensen
Denmark
 
Yeah, we've redesigned the layout of EasyBCD's features in the 2.x builds. Hopefully it was much easier to find what you were looking for.
 
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