Dual Boot W7 + Vista - Keep Vista Boot Mgr?

Farenheit

Member
Hi All,

I'm looking to install Windows 7 on my machine. My current config has HDD1 (C: Partition 1 = Vista, D: Partition 2 = blank) and HDD2 (Ubuntu 9.04). I'm using an older beta of Easy BCD 2.0 to have Vista and Ubuntu in the Vista Boot Manager.

I'd like to put Windows 7 on the D: drive. I don't think that should be an issue, but if I do that, will Windows 7 replace the Vista Boot Manager? I'd like to keep the Vista Boot Manager intact if possible, so I don't have to load Easy BCD in Windows 7. Is this possible and\or recommended? Or should I just let Windows 7 take over the boot manager, load Easy BCD into Windows 7, then recreate my Ubuntu menu.lst and boot order? Thanks!
 
Windows 7 and Vista's boot manager are basically the same. The Windows 7 installer if you install Windows 7 to a pre-partitioned space all it well do is add an entry for Windows 7 to the bootloader.
 
I have a similar situation except that I had an empty partition in front of the Vista partition and installed Seven there. After the install, I found out that Seven actually update the boot loader in Vista. It did not install its own in the Seven partition. So, there was no need for messing with the BCD to get it to offer both Seven and Vista.
 
I have a similar situation except that I had an empty partition in front of the Vista partition and installed Seven there. After the install, I found out that Seven actually update the boot loader in Vista. It did not install its own in the Seven partition. So, there was no need for messing with the BCD to get it to offer both Seven and Vista.
Yes, as Justin stated above, the bootloader of Win 7 is basically the same as Vista's (i.e. both have a bootmgr, BCD, and winload.exe). The Win 7 installer is smart enough to detect when a BCD already exists on the hard drive (in the "active" "system" partition, as seen from Disk Management), and so I believe it just adds a new entry to the BCD. Either that or it replaces the BCD with its own version (which, is essentially the same as Vista's, as I understand it, but its possible there are a few differences), and then adds entries to boot both Vista and Win 7. But I think the first possibility is more likely.
 
Awesome...well I wish I had the same luck as you all, but I didn't :frowning: I was able to load Windows 7 on the 2nd partition of the drive (curiously enough, I had to unplug the 2 other hard drives in my system for setup to allow it to install). After the setup files loaded, I plugged back in all the hard drives. Then Windows 7 finished loading and I was in! However, when I rebooted, there was NO Boot Manager, and it forced me to go into Windows 7. I loaded Easy BCD 2 and put in an entry to boot into Vista and that worked. But essentially, it lost all of my boot options. Oh well, lesson learned I suppose.
 
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