EASYBCD - boot configuration data store cannot be opened

N

nomadic

Member
I'm running Linux (Debian and Fedora) and Windows (Vista Ultimate and Home Premium and Evaluation copy of Win7). I'm booting with Grub (installed in MBR through Debian).
Everything works fine. However...

When I load Easybcd in the three windows systems, I get the message
"The boot configuration data store could not be opened. The requested system device cannot be found. Would you like to manually load a BCD registry for easybcd to manage?"

A posting here attributed this to using a 3rd party bootloader. I'm pretty sure I've used easybcd previously with a 3rd party bootloader (saved my bacon a couple of times), tho it may have been the earlier Grub version and not Grub2 / Grub-pc which I have now.

I'm assuming the BCD store is actually there somewhere since every system boots without a problem. How can I find it so that I can load it for easybcd to manage?

Any help would be appreciated.

nomadic
 
EasyBCD looks in the "active" partition of the boot disk by default.
You need to navigate it to the BCD inside the \boot folder on the partition listed as "system" from Windows Disk Management.
You'll need folder options set so you can see it, and if it's on an unlettered partition, you'll need to give it a letter so that the Explorer dialogue can navigate there.
 
Terry
thanks for quick reply. I'm a bit confused:
In Win7 Disk Management,
- win7 partition is marked healthy(Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary partition)
- Vista Ultimate is marked healthy(System, Primary Partition)
- Linux Fedora partition is marked healthy(Active, Primary Partition)
Which one has BCD?

Within BCD(trying to manually load register) I cannot navigate to the linux partition - EXT4 filesystem, no drive letter in windows and disk management wont allow me give it one.
In Vista Ultimate, \Windows\Boot\ has no BCD
In Win7, same.
(and I am looking at hidden folders also).
Am I missing something / doing something daft here?
nomadic
 
It's super-hidden. Did you have all the highlighted folder options set as shown ?
The "live" BCD is in "system" (Vista Ult)
Windows cannot access Linux partitions, MS is too parochial to offer support for "foreign" file-systems.
(though you can use Ext2explore freeware from Windows)
 
@Terry60

Thank you so much!! I've been having this same problem for like 3 days now trying to figure it out and it turns out that the bcd file is hidden and you just have to adjust your stupid folder options set? I feel retarded. Again, THANK YOU SO MUCH!! :booyah:
 
I can't get to the System Reserved partition to edit it! -- it looks bad to me. Hard drive was restored some time ago.

System Reserved partition looks bad to me. A normal one looks like this:

Partition Name System Reserved
Drive Letter None
Layout Simple
Type Basic
Format NTFS
Status (System, Active, Primary Partition)
Capacity 100 MB NTFS Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)
Capacity 100MB Free Space 72MB %Free 72% Fault Tolerance No Overhead 0%

But my System Reserved partition looks like this
System Reserved Name blank*
Drive Letter None
Layout Simple
Type Basic
Format blank
Status (System, Active, Primary Partition)
Capacity 100MB Free Space 100MB*(72MB) %Free 100*(72%) Fault Tolerance No Overhead 0%
IF I CHANGE DRIVE LETER FROM NONE TO E: THEN
Name changes "System Reserved [E:] Format NTFS Free Space is 40MB %Free 40
* indicates wrong value
( ) indicates typical correct Answer

How do I access this? Any ideas how to proceed? Do I need to repair this System Reserved? Or can it be repaired / rebuilt?
Great site and product! Thanks /Howard
 
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