New feature please.

C

crabhunter

Distinguished Member
Please can I request a feature to be added to a future build of easybcd.
I would like to see an option of selecting actual drives and partitions when adding an OS.
Because Linux and OSX insist on writing something to all the drives in a system even the ones you are not installing them to and so screwing up other OSs I find the only safe way of installing is to only have the drive you are installing to connected when doing an install.
I can never seem to chose a drive or partition that hasn't got a windows letter ie C:\
This seems to give problems when multi booting.
I can never use other OS's to multiboot as Windows is the only OS the see software raid.
Mike
 
Any files written to the system partition should not effect other systems other than you perhaps having trouble booting into the OS with them. One of the major reasons I can think of why it sticks to the system partition is because a) its a utility for BCD so it knows where to find what it needs and b) doesn't have the support due to the lack of native support in Windows to write to an ext2fs or hfs volume.

A lot of support issues would arise in some cases if it allowed users to do everything manually. By easy in EasyBCD the attempt is made to make everything as automatic as possible, requring very little on the user's behalf. An example of this is when adding an XP entry. It doesn't allow for selecting the partition, because it automatically locates the boot.ini file necessary for the boot. Its a good thing really because with Windows the boot files could easily be on different partitions from thier respective systems.

Now if you'd like to manually edit it because it mis-correctly identified or would rather have it point elsewhere most of the time its as simple as going to the change settings page and making the desired adjustments.
 
Unfortunatly some OSs do overwrite things making recovery of an OS impossible.
Both my old pc and my new pc which both had windows on a raid0 setup sufferd breaking of the raid data because Linux and OSX saw the drives as individual drives and screwed them up,even though I was installing them to a separate drive.
Now what I would like to see in easybcd is an option when you add an entry, of the type of OS as there is now, and then a drop down list with all the drives and their make/name/serial etc.Then a drop down list with all the available partitions on that drive.
That way if you know you have installed lets say Linux on partition2 of a Maxtor drive you could point the entry right to it.
Mike
 
When EasyBCD "greys" an option to stop you changing it, it's because it knows that's where it has to be.
Early releases of Easy expected the user to put in the correct value, and support here consisted of constant repetition of the same advice "No, you shouldn't be pointing to the OS, you should be pointing to where the boot files for the OS are".
Multiple-boot Windows systems are spread across multiple partitions, but all their boot files are together on the "system" partition. That's the way all windows systems are designed to interact.

When you do independent installs, with all the systems having independent partitions and independent boot files, It won't multi-boot unless you constantly change the BIOS boot sequence. To get a multi-boot as we understand that term, i.e. with a menu of OSs to select from, you need to go to great lengths to copy files, edit pointers, reset flags, if you start with independent systems.

Linux doesn't touch the other partitions when you install it, unless you let it take over the boot by altering the MBR to surplant the Windows bootloader with Grub - but that's your choice as a user. If you click the "advanced" button during install, when telling it where to go, you have the option to prevent it taking over the boot, installing Grub into its own partition instead, and leaving Windows in control.

The latest release of EasyBCD will handle the adding of Linux or XP to the Vista BCD with almost complete automation. It does give you a drop-down list of all the partitions with linux clearly labelled. Removing all the intelligent code which knows where things must be to work properly, would be taking it back several years, and just put us back into the constant repetition of "you don't do it that way" manual intervention.

If Easy won't let you do something, it's trying to stop you doing something wrong. (or it's a bug to be reported and fixed)
 
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Terry60 said:
Linux doesn't touch the other partitions when you install it, unless you let it take over the boot by altering the MBR to surplant the Windows bootloader with Grub - but that's your choice as a user. If you click the "advanced" button during install, when telling it where to go, you have the option to prevent it taking over the boot, installing Grub into its own partition instead, and leaving Windows in control.
Click to expand...

It always does for me, even when I use advanced and put the bootloader exactly where I want it.And reading other peoples posts I am not alone.

Addendum:

Terry60 said:
The latest release of EasyBCD will handle the adding of Linux or XP to the Vista BCD with almost complete automation. It does give you a drop-down list of all the partitions with linux clearly labelled. Removing all the intelligent code which knows where things must be to work properly, would be taking it back several years, and just put us back into the constant repetition of "you don't do it that way" manual intervention.
Click to expand...

When I use the drop down box I only get partitions that windows created,ie C:\ D:\
Mike
 
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Are you using The 2.0 Beta or 1.7.2 ?
Can you post some evidence for CG of 2.0 not including Linux in the dropdown, with accompanying data, so that he can see what's different about your configuration that prevents it working.
(and what exactly did Linux put on your Vista and XP systems ?)
 
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Mike, which drop-box are you talking about? The Windows drop-boxes only show drives with letters, but the Linux drop-down menus in 1.7.2 and 2.0 both show actual, physical partitions on your disks regardless of where they were created.
 
Yes I appologise,when adding a linux entry I do have all the choices in bcd2(build60)
and the Linux entry now mysteriously works when it didn't to start with.
I don't the same options when adding an OSX entry,sorry I got confused.
Mike.
 
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