New pc questions

C

Caramelo

Member
I've just sent off for all the widgets for my first attempt at building a pc.

I plan on installing XP on it. I plan to bypass Vista at this point since I don't own a copy and buy Windows 7 when it's released.

Will BCD function with W-7? I didn't see it listed as a compatible program. I realize it it still an RC.

In dual booting, can 2 OS reside on the same PHYSICAL drive but in separate partitions?

Thanks for entertaining basic questions.
 
Hi Caramelo, welcome to NST.
You don't have to wait till October. There's a deal at the moment you should investigate whereby you can get a free upgrade to W7 if you buy Vista now. Check the prices.
If you've already pre-ordered W7 at the discount offer price, it's probably cheaper to wait, but do some digging to see if you can save yourself some time or money.
EasyBCD is a GUI utility for managing the BCD which MS has only provided with a stone-age command line facility (BCDedit).
The BCD was invented with Vista, hence all of our documentation calls it the "Vista BCD", but it has been ported into W7 (which is to all intents and purposes is Vista2), so it works exactly the same in either.
One small cosmetic quirk is that the W7 animated startup screen becomes replaced with the boring Vista version if you edit the W7 BCD with EasyBCD. The reason for this is not fully understood yet, but it doesn't affect the functionality in any way.
You can dual boot an almost unlimited number of OSs from the same HDD or from different HDDs.
Since XP, the restriction of 4 bootable OSs (4 primary partitions) has gone because Windows can now be installed to a Logical disk inside an extended partition, as long as the boot files are in a primary.
 
Thanks for your answer Terry.
Will the upgrade from Vista to W7 be like a patch or SPack, or will it be an install?

What do you mean by a primary?

Addendum:

Just missed the 1/2 price W7 preorder price. It ended yesterday.
 
Last edited:
The upgrade well be like installing a new OS, the only difference being you select the upgrade option and it perserves your files and programs. Some drivers/programs may need to be re-installed or updated after the upgrade.

By primary Terry meant 1 of the 4 allowable boot partitions possible to boot a computer from. Windows needs to be installed on one of those, which shouldn't be an issue if you're upgrading anyway as you select your current Vista installation as the install you want to upgrade.
 
Windows 7's no longer in beta and I would hate to haft to buy a beta Microsoft product... the RTMs are expensive enough :smile:
 
Justin, that post was spam.

When you see a post by a person with a post count of 1 and a single word or phrase (possibly tied with a link) in the signature that talks about a random (but technical) matter - it's spam :frowning:

So much spam and it's getting soo hard to tell the difference between humans and bots!
 
I'd given the benefit of the doubt, and removed his sig hyperlink, (perhaps why Jus didn't see it) but if you found it again CG, that's obviously what he was here for. (Like you I wasn't absolutely sure but pretty suspicious because of the "system engineer" claim alongside not knowing W7 is in the shops already.)
 
Last edited:
Yes I've noticed that phenomenon too. You'd think seeing all the other purged spam would be a disincentive. (or can't non-mods see all the deleted entries ?)
 
It's invisible. Only mods can see the deleted "stubs" in order to keep the clutter down to a minimum.
 
Back
Top