Oops I Erred With Vista And EasyBCD

Ex_Brit

Ex_Brit

SuperMod
Staff member
I just reinstalled Vista and had to promptly uninstall it as I think I must have screwed up renaming various entries in EasyBCD. No matter what I booted to, XP Pro or Vista I got BSOD, something about missing NTLDLR in XP Pro and something else in Vista.
Whaaaa !!
I'll try it again - maybe tomorrow. I'm frazzled from cloning my legacy OS's over to the new SATA drive etc. etc.
(Hate to admit...I used ProNetworks uninstallation instructions).

OK I've reinstalled it (Sunday) And the same thing has happened again...can I leave Vista installed on the partition and do a repair from within XP and hopefully regain the bootloader that EasyBCD likes? Or should I format and start again? Pity as I had all the drivers set up so nicely. At present time Vista is still installed but not booting as I've gone through the uninstall procedure outlined in Pro you know what's instructions and removed those extra entries from my root drive and uninstalled EasyBCD.
It seems that EasyBCD 1.2 doesn't like you renaming entries.

(This is in addition to my other question in this thread regarding showing the Admin on the welcome screen).
 
I'm not clear on what exactly happened with you, so bear with me for a bit..

EasyBCD doesn't rename the entries, so it can't be the cause of anything.. EasyBCD simple tells Vista to rename the entry - that's how 1.2 works, but 1.5 will be drastically different and not rely on Vista for most of that - much more reliable.

What you need to do:
Use a Windows 2000 setup disk, enter the recovery console, run
Code: 
fixmbr
fixboot
bootcfg
Then you should be able to boot into Windows XP and from there run EasyBCD, and recover the Vista bootloader....

*should* work, but as we all know, with Vista there are no guarantees.

Good luck, lemme know how it goes.
 
It wasn't EasyBCD that was renaming things, it was me. I tried renaming "Microsoft Windows" to "Vista" and the legacy or older systems whatever it said, to "XP PRO". That caused the problem. I did that in the older EasyBCD with no problem

Anyway I did the basic steps of removing Vista - putting in the XP CD and doing a fixboot, then removing $RECYCLE.BIN
Boot (folder)
Boot.bak
bootmgr
Bootsect.bak
so now I can at least boot into XP Pro (either one of the two installations).
Vista is still sitting in its own partition but undetectable. I tried reinstalling EasyBCD and it refused.

Should I complete what I started here and format the Vista partition and start over again?
 
Don't bother with the previous post, I've reinstalled and am not going to even try to rename the entries in EasyBCD. Knowing my luck the darn machine would explode.
 
You wont believe this. The first time I loaded Vista (ages ago) everything went like clockwork, as it was when I posted above. This time I just updated some drivers and now the damn thing wont boot...GRRRR :angry:

I guess it'll be install # 9999 very shortly the way things are going. I tried the DVD's recovery option, couldn't repair.

Question:
1) Can one rename the systems' names in EasyBCD? Every time I tried BSOD.
2) Can one repair Vista using the DVD? It seems to either only have a recovery option or want to overwrite everything and rename the system to Windows.old.
3) Would I be better installing it on the other internal hard drive and if so, would EasyBCD still work?
 
Computer Guru said:
Do you have access to any later builds? Because Beta 2 is really old now...
Click to expand...
yeah, 5536 is...prettier. and it's easier to install drivers.

i upgraded to it when 5472 started bsoding on boot. i'm glad i did, mostly because it lookes better. :tongueout:
 
Ex_Brit said:
Question:
1) Can one rename the systems' names in EasyBCD? Every time I tried BSOD.
2) Can one repair Vista using the DVD? It seems to either only have a recovery option or want to overwrite everything and rename the system to Windows.old.
3) Would I be better installing it on the other internal hard drive and if so, would EasyBCD still work?
Click to expand...
No one has complained of any rename-related issues via email, and as you can see, there are no renaming posts here in the forums.... I don't think it's an issue - you were able to do it before, correct?

As of now there is no way to do a repair install of Windows Vista, in all likelihood there won't be in the future either as a result of the staged installs.

You can install it on whatever drive you have, so long as Vista works, EasyBCD will too... but be careful:
Vista will _always_ install the bootloader to the master hard drive's primary & active partition... so the data will be on the drive you select, but the bootloader won't necessarily be... It makes no difference to EasyBCD, it's very flexible.
 
Thanks Guys.

Regarding all the boot problems I've been having this time around I put my thinking cap on. I thought this is odd because I purposely did NOT try this time to install all and sundry that I have on my XP, just things that I know will work.
I could usually get into Vista using Safe Mode but couldn't make head or tail of the event viewer as Vista makes that part extremely complicated so I looked at device manager for yellow exclamation marks. Sure enough my webcam was acting up. I told it to find the driver on my C: (XP) drive and it did. Still wouldn't boot in regular mode. The only other thing that has been difficult to deal with when swapping between systems has been my Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite (Bluetooth) keyboard and the Intellimouse Exsplorer for Bluetooth mouse.
Although I install them following your expert instructions and they work fine...something goes wrong when I switch systems as they or rather usually the keyboard has to be reinstalled.
So as I was getting the "no-boot" this morning I simply pulled the Bluetooth dongle and rebooted. I always have my PS/2 KB and USB mouse connected and hey presto! Booted OK!!
Don't know whether this will help anyone else.
 
Interesting, I really need to get home and install this build ASAP... because unless my mind deceives me, that was a killer bug in the 53xx builds that just totally fubar'd if Bluetooth or Mass USB Storage Drivers were connected via USB (2.0)...

Hang in there!! and use system restore too!
 
Build 5536 rocks...except you may have to reinstall a few things. Diskeeper Beta for Vista no longer works. Trend Micro PC-Cillin Internet Security 14 has to be reinstalled to work as did my Creative Sound. All my email accounts had their passwords wiped.
BUT, so far it's working better than the previous build. Pity about Diskeeper though because the built-in one is slow and has no interface to tell you how far along it is at.
 
Diskeeper is useless as it is, my (pain-in-the-backdoor) solution was to create a second logical partition and installing XP on it and using that with PerfectDisk to defrag the Vista partition... Until NST gets a fix out that is :smile:
 
I can use Diskeeper 10 Pro that's installed in my XP partitions no problem. So that isn't really a major hurdle. It's just finding a fast defragger that will install in Vista is the problem right now.
Another problem is...and I've had much correspondence with Microsoft already over this. Their own Desktop Elite for Bluetooth keyboard now insists on a passkey with build 5536. (No "do not use a passkey" option). The software/hardware (not sure which) will not accept two passkeys (1 for XP and 1 for Vista) which I've been moaning about for a year at least with my dual boot XP's. I'm certainly not working without a passkey in XP where I spend most of my time. So for now it's either a case of using my PS/2 KB in one or the other or removing/adding the keyboard from/to the Bluetooth devices each time I switch.
 
You should use a 3rd party bluetooth software, it appears that Vista hasn't fixed that bit of BS.

Do you still have the original CD that came with your bluetooth stick? I recommend using that......
 
The CD's are merely v5.2 whereas I'm using version 5.5...or do you mean I may see that option to use the KB without a passkey in Vista if I use the older software?

I'll boot into Vista when I'm done here and see what happens.

3rd party Bluetooth software...not sure about that or where to look.

MSFT NG's recommended going with Logitech RF units in future...easier, less fussy and more adaptable.
 
My bad, these steps wouldn't work for the MS keyboards, I was remembering the steps for the generic BT keyboard, my bad.
 
I managed to reinstall v5.5 from a stored download and use your .ini files to make them work, but I find it strange that the one option for no passkey has been removes. Microsoft obviously doesn't trust us, but then they should at least make their own hardware work!!

I think I'll go Logitech RF next time.
 
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