Prpblems with duplicate disk signatures?

N

NCguy

Member
I am wanting to copy a windows 7 partition to a new drive and then use the old drive as an external backup. I intend to copy the MBR and the disk signature. I know I will then need to re-initialize the old drive and assign a new disk signature so both drives can be used in the same machine. Can anyone advise on the best way to assign that new disk signature? Someone suggested bootsect /nt60 ?

Related to this us the issue is having easybcd possibly write the new MBR:


  1. Does Easybcd write a new disk signature as part of the MBR?
  2. I have seen an instance where Windows 7 loads and the Vista loading screen actually displays during the load instead of the new Windows 7 loading screen. Doesn't seem to cause a problem but it looks a bit unusual while its happening. Is this what you would get if you used Easybcd to install the MBR since it installs Vista level MBR code as opposed to the new Windows 7 level MBR code?
 
There's a quirk, not fully understood, where doing anything to the W7 BCD with EasyBCD, (even just changing the OS name) will cause the Vista animation to replace W7's.
The easiest thing to do when you've cloned W7 to your new disk, is just boot W7 DVD and "startup repair" the clone as many times as it takes to fix everything, till it boots unaided.
That way you'll also keep your W7 animation.
 
I was planning on copying 3 OS's and a data partition to this new drive.

W7 64 (system)
W7 RC1 32
Vista 32

Is bcdedit my only choice for adding all these entries to the BCD (barf) if I dont want the wrong animation? Is there a way to fix the animation after all is complete?
 
According to the MS blurb with W7, the animation is "part of the boot loader".
Now since bootmgr is the manager and winload.exe is the loader, that would mean it's part of winload, which sits untouched in Windows\system32 folder. (I've verified it's not in bootmgr by swapping them over as a test). It would seem then, it should be immune to anything done to the BCD by EasyBCD, but as I already said, we don't yet understand why it happens, (unless CG has found something through his MS contacts not yet passed on to us) so as a consequence, no, we don't have a way to "repair" it afterwards.
Your choice. BCDedit or live with the animation change. (Incidentally I don't know that it doesn't happen with BCDedit too, never having tried it)
 
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