Some Questions on EasyBCD

A

Alanon

Member
Ok, here I am.
I need some help if possible.
My situation is:
I am currently running Winders 64 bit ultimate on 2 hard drives. For Christmas am getting 2 more 500 gig drives. One of them I want to devote to Mandrake Linux and use some form of dual boot. In the past I have used GRUB to dual boot between XP 32 and Slackware, but this time the 64 bit scares me, and don't want to loose all my custom settings. Have any of you tried this situation? Installing new drives with new OS and using EasyBCD? I know I had a bit of problem last go round with the GRUB on MBR but now this is whole new system. All drives this time will be SATA, and I suppose I will have to dedicate some to FAT, some to NTFS. I read good and bad things about this EasyBCD, but it seems to be what I am looking for. Worse comes to worse, I can do the old BIOS switch between boot drives but that is a pain. The new drives are coming in 2 days, so guess I will start burning DVD's of all that I don't won't to lose, but I would like to see comments from others that have been there, done that. Anyone that has done this please advise.
Thanks in advance.
 
Welcome aboard! You'll find the EasyBCD tool a rather fast and effective means of adding another OS into the Vista boot options menu. The EasyBCD tool has it's own form of Grub loader you simply install to the Vista primary and point to the mount /root for the distro you plan on adding in.

The first thing you want to do however is look over the documentation for EasyBCD seen at http://neosmart.net/wiki/pages/list...ey=EBCD&openId=196612#selectedPageInHierarchy

The various sections there cover a great deal on how to see XP and other OSs added as boot option in Vista. Note that some distros will see their own boot loaders installed which may prevent seeing it load when selected in the Vista boot options. A manual configuration with the distro's installer and the option of not installing the boot loader but simply pointing to the root /mount point when adding the new entry into the Vista BCD will likely see success.
 
When you do the install of Linux on the new drive you shouldn't have any issues in regards to the entry EasyBCD creates. Most of the time, it is x in (hdx,y) for the root lines of your entries that need to be changed until you can find the correct disk. You can do this with grub's edit feature at boot time and once you successfully boot just modify /boot/grub/menu.lst to reflect the changes for future booting.
 
Are you looking at one of the latest releases of Mandriva formerly named Mandrake? That will see it's own boot loader go on that will detect and add Windows into it as an option.
 
A lot of Linux distros will do that if you decide you want to stick with grub as the primary bootloader. In that case, you'd haft to switch boot priority and change Windows entry in menu.lst to reflect the correct disk since it won't be considered first if you boot from another device.
 
That's the problem currently being seen with Fedora Core 10 since all newer releases automatically detect other OSs during the installation. Core 10 is on a separate drive here where that would have to be set as the default boot device until finding the method of using EasyBCD.

On the other the smaller ubuntu 8.10 distro was simply added in once the root was set as the / mount point on that same drive. When selected from the Vista boot menu it loads right up without any editing having been made. Mandrake now Mandriva however is a larger server/ enterprise distribution there.
 
RE: Mandrake Vs Mandriva

OOps,
Guess my age is showing. HI HI. Yes Mandrake became Mandriva, and I have the latest both 64 bit, and 32 bit setting here in DVD ready to do something with. While I don't mind having GRUB as boot loader (it has served me well in the past) I was looking for a better solution, and EasyBCD seems to fit the bill. This Windows 64 bit is strange in a lot of areas, and I don't want to fry my MBR and start over.

I will be installing the Enterprise version of Mandriva, and while in the past the MBR was not effected by the GRUB (much), again I have reservations on installing on this 64 bit crap.

I guess the proof will be in the pudding. I'll be going for it, and getting my files ready for a major F* UP. If all goes well, will post my findings back here. If not, was nice of you people to give me a heads up.

Take care,
Back again? in 5 to 7 days. *ROTFLMAO*
Mike

Addendum:

Ok, while I'm thinking on it.
Motherboard supports up to 8 SATA drives. Have a quad core processor. Using Mobile plan for internet, and download speed maxs at 12kbs.
My planned schedule of attack is:
1. Backup any and all files not available to easily re-install.
2. Hardware
3. Step 2 goes well, start Mandriva install on 3rd SATA hard drive
4. RAID #1 hard drive over on to 4th, and see how that goes. (Unsure if I will do RAID here, depends..)
5. Format drive 3 to allow for 2 to 5 gig swap FAT for Mandriva and and Winders so files can be seen by both OS. (Unsure here as to what Vista 64 bit will think) I have a full install of XP pro also, so may consider that using WINE.
6. Install the EasyBCD download via Vista 64 bit? (Should this step be up? Not sure, guess will find out.)
7. People, it scares the poopy out of me messing with the Vista 64 MBR. This is where I am so hesitant. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. So will do my best on backup's and go from there.
Ciao,
Mike

Addendum:

Humm.
Ok just busted everything. I did the install for 1.7.2 and no adverse effects for Vista 64. I feel better now. Enough to boost the 20 bucks for the collection drive.
Gone.
 
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