So, How did I get here?
I am 55 years old, and an unrepentant gamer ever since Duke Nukem taught me to be sensitive and diplomatic. I use computers every day at work where we have a mixture of Macs and PCs, depending on the task, and have bumbled through DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, XP, OS9, OSX, Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04. I passed over Vista like it was a turd on a buffet table, and waited patiently for Windows 7. Friends of mine that tried the early release candidate loved it (especially after all the trouble they had with Vista incompatible hardware and software). So, I put in my advanced order and planned for the day when I would install it on my computer. The only complication was that I only had room for 3 hard drives in my computer. One was for XP, and is loaded with lots of goodies I don't want to lose. The second was for Ubuntu 9.04 which I really liked using, as long as no gaming was involved. The third was for storing photos and videos. I decided to remove the Ubuntu drive and replace it with Win 7 in a dual boot configuration. So, I removed the Ubuntu drive, and booted into a GRUB Error 17 nightmare. Krap! So, I went online and the nice folks on the Ubuntu forums quickly solved that problem. (Insert WinXP disk; enter Recovery console; type CD .. and then type FIXMBR) Done. Now I could boot XP again all by itself.
Went to install my "upgrade" edition of Win7, and discovered that it wanted to WRITE OVER my XP install???? So, I unplugged the XP drive, installed XP on the new drive, and then installed Win7 over top of the new XP on the new drive. Everything just fine, except that I couldn't dual boot. Sure, I could fiddle with the BIOS and get into each OS, but that is not the best solution. So, i spent 6 hours searching stuff online, installing this thing and that thing, swearing, cursing, and pounding my fist on the desk. A typical day on the computer. No solution to the dual boot problem. Then I found a reference to EasyBCD2.0 Beta. I signed up, installed the software, and in about 15 seconds had a perfect dual boot computer with Win7 and XP. So, thanks for the elegant solution. Of course, now I am going to totally screw it up by installing Ubuntu 9.10 on an external drive, so I fully expect to be scouring the forums for a solution to problems that I can only imagine now. Ah well, everyone needs a hobby.