Use BCD without Vista

cowbalt

Member
Hey gents,

I'm not sure whether this is possible or not.

I''ve been playing around already, and crashed my MBR several times... No shame at all!Of course I backed up my stuff first, and know how to fix the MBR back in its original state within a few minutes.

The real question/story:

Is there a way of installing Vista's Boot Configuration Data while only using XP and without having to install Vista. I actually (maybe obviously) don't want to go Vista yet, and want to play around with OSx86 and Linux...

So I prepared nicely an active partition, not too big in size, to hold the boot info, and use other partitions for my operating systems. This works fine for XP, but....

Since I'm centralizing my boot info, it would also be great to use your tool, and the functionality of Vista's bootloader. Create a nice loader you know with the nice gadgets in it etc etc...

Would this be achievable?

I saw a document somewhere, but can't find it anymore, explaining that you first need to copy the files (c:\windows\boot) from a Vista installed machine, to the boot partition and then run easyBCD, but I've been trying this without avail.

It comes up with a message that the BCD file was either missing or corrupt (don't remember the exact error message, but you experts will know where I'm talking about)

Do you guys know the exact procedure for this, and/or tell me if the above is possible to do or not? Of course any advice on this is welcome.

kind regards!
 
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^ hello :smile:

CG will be with you in a minute, im just a lowly poster lol

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i really dont know all the workings of easybcd. that would be really kool if you could use it that way

i know you can have easybcd on a XP if you have the newest NT something or other... am i right???
 
Kahai, you're no lowly poster
At 67 posts you're on the top-ten list

WOW! :smile: kool beans. i like this place its a forum board that i feel comfortable on, most of the other ones im on make me feel weird lol

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i hope that we could help you cowbalt
 
or shall I say, "those spoiled windows users with their pop-up info boxes, they just click it away...! ". or just click next next next next.... whehehe...

Anyway, I will keep you posted on this one. I assume you would like to let you know if I got it fixed..

I will first think this through during the night (gmt+1) .... :??:??
 
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:lol:

No problem, hope it works. Maybe we'll see you on that list sometime soon, too, eh cowbalt? :grinning:
 
:brows:
:lol:

No problem, hope it works. Maybe we'll see you on that list sometime soon, too, eh cowbalt? :grinning:

We'll see, we'll see... I'm doing my best as you can read...:??

Maybe I can be of assistence in the future, you never know...

It would also depend if this will work of course... You do have my full trust though :brows:

While we're still here, I may have another question...
If you copy the root\windows\boot, it has two other subdirs, containing language dirs. Are the unused language dirs safe to be removed before actually applying the procedure as mentioned in the link you gave me?
 
I don't honestly know... I've had reports of it working without the language or fonts subdirectories, but I'd say just keep them to be on the safe side.
 
Hey CG!!! I'm back again.... :tongueout:

I've done exactly as written in the post, but the following happens:

I copied the Vista boot files and installed those on my current XP drive (XP drive, d:\windows\boot).
I ran EasyBCD 1.7, and it asked me to install the vista bootloader in the MBR. Pointed the Vista installation to the D drive, and the boot files to the C drive and in completed the installed without errors.
I then removed the Vista Entry (which was showing as unknown btw), and re-applied a new entry for the XP operating system, I'm not sure which partition I need to select there. Do I need to apply it on the boot drive, or on the XP install drive?
Anyway, I pointed to the XP drive, and rebooted the system

It boots the Vista bootloader, but comes up with an error message saying that /boot/BCD is either corrupt or missing information (error code 0xc00000034 ).

This may be relevant: The Vista files were copied from a Vista machine using 1 IDE drive, my machine uses 2 SATA drives.

Looking forward for any input again!

Cheers.
Cowbalt
 
Ah, you are correct - it's the SATA thing.

That error message is for INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE - sounds like the correct disk drivers aren't embedded in /boot/BCD.

Do the same thing again, except this time run Diagnostics | Reset BCD Data in EasyBCD before adding the XP entry, then reboot.

Hope that works.
 
Sounds reasonable to me CG... I already thought of something like this, that's why I mentioned the the SATA's :tongueout:

I'll test it tonight and let you know...

Greets.


Addendum:


Hey CG, after testing al kinds of flavors, I'm still not getting it work.

May we carefully say that this won't work? I'm not that kind of a person though. If something doesn't work, I rather prefer to see it working anyway :grinning:

So, in other words your advice did unfortunately not do the trick.

I can hear you thinking, back here in Holland :tongueout:

Your help is mucho appreciated btw!!!

Cheers


Addendum:


hmm, vBulletin seems to be doing funny with the posts...

Sounds reasonable to me CG... I already thought of something like this, that's why I mentioned the the SATA's :tongueout:

I'll test it tonight and let you know...

Greets.


Addendum:


Hey CG, after testing al kinds of flavors, I'm still not getting it work.

May we carefully say that this won't work? I'm not that kind of a person though. If something doesn't work, I rather prefer to see it working anyway :grinning:

So, in other words your advice did unfortunately not do the trick.

I can hear you thinking, back here in Holland :tongueout:

Your help is mucho appreciated btw!!!

Cheers
 
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OK, I just found something - interesting - on the Vista machine I'm currently on...

On my old machine (and the ones that others have tested these instructions on) there is a \Windows\Boot\PCAT folder, within it is a folder "en-US" and a file "BCD" and another "BOOTMGR"

On the current machine, these aren't in \Windows\Boot\PCAT but rather split between that directory and in \Windows\Boot\DVD\PCAT\ - is that how yours is?

So, let's do this from scratch. Find the files I'm talking about in \Windows\Boot\* and copy them where they should go:
Copy BOOTMGR to C:\BOOTMGR
Copy folder en-US to C:\Boot\en-US
Copy BCD to C:\BCD
Copy memtest.exe to C:\Boot\memtest.exe
Copy folder Fonts to C:\Boot\Fonts

Run EasyBCD. It should NOT tell you your MBR is corrupted.
EasyBCD | Bootloader Management | Reinstall Vista Bootloader
EasyBCD | Add/Remove Entries | Add an XP entry here.
EasyBCD | Add/Remove Entries | Delete the Vista entry (if it exists, I'm not sure)

Reboot and try it?

Addendum:

If you double-post within 12 hours, vBulletin will merge the two posts - I presume that's what you were asking about?
 
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Hey CG,

I've been away, had my gf over yesterday, so wasn't allowed to touch my PC :tongueout:

Anyway. I've checked the /boot directory that I copied from the other Vista machine, but can confirm there's no DVD directory whatsoever. So, shall I try the manual copying, as you mentioned, anyway?

Any other ideas....maybe?

Thanks for putting this effort. I hope to get it working, so I/we/or you can write some kind of manual for this, if you're interested of course!

All the best,
Cowbalt.
 
Yes, go ahead and give the manual way a shot - there's always a possibility that EasyBCD is missing out on something somewhere along the way.
 
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