Windows 7 Hidden Boot Partition Support

S

sw42

Member
I had Vista installed, along with EasyBCD 1.7.1, to boot a Debian Linux partition, and that was working just fine.

I then did a fresh install of Windows 7, along with EasyBCD 1.7.2, configure the same EasyBCD settings, and got file not found or corrupted (0xc000000f) errors when trying to boot Linux.

I poked about the support forum, and found some notes about needing to install Windows 7 into a single parition, like Vista was. I reinstalled Windows 7, along with EasyBCD 2.0 Beta Build 76, and I could boot into my Linux partition again.

However, before I did that, I tried EasyBCD 2.0 Beta - Build 76 with the Windows 7 separate boot and OS partitions (the Windows 7 default). That seemed to boot grub, but it was not finding the grub config file in the Linux partition, like it does with a single boot and OS partition. It just sat at the grub prompt.

Is this the expected behavior with EasyBCD 2.0 Beta - Build 76 with separate boot and OS partitions?

If no, what might the problem have been?

If yes, are there any plans to have EasyBCD support the default Windows 7 partition layout, with separate boot and OS partitions?

I could not tell from the forum if there is any intent to support this or not.

I can't really test any further, as that would require reinstalling Windwos 7 (again) to get the separate boot and OS partitions.

Handy utility though, even with this caveat.

Thanks
 
Hi SW, welcome to NST.
Give the W7 boot partition a letter and try again.
(Easy2 supports the unlettered partition for XP auto-configure (most of the time), but not yet for Linux. )
CG is constantly adding extras. Watch this space.
 
Last edited:
Terry, for Linux entries there is no need for the boot partition to have a letter in the latest builds of EasyBCD 2.0; so that shouldn't make a difference.

sw42, re-add the Linux entry in EasyBCD, but specify "grub is not installed" and see what happens?
 
Sorry,
hard to keep track of build differences mentally, and too many queries to keep searching back through old posts to verify what you think you remember. I thought I was repeating something I remembered from a previous post of yours.
 
Hi Computer Guru,

I tried the "grub is not installed" option as well (with EasyBCD 2.0), but if I remember correctly, I got the same result, grub booting and just sitting at grub prompt. I also tried grub2.

I assume there is a bit of magic here that passes the partition information to NST grub, to have it chain load the partition boot sector. For some reason, with split boot and system partitions, that did not work for me, even with EasyBCD 2.0. I don't remember there being any error messages, but I might have missed something.

As I mentioned in my previous message, I can't do any more testing, as that would require reinstalling Windows 7 (again), and I need to leave my system in a working state. It would be really cool though if this simply worked with the Windows 7 default partition layout, like it does under Vista, or with Windows 7 and a single partition.

Thanks
 
Back
Top