Windows XP + iso without Vista

B

Beppi

Member
Hello all
first of all congrats for such a good software like EasyBCD. I wish we had more stuff like this.

Sorry if I misunderstood something in the multiboot process, so I could write wrong things, forgive me in case.

My question. I don't own Vista or Seven, I only have a laptop with Windows XP installed. It's one Lenovo that I suspect that makes boot from the hidden partition and then passes the chain to the XP loader.
I installed EBCD and installed the Vista mbr on my system and (appearantly) boot drive C:\, with the objective to be able to multiboot among XP AND some live-cd isos that I have on the file system. But at every boot the process goes straight to Windows without asking me anything. If I add a second Windows XP (that infact is the same one, with two voices in the boot.ini file), then I get a boot menu asking me to choose.
So this means that I actually use the C:\boot.ini and EBCD is never considered.
Is there any solution, considering that I don't want to install Vista or Seven?

Thanks a lot. Beppi.

Addendum:

By the way, obviously I followed the FAQs. The "system" disk looks to be C:\, not the hidden partition, and I tried to add the XP both manually, both after resetting the MBR configuration and so on. After any test it always starts the XP loader and never presents me anything different.
Do I really NEED a Vista installation?
 
Last edited:
Yes.
The BCD is a feature of Windows introduced with Vista, and continued in W7.
It doesn't exist in XP.
EasyBCD will multi-boot XP OS-X or Linux but only as a part of a Vista/7 multi-boot
If you own a VIsta/7 licence, you can port the BCD across to an XP system and use EasyBCD to manipulate it, but EasyBCD's "recreate BCD" feature is disabled in an unlicenced environment. You cannot use EasyBCD to create a pirate copy of the software.
 
Thanks for the answer.
Of course I don't want to make anything illegal, for my work I own several copies of different operating systems but I keep only XP on my personal PC. So, I understood that I was missing some Vista files, I copied them and then reproduced the whole sequence, and now I have all my multiboot options :smile:
Thank you, unfortunately only XP works. I wanted to boot from several boot isos, like Hiren's, NST, knoppix, systemrescue, clonezilla, gparted, puppy linux and a WinPE I made. unfortunately noone of them seem to work, and I tried for them all both from disk and from ram, and forcing portability. Is there something I can do? Is there a list of known isos that work?
Thank you very much.
 
I haven't used the bootable external drive feature personally, so can't advise on that, but stick around for Jus or CG to read this and you'll probably get some clues as to what you've omitted to do to get the ISOs booting.
 
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