In case anyone comes across this in future and can also not deal with 2 boot menus chaining just to boot an OS I thought I'd post an update.<br><br>It is assumed that XP is installed first and Vista second. This does cause some confusion because they don't keep to the same drive letters. XP being on the first partition claims C: but Vista renames it to D: and sticks itself on "C:" itself. I will stick to Vista being on D: and XP as C:<br>
<br>Vista writes it's boot manager (bootmgr) to the first partition (as with XP writing ntldr to the first partition). With a lot of switching between Linux and rebooting testing I have discovered that it works just as well if you copy bootmgr and the BCD (Boot Configuration Data store) to D: The only problem is that bcdedit (the inbuilt bcd command line editor) still points to C:. Data within the newly copied store can be modified by adding the /store option (this is actually as it was typed in Vista, so no remixing of drive letters)<br>
bcdedit /store C:\Boot\BCD /set {bootmgr} device "partition=C:"<br><br>Currently, Grub now boots Vista directly from it's own menu option, the problem is currently that XP doesn't boot, it complains about not having bootmgr present. I am for now going to try and create a new BCD store and stick a copy of bootmgr on C: and then chain grub -> bootmgr -> ntldr. It seems a bit long winded so if anyone ever forces themself onto windows for long enough to work it out I'd like to know. Also I don't know where Vista keeps information about where the BCD is stored, I now have to add /store every time I want to edit the BCD. True, I probably won't need to once I've sorted this out but it is something wrong :)<br>
<br>*sigh* it's been a long day of messing around with Windows. At least I've also got a nice clean Linux install I can work on configuring now to relax :D<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Nistur <<a href="mailto:nistur@googlemail.com">nistur@googlemail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Cool, thanks a lot. I used to have a "Barely naked" version of XP (hacked version with a little more than the bare bones one someone made) I thought that sort of thing would be hard to come across. A Vista one sounds great too :)<br>
<br>
Looks like I'm going to have grub4dos with nlite/vlite configured Windoze installs :)<br>
<br>
Thanks again for the great advice<br>
<br>
Nistur<br>
<br>
azmodie wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">
I have used virtual box alot for both testing ditros and running development enviroments under windows. (visual studio 6) with<br>
great success. I eveb had photoshop cs3 running on XP guest configured to 256mb ram and 32mb graphics. little slow to start and slightly slower than running it native but more than useable.<br>
<br>
I agree if was just aplications for development (no 3D) then this is definatley an option. but if you p;lan on windows gaming then the performace hit is great and that even if u can get them to run. 3D support in virtulised systems is choppy (to best of my knowlege)<br>
<br>
i think the grub4dos method linked earlier is the best bet.<br>
<br>
although if u have enough space nothing stopping u setting it up with a cut down version of xp(nlite) or vista(vlite) in a virtual machine for editing code in the ide. (can mount shares in vitualbox). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLite" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLite</a><br>
<br>
azmodie<br>
-- <br>
Umbrella Corporation :-<br>
"They are the fear within all of that there is a company. The Corporation controlling everything that is Umbrella.<br>
A combination of Microsoft and the US Military. At some level there is a board of directors who meet once a<br>
month and decide all of our fates."<br>
-- Jeremy Bolt - Producer - Resident Evil : Apocalypse<br></div></div>
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