[dundee] multi boot

[Nistur]

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.

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:

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)
bcdedit /store C:\Boot\BCD /set {bootmgr} device "partition=C:"

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 :)

*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



On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Nistur <nistur at googlemail.com> wrote:

> 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 :)
>
> Looks like I'm going to have grub4dos with nlite/vlite configured Windoze
> installs :)
>
> Thanks again for the great advice
>
> Nistur
>
> azmodie wrote:
>
>> I have used virtual box alot for both testing ditros and running
>> development enviroments under windows. (visual studio 6) with
>> 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.
>>
>> 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)
>>
>> i think the grub4dos method linked earlier is the best bet.
>>
>> 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).
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLite
>>
>> azmodie
>> --
>> Umbrella Corporation :-
>> "They are the fear within all of that there is a company. The Corporation
>> controlling everything that is Umbrella.
>> A combination of Microsoft and the US Military. At some level there is a
>> board of directors who meet once a
>> month and decide all of our fates."
>> -- Jeremy Bolt - Producer - Resident Evil : Apocalypse
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------
> http://nistur.chaosnet.org
>
>
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