boot manager for XP / Win7 (+ others)

[John Smith]

Hi, I was hoping someone could suggest a good boot manager for a dual boot
system comprising XP and Win 7 (and possible Solaris / Linux in the future)

I previously installed Win 7 whilst in my XP session. This polluted my XP
system as it wrote Win 7 boot files to my XP partition. I don't want any of
that funny business. So this time I decided to placed each OS on a separate
SATA drive.

Configuration is as follows:

Motherboard: Abit NF7-S 2.0
SATA1: XP Pro SP3
SATA2: Windows 7 (Build 7600)

At this stage I have just been physically unplugging/booting the respective
HDD's.

I think my motherboard/bios is too old for that F12 boot trick I've read on
the forums. I also might be interested in installing Solaris (or some
flavour of Linux) in the future on another partition I'll create on SATA2.

I heard that the preference is a boot manager that sits in the first track
of the hard drive. I also want something that executes FAST and is simple to
configure.

I've heard about Acronis (which I read is somewhat slow) and GAG. Does
anyone have any recommendations/config advice?

Any help most appreciated.

JS

 

[John Smith]

Hi, I was hoping someone could suggest a good boot manager for a dual boot

system comprising XP and Win 7 (and possible Solaris / Linux in the
future)

I previously installed Win 7 whilst in my XP session. This polluted my XP
system as it wrote Win 7 boot files to my XP partition. I don't want any
of that funny business. So this time I decided to placed each OS on a
separate SATA drive.

What I meant to say was that when I installed Win 7 this time around, I
unplugged my XP HDD so it wouldn't recognise it, and just install all Win 7
stuff to SATA2.

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

Hi, I was hoping someone could suggest a good boot manager for a dual boot
system comprising XP and Win 7 (and possible Solaris / Linux in the
future)

I previously installed Win 7 whilst in my XP session. This polluted my XP
system as it wrote Win 7 boot files to my XP partition. I don't want any
of that funny business. So this time I decided to placed each OS on a
separate SATA drive.

Configuration is as follows:

Motherboard: Abit NF7-S 2.0
SATA1: XP Pro SP3
SATA2: Windows 7 (Build 7600)

At this stage I have just been physically unplugging/booting the
respective HDD's.

I think my motherboard/bios is too old for that F12 boot trick I've read
on the forums. I also might be interested in installing Solaris (or some
flavour of Linux) in the future on another partition I'll create on SATA2.

I heard that the preference is a boot manager that sits in the first track
of the hard drive. I also want something that executes FAST and is simple
to configure.

I've heard about Acronis (which I read is somewhat slow) and GAG. Does
anyone have any recommendations/config advice?

Any help most appreciated.

JS

I have used XOSL for several years. It will work with any OS and each OS can
reside on any disk and on any partition (primary or logical). It's free but
it requires a 15 MByte partition for itself, which can be on any disk. Note
that XOSL does *not* modify the boot environment of your various OSs in any
way. It simply lets you select an OS, then passes control to the chosen OS.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Monday, October 05, 2009 11:14:37 AM, and on a
whim, John Smith pounded out on the keyboard:

Hi, I was hoping someone could suggest a good boot manager for a dual boot
system comprising XP and Win 7 (and possible Solaris / Linux in the future)

I previously installed Win 7 whilst in my XP session. This polluted my XP
system as it wrote Win 7 boot files to my XP partition. I don't want any of
that funny business. So this time I decided to placed each OS on a separate
SATA drive.

Configuration is as follows:

Motherboard: Abit NF7-S 2.0
SATA1: XP Pro SP3
SATA2: Windows 7 (Build 7600)

At this stage I have just been physically unplugging/booting the respective
HDD's.

I think my motherboard/bios is too old for that F12 boot trick I've read on
the forums. I also might be interested in installing Solaris (or some
flavour of Linux) in the future on another partition I'll create on SATA2.

I heard that the preference is a boot manager that sits in the first track
of the hard drive. I also want something that executes FAST and is simple to
configure.

I've heard about Acronis (which I read is somewhat slow) and GAG. Does
anyone have any recommendations/config advice?

Any help most appreciated.

JS

Hi John,

I used to use Boot Magic to manage my 5 OS's until I wanted to install
Win7. I then moved to GAG which works well. It also has a floppy option
to run that way if you like. And it was easy to configure.

I had to set the Win7 partition Active for the install AND hide my XP
partition in order to stop Win7 from putting its crap on the XP
partition, since they both reside on the same hard drive. Notes I had
read online prior to installing said all that was needed was to set the
Win7 partition active, but after three failed attempts, I was able to do
it by hiding XP.



Terry R.

 

[John Smith]

Thanks everyone for the information. On recommendations, I'm now looking
into XOSL and GAG as they are also commonly referred to in my readings.

I think my issue is that my config is as follows:

Disk1 (PATA) : Data
Disk2 (SATA1) : XP
Disk3 (SATA2) : Windows 7

I have noticed that by default, boot managers tend to modify the MBR on
Disk1. However that is just my PATA data disk. I guess I will have to unplug
the PATA drive prior to allowing a boot manager to modify any MBR.

At this stage I am using Boot-US. I have it loaded on a floppy drive which
is set to boot first (in BIOS). Has a simple ASCII selection screen that
loads blazingly fast. I just dont want to do any writing to any MBR as I
have had problems in the past. Will take on everyone's recommendations and
do some reading before writing to MBR

Cheers,
JS

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

Thanks everyone for the information. On recommendations, I'm now looking
into XOSL and GAG as they are also commonly referred to in my readings.

I think my issue is that my config is as follows:

Disk1 (PATA) : Data
Disk2 (SATA1) : XP
Disk3 (SATA2) : Windows 7

I have noticed that by default, boot managers tend to modify the MBR on
Disk1. However that is just my PATA data disk. I guess I will have to
unplug the PATA drive prior to allowing a boot manager to modify any MBR.

At this stage I am using Boot-US. I have it loaded on a floppy drive which
is set to boot first (in BIOS). Has a simple ASCII selection screen that
loads blazingly fast. I just dont want to do any writing to any MBR as I
have had problems in the past. Will take on everyone's recommendations and
do some reading before writing to MBR

Cheers,
JS

Yes, XOSL puts its own code into the Master Boot Record so that it knows
where to find the loader. Restoring the MBR is child's play. Here is one
method:
- Boot the machine with a DOS boot diskette, e.g. from www.bootdisk.com.
- Type this command: fdisk /mbr

That's all! And contrary to popular opinion, this works regardless of the
type of partitions you have (FAT/NTFS) because the MBR is independent of the
file systems.

 

[John Smith]

Yes, XOSL puts its own code into the Master Boot Record so that it knows
where to find the loader. Restoring the MBR is child's play. Here is one
method:
- Boot the machine with a DOS boot diskette, e.g. from www.bootdisk.com.
- Type this command: fdisk /mbr

That's all! And contrary to popular opinion, this works regardless of the
type of partitions you have (FAT/NTFS) because the MBR is independent of
the file systems.

Thanks for the reply.

I had a hell of a time trying to fix the MBR on a previous set up. I
installed Win7 whilst in an XP session. Then deciding to uninstall Win7
which was a bit of a pain as Win7 wrote boot files to the XP partition. Then
installed Ubuntu with its GRUB. Tried to get rid of Ubuntu by booting the XP
CD and going to recovery console and typing FIXMBR. But since my
motherboard's sata isnt recognised by the XP CD had to load the driver from
floppy. FIXMBR didnt work. This and that happend. It turned into a mess. Had
to restore XP from a backup as I couldn't get in.

You mentioned that you use 'fdisk /mbr'. I was using 'fixmbr'. Is there any
difference between the two? There is also a 'fixboot' command. Actually, i
should google search this

Will read further into XOSL. Thanks again!

JS

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

Thanks for the reply.

I had a hell of a time trying to fix the MBR on a previous set up. I
installed Win7 whilst in an XP session. Then deciding to uninstall Win7
which was a bit of a pain as Win7 wrote boot files to the XP partition.
Then installed Ubuntu with its GRUB. Tried to get rid of Ubuntu by booting
the XP CD and going to recovery console and typing FIXMBR. But since my
motherboard's sata isnt recognised by the XP CD had to load the driver
from floppy. FIXMBR didnt work. This and that happend. It turned into a
mess. Had to restore XP from a backup as I couldn't get in.

You mentioned that you use 'fdisk /mbr'. I was using 'fixmbr'. Is there
any difference between the two? There is also a 'fixboot' command.
Actually, i should google search this

Will read further into XOSL. Thanks again!

JS

Fdisk.exe is a DOS command. Fixmbr and fixboot are Recovery Console
commands. Unfortunately you cannot use fdisk.exe for a SATA disk unless you
have a SATA driver for DOS (which is unlikely). Furthermore, unless the
author of XOSL has updated his boot loader, you can probably not use it on a
SATA disk.

 

[John Smith]

You mentioned that you use 'fdisk /mbr'. I was using 'fixmbr'. Is there

Fdisk.exe is a DOS command. Fixmbr and fixboot are Recovery Console
commands. Unfortunately you cannot use fdisk.exe for a SATA disk unless
you have a SATA driver for DOS (which is unlikely). Furthermore, unless
the author of XOSL has updated his boot loader, you can probably not use
it on a SATA disk.

Ok thanks for the clarification. Ever since going SATA its been one pain
after another. PATA was simple and easy. I'll just continue using boot-us
from my floppy drive until I can find and alternative solution.Thanks again

 

[BillW50]

In John Smith typed on Wed, 7 Oct 2009 01:27:46 +1000:

Ok thanks for the clarification. Ever since going SATA its been one
pain after another. PATA was simple and easy. I'll just continue
using boot-us from my floppy drive until I can find and alternative
solution.Thanks again

I bought 7 computers in the last three years and not one of them uses
SATA drives. I avoid them like the plague. I do have one SATA drive. But
it is in an enclosure and plugged in by USB. And so far I don't have any
issues with them connected up this way.

 

[Paul Randall]

I have used XOSL for several years. It will work with any OS and each OS
can reside on any disk and on any partition (primary or logical). It's
free but it requires a 15 MByte partition for itself, which can be on any
disk. Note that XOSL does *not* modify the boot environment of your
various OSs in any way. It simply lets you select an OS, then passes
control to the chosen OS.

Hi, Pegasus

I've been meaning to play with XOSL for a while, and have read a lot of
stuff about it; one thing that concerns me is that development stopped in
about 2001. Hard drives back then were tiny compared to today's drives, and
I haven't seen anything that says what, if any, hard drive size limits there
are. I did read something about its being able to exceed an 8-GB
limitation, but I'm wondering if it can handle 1.5 TB drives? I have a
Compaq machine whose BIOS makes SATA drives look like IDE, and I'd like to
know how much success people have had using XOSL with large drives.

-Paul Randall

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

Hi, Pegasus

I've been meaning to play with XOSL for a while, and have read a lot of
stuff about it; one thing that concerns me is that development stopped in
about 2001. Hard drives back then were tiny compared to today's drives,
and I haven't seen anything that says what, if any, hard drive size limits
there are. I did read something about its being able to exceed an 8-GB
limitation, but I'm wondering if it can handle 1.5 TB drives? I have a
Compaq machine whose BIOS makes SATA drives look like IDE, and I'd like to
know how much success people have had using XOSL with large drives.

-Paul Randall

Sorry, I don't know. If I had a large drive then I would give it a try - it
only takes a few minutes. I would do this:
- Create a 15 MByte FAT partition at the far end of the large disk.
- Install XOSL in that partition.
- Add a disk with a pre-existing WinXP installation.
- Add this WinXP instance to the XOSL selection menu.
- Test it.
- Create a 20 GByte logical partition near the far end of the large disk.
- Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
- Use robocopy to copy the WinXP installation from the second disk to the
logical partition on the first disk.
- Disconnect the second disk.
- Add the cloned WinXP instance to the XOSL menu.
- Test it.
Warning: XOSL does not have many safeguards. It can easily wipe out existing
partitions if you make a wrong choice. You should play with it using a
throw-away disk until you're fully familiar with its operation.

 

[Paul Randall]

Sorry, I don't know. If I had a large drive then I would give it a try -
it only takes a few minutes. I would do this:
- Create a 15 MByte FAT partition at the far end of the large disk.
- Install XOSL in that partition.
- Add a disk with a pre-existing WinXP installation.
- Add this WinXP instance to the XOSL selection menu.
- Test it.
- Create a 20 GByte logical partition near the far end of the large disk.
- Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
- Use robocopy to copy the WinXP installation from the second disk to the
logical partition on the first disk.
- Disconnect the second disk.
- Add the cloned WinXP instance to the XOSL menu.
- Test it.
Warning: XOSL does not have many safeguards. It can easily wipe out
existing partitions if you make a wrong choice. You should play with it
using a throw-away disk until you're fully familiar with its operation.

I'm away from home right now but I do have an unused 120 GB drive with me
that I might slip into my laptop and a UBCD4Win boot CD. After reading
http://www.buildorbuy.org/bioslimits.html, I'm thinking that it is worth
playing with. Thanks for the testing procedure. I think I have all the
necessary software tools with me to do this testing.

What is the largest hard drive you have used XOSL with?

-Paul Randall

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

I'm away from home right now but I do have an unused 120 GB drive with me
that I might slip into my laptop and a UBCD4Win boot CD. After reading
http://www.buildorbuy.org/bioslimits.html, I'm thinking that it is worth
playing with. Thanks for the testing procedure. I think I have all the
necessary software tools with me to do this testing.

What is the largest hard drive you have used XOSL with?

-Paul Randall

80 GBytes.