x509

It's been almost five years, and no replies? I have this same problem. Outlook 2010.

Alternatively, I store no user data under the folder \users\myWindowsID. I store all user data., including downloads, documents I create with MS Office apps, Quicken files, everything, in folders in a separate D (DATA) drive. When, not if, Windows gets messed up, I just reload the OS, apps, etc. Apps like Norton Internet Security self-update anyway.

I have seven systems in my home LAN, no two alike, combination of self-built desktops and purchased laptops from two different vendors, mixture of Win 7 Pro 64 and Win XP. I'm looking for a driver update utility that covers both OS's, is reasonably complete and accurate, with reasonable pricing. Any recommendations? Warnings (to avoid )? Thanks.

I just finished scanning the multiboot sticky, but I didn't find any mentions of UEFI-based motherboards. And I can't find any commercial multiboot products that claim UEFI support. I'm interested in using a commercial product because I spent some time investigating GRUB and found it too much of a hassle just to save $30-$50. In about a month (budget permitting ) I plan to do a MAJOR upgrade to my main system, which runs Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. ASUS P9 X79 Pro, Intel 3930K, 16 or maybe even 32 GB RAM, and watercooled . I organize my storage so that Windows and programs are installed on C: and my data files, music, pictures, downloads, and backup files are on three physical disks with partitions D, E, F, and H. From what I have read, Win 7 is smart enough recognize new devices and automagically install new drivers, so there is no need to re-install Windows. I recently bought an SSD from Corsair that included one-click software to migrate Windows from an HDD to an SSD. I did that for a recent laptop upgrade, and it worked perfectly. So the only real issue is that my current Windows drive is MBR-based. When I upgrade to the new motherboard, which is UEFI, I want to simply plug in my boot drive and data drives. When I do this upgrade, can I still use a multiboot tool like Terabyteunlimited or Boot-US, to multiboot? I like using those tools because I can have totally independent Win 7 (or other) installs. I used an approach described on My Digital Life to install Windows without the extra 100 MB system partition http://www.mydigital...7-installation/ and that worked perfectly. that means that I don't have to edit the BCD file and that each Windows install is completely unaware of the others. So what do I do going forward? My objective is to multiboot a UEFI-based system with "hiding" all boot partitions except the one I'm interested in. I'll freely admit that I have no hands-on experience at this time with a UEFI BIOS.

Great! Aside from trying to use more than four partitions on one drive, I don't think I was trying anything particularly difficult. That is: boot off a selected partition while hiding other partitions. There was a program about 10 years ago from a company called something like "V-comm" called System Commander, that did all this. Of course, this other product didn't work too well. Although I'm an old Solaris guy (used to work at Sun Microsystems), I see the value in "intuitive" GUI-based systems to set options and control actions. BootIT seems to have skipped class the day when they were talking about these issues. Actually, I'd rather deal with a clean, well documented command line interface or scripting system than a GUI-based system that is confusing and doesn't give the user enough information to make intelligent choices. Just my two cents here. Thanks, jaclaz!

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

can be replaced by either: or: Maybe it's because I do know a bit about grub4dos syntax, but it does seem to me like rather intuitive. jaclaz Jaclaz, Time to eat some serious crow and try out grub4dos. Why the serving of crow for dinner? After working with Terabyte's BootIT Bare Metal, it has a second-rate Partition Manager, that doesn't do what I need it to do, and the answers I'm getting from their support feel like a real flip-off. And as a boot manger, it's quite complicated, probably more complex that grub4dos, in fact. So mea culpa for wanting to use the Terabyte product instead of grub4dos. I think I'll use the Easeus Partition Manager in combination with grub4dos. My question:s Can grub4dos also support boot partitions on a second or third HD? Can it deal with logical partitions in an extended partition? Thanks for enlightening me, even if it took a while.

I just started to multiboot window 7 professional by using a boot manager and duplicating my original windows 7 Professional partition. One is my main "production" install and the others are for test purposes. To avoid any confusion, I would like to either add text like "Production" or replace the standard "Windows 7 Professional" text that appears at the bottom of the screen during the bootup process. I'm not interested in changing the screen background or the graphics. How can I accomplish this? Thanks.

Thanks, but this program does not hide partitions. x509

If you don't allow a primary partition for Win7 to create the 100 mb partition, then Win7 install automatically puts it as the "boot" directory in the Win7 install it subsequently creates. What I do, from scratch (eg), is to make P1 and P2 Linux partitions, P3 a NTFS partition, then P4 is the extended. Win7 will automatically install itself into P3, and "boot" will be a directory within that install automatically. burpnrun, Thank you. What you described is quite clear. What do you think of this, I wanted to do 2 win 7 installs, each without creating that SYSTEM RESERVED partition. I create those two Linux partitions, plus an extended partition. Win 7 automatically creates the fourth primary partition and then installs itself there. THEN I delete one of the two Linux partitions and recreate the fourth primary partition. Then I repeat the Win 7 install on that fourth partition. Let me say this. I'm really impressed with all the good info that I have received from everyone here. I really appreciate it and I hope that i can give back as much as I'm getting here.

Thanks. B) B) Did you also try BootIt NG, which was the current version a year ago. It works well enough in the tests I did, but "smooth" and "intuitive," no. That's obviously not where TeraByte Unlimited wants to put their efforts. Ah, good info here also. About the same price as Boot It, probably no coincidence. Do you need a Linux loader if you aren't planning any Linux installs? I assume you are referring to the 100 MB SYSTEM RESERVED partition as the "win 7 boot" partition. What did you call that directory? When you do each Win 7 install, did the installer try to create that SYSTEM RESERVED partition anyway? And then, did you have to copy all the files in that 100 MB partition into the main Win 7 install partition? (I'm just guessing here.) If so, what did you name that partition? I have no choice. I have a business card scanner that is supported only under XP and 32-bit versions of Win 7 (and Vista). I have no idea why, but I'm telling my work colleagues to stay away from this company's products. Lack of support is NOT good. Down the road sometime, Microsoft will release SP 2 for Win 7 and somehow, some way, it will break OSL. I can almost guarantee it. (Back in the DOS days, the rumor was that Microsoft employees were saying, "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." True story? Who knows? ) Again, than you for your feedback.

We can remove the guesses, BTW all or most of them plainly wrong from the equation. Several months ago I contacted the nice guy that runs multibooters.co.uk and pointed him to grub4dos which is NOT GRUB (legacy) and is NOT GRUB 2. but he had no time to test himself the grub4dos . (and AGAIN what I pointed you to is grub4dos AND NOT GRUB) US$ 0 (as in zero, nil) seems to me a better deal, but of course if you like uneedingly spending 40 bucks for the Terabyte thingy (which BTW I can confirm it is a very good bootmanager ) it's your choice. JFYI: http://www.winimage.....php?f=1&t=3231 jaclaz jaclaz, That link you pointed me to was very interesting, and I think that Jakemanjoke thinks the way I do. I also believe in freeware, especially since it's often better and more bug-free than commercial software. But at some point, my time has value. If I'm willing to spend more than I absolutely need to for a really smoking fast system, and yet more to watercool it (so it's also quiet) then at some point it's "Pay the Man the money" to get what you need faster than otherwise. I have spent a lot of time building up this system and more to watercool it, which is OK because I enjoy it. I will enjoy this multi-booting capabilty the faster the better. IF it turns out that TeraByte Bare Metal doesn't meet my needs, or I'm spending too much time getting to work, then it's time for grub4dos. Fortunately you can download TB Bare Metal as a trial download, so if I don't like it, I simply uninstall it and it hasn't cost me anything. I'm not surprised that I was wrong in my guesses. Those were my assumptions, and since I had no real facts to back them it, I came out and called them guesses. In a way, I'm glad that they were wrong. But if I hadn't written all that out, I would have no way to know that they were wrong.

Sure , and you have a wise approach with the separation of data from OS. Problem might be the use of a "main" C: partition hosting your "main" OS. You cannot "hide" it unless you install grub4dos to the MBR. (actually I am lying, there may be ways, but they are rather advanced, but more than that prone to errors as they need "looping") A much better way would be that of having a slightly different setup. Ideally you should have (on first disk) a very small partition dedicated to just the bootmgr and the \boo\BCD (optionally plus the grub4dos files), i.e. recreate the situation of a "standard on pristine disk" Windows 7 install (the INfamous 100 Mb "hidden" partition). This would allow to leave the MBR code the "standard" Windows 7 one. And yes, you need some time to get the basics of grub4dos, and (if you don't already have them) some knowledge of the "standard" way Windows 7 boots. Find it here (just imagine to read Windows 7 instead of Vista ): http://www.multibooters.co.uk/ Particularly: http://www.multiboot....uk/system.html http://www.multiboot...dows_seven.html Take some time on the grub4dos guide and on the above pages, and when you feel like ready, post again, and I'll try to fill the gaps (if any). jaclaz jaclaz, Thanks for the detailed reply. I've been reading some of the grub pages, maybe not all of them, but enough to get the general idea. Based on your message above, I also went over to the multibooters.uk website, an amazing resource that probably should be better known. Or at least I wish I knew about this website before posting my questions. I found a page there that talks about "Vista Boot Managers" here: http://www.multiboot...k/managers.html What's interesting is that this guy, who is very thorough, bless him! has tested a whole bunch of boot managers. Here is his full list. Note that grub is not on the list: XOSL GAG OSL2000 Boot-US Bootmagic Paragon Boot Manager Acronis OS Selector BootIT Next Generation I don't know why grub is not on the list, but I'm going to guess that in order to hide partitions, there is much more work necessary with grub than with any of the ones he has tested. And I'm also going to guess that he has figured that since these boot managers are less than $100, that it's simply not worth his time to compare grub. That's only a guess, of course. However, this webpage answers a lot of my questions, and raises points that I wasn't aware of. Specifically, I didn't know that Vista/Win 7 has a restore-from-hibernation issue for OS partitions on drives other than Drive 0, and that some boot manager do not handle this issue properly. Wow, that's very good to know, but who would be aware of that issue in advance? What I really like is that his analysis confirmed my own very bad experience with Acronis OS Selector,:no:so when he says that you should stay away from Paragon Boot Manager, I 'm going to believe him. So by a process of elimination, it looks like I'm going to spend the $40 for BootIt Bare Metal and figure out how I can have separate boot menu items for each Win 7 install. This is a pretty good deal, since the license allows up to 3 installations, and also includes a partition manager as well as a boot manager. See http://www.terabyteu...-bare-metal.htm So I still have some questions about how to implement BootIt Bare Metal. What would be the right subforum here to post those detailed questions? x509

Yes, learning is FUN! No question about that. I'm not doing any of this just to save money. I got a reply saying that this subforum was the one in which to ask questions. I'm more than happy to see my other thread, the one in which I have posted full details, moved to the most appropriate forum or subforum. I'll admit, I'm sort of new here, because I haven't been very active. This set of forums has an amazing set of resources, and I want to both contribute and to tap into the resources. x509

Thanks you. I'll need to spend some time reading these pages. Sure. Four physical drives. Drive 0 is 320 GB, for OS installs only. That way, a complete OS blowup or a major hardware/software upgrade, doesn't affect any of my data or my music and photos. When I built up a new system recently, I simply moved Drives 1-3 into the new case. Drives 1-3 are 1 TB each, with an extended partition and multiple logical partitions, all filesystems NTFS. On Drive 1, I keep all my data on Drive D: Music goes in E: and that's also where I have my iPhone backups, iTunes libraries, etc. Drive F: is Photos (and eventually movies). On Drive 2, Drive G: is my disk-to-disk backup for Drive C: images, and drive D: backup (with software that only backs up adds/deletes/changes). This is a different physical drive from all my data, so that a mechanical failure doesn't take down both my data partition and backup. Drive 3 is for my software downloads for drivers, for software that has been purchased with online download only, plus software that I've downloaded to try out, and user manuals. When I was still running Win XP, I did all my customization work, drivers, slipstreaming, etc, to build up a custom image for installs. Drive 3 is actually an external USB drive, so I can move it easily from system to system. On my 320 GB Drive 0 C: drive, let's say that once formatted I have about 300 GB. My production Win 7 x64 partition is 100 GB, more than I need now, but that's OK. In the remaining 200 GB, I would like to have at least 2 Win 7 partitions for experimentation, trying out software for comparisons, etc. Let's say that these partitions could be 40-50 GB each, and if I need to clean out old stuff, I could just restore an image of the OS as installed, and start all over again with new experiments.. In the remaining 100 GB, I could install a Linux distro and maybe even MacOS for learning purposes. I'm an old Solaris user, and I might even do a Solaris X86 install just for grins. One of my objectives is that all the OS partitions except the active one are hidden by default. I tried BCDeasy (I think that's the name) and it doesn't let me do this partition hiding. I hope that this explains better what I'm trying to do. Thanks in advance.

I want to multi-boot my system, so that I'm not always experimenting with new software or new drivers in my "production" system. My production system is Win 7 Professional x64. I know that Microsoft changed the boot process starting with Vista, and continued that with Win 7. My goals are to have at least 2 Win 7 partitions, an XP partition (for old hardware), and maybe Linux or even MacOS (who knows?) for playing around. Also, it is important that whatever OS partition I've booted into, that all the other OS partitions are hidden, so I don't run into subtle Windows issues when Windows sees multiple OS's installed. I keep all my data, all my music and photos, etc., plus-disk-to-disk backup, in separate partitions spread across 3 other drives in my system. I would like to keep these partition letters, e.g. D: for Data, the same, regardless of which OS I've booted (except for Linux of course). I'm looking for the collective wisdom of everyone in the forums. I've done a bit of experimentation with Acronis OS Selector (in Disk Director Home), BootIT Bare Metal, and a Paragon disk suite, after doing installs of Win 7. All three products presented me with a boot menu with one selection. That selection then booted into the standard Windows Win 7 menu that you get with multiple OS installs. I would need a way to have each Win 7 listed as a separate boot menu item. I've ruled out Acronis OS Selector because when I uninstalled it, it really trashed my system. Fortunately it was a test system. Not only did I lose ALL my Win 7 installs, but the extended partition on a USB-attached drive was completely trashed. This drive had hundreds of MB of download trial software, user guides, web page downloads, etc. To Windows, the drive was completely empty, and I had to use a very powerful tool, Active Disk, to actually recover the partitions. So I'm wondering if you guys have had experience with BootIt Bare Metal or Paragon's disk suite in "real life" situations. BootIt Bare Metal can create more than four primary partitions on a drive. Do you guys use that feature? I've also discovered that I could install Win 7 Pro to a primary partition on a second hard drive. In practice, is that advisable? Thanks in advance.

I am building up a new system around an Intel i3-540 with 8 GB RAM, lots of disk that is being carried over from my current system, etc., and I want to have several Win 7 partition, One for production and at least one more for testing out new software or drives, etc. Plus an XP partition, and maybe even Linux. Which is the best forum to ask about people's experience with the products on the market like BootIt Bare Metal, Paragon, Acronis, etc. Or any others I may have overlooked? I'm really new to this board, so I don't have a good sense of where I should do this post. Thanks.

Been away for a long time, but I'm now getting started with Windows 7. Back in the Win XP days, I used nlite to build a customized, silent install for Win XP, and that has been a HUGE timesaver for me whenever I have had to re-install Win XP on my main desktop system. I was disappointed to see that vlite apparently doesn't support Win 7. I am about to install Win 7 Ultimate on one of my laptop systems, and I'm not sure which is the best utility for this purpose, since there is more than one. I'm looking for a utility that has the same (or better) functionality as nlite and is also STABLE! In your experience, which utility would best meet my needs? Ideally, this utility will also allow me to automatically include the serial number for different systems (I have four now, possibly six in the future), as well as selecting diffent options for different target systems. I'm also interested in doing a silent, unattended install for all the simple utilities like WinRAR as well as the monster packages like MS Office or Adobe Creative Suite, but not necessarily at the same time as I'm installing Windows. Which utility would you recommend for this purpose.

Thanks. I'll check it out. x509

Every time I rebuild one of my systems, I have to spend several days, it seems, reinstalling all kinds of utilities and apps, mostly with serial numbers. For a lot of these apps, the install process includes selecting which options to install. Probably the worst of the worst is MS Office. Geez Louise, it can take 20 minutes just to click on all the install options for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. And usually you have to enter a serial number somewhere in the process. I know that there are several utilities that claim to create one CD (or ISO file) that can contain lots of these apps and do a silent install. I'm asking the guys in this group which ones they recommend, are are there any that I should just stay away from. As with my other posts, thanks in advance for your replies. I have to say this. I think that nlite is one of the greatest utilities I have ever come across, the way it has made my PC life easier. This is a great forum. x509

I'm willing to spend a few bucks for a service that gives me a program that I can download, which would identify all the drivers on my system that need to be updates. But I don't know which of these services are good and which are just rip-offs. Can anyone make any suggestions (or warn against the bad ones!) Thanks in advance. x509

I'm kind of a newbie-plus in this area, so I hope I'm not asking a really stooopid question. When I built up an unattended XP install using nlite, I found that for many of my devices, I had to run an install program off of the manufacturer's CD. Is there some way that I can back up all the installed drivers, including the inf files, once they have been installed, so that I can store all these drivers somewhere? Then I could slipstream all these drivers in and speed up my next install. Or, is there some way that I can just "expand" the manufacturer's setup.exe and capture all the driver files that way? An advantage of this approach is that if I do driver updates, I can incorporate those updated files into my install CD. Right now I'm running Win XP, but I'm planning to build up a system in a few months to run Windows 7 64-bit. Would the best approach or utility be different for each OS? Thank you in advance. :hello: x509

I downloaded the latest version of WPI Wizard, including all the various options. Then Norton Internet Security 2008 started to give me warnings about a serious threat that could not be removed automatically, the CDswitch.exe file inside tools.rar. Has anyone else gotten this message? Any real solution, aside from simply deleting this executable? Has anyone had their system infected by this "virus?". Here are some details: The NIS 2008 contains the following entry: Risk category: Virus Overall Risk Impact: High Performance: High Privacy: High Removal: High Stealth: High Click for more information about this risk : Downloader Action taken: Removal failed Affected Areas: [cdswitch.exe] inside of [f:\software\windows post-install wizard\tools.rar] On the Symantec website (here http://securityresponse.symantec.com/secur...101518-4323-99) there is more information. Here is the summary tab contents: Discovered: June 8, 2001 Updated: February 13, 2007 11:50:11 AM Type: Trojan Horse Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows XP Downloader connects to the Internet and downloads other Trojan horses or components. Note: Virus definitions dated June 1, 2006 or earlier may detect this threat as Download.Trojan. ProtectionInitial Rapid Release version June 11, 2001 Latest Rapid Release version April 19, 2009 revision 049 Initial Daily Certified version June 11, 2001 revision 007 Latest Daily Certified version April 19, 2009 revision 024 Initial Weekly Certified release date June 13, 2001 Click here for a more detailed description of Rapid Release and Daily Certified virus definitions. Threat AssessmentWildWild Level: Low Number of Infections: 0 - 49 Number of Sites: 0 - 2 Geographical Distribution: Low Threat Containment: Easy Removal: Easy DamageDamage Level: Low DistributionDistribution Level: Low Writeup By: Gor Nazaryan x509

Then this reason is "egg-zacketly" why I was having problems slipstreaming directly to SP3. Since my desktop system was down, I have been using my laptop, which is a Lenovo ThinkPad with an Intel CPU! So we have a Catch-22 here. Once my desktop system is up and running, I can create a new install CD slipstreamed to SP3. But first I need to get that system up and running! x509