Booting partition on external hard drive

[WizardOfWoz]

I know in XP is was possible to use the 'chainloader' command to pass control to the mbr of another partition.

Is this possible with the Vista/7 boot loader, and if so, how?

[jaclaz]

I know in XP is was possible to use the 'chainloader' command to pass control to the mbr of another partition.

Is this possible with the Vista/7 boot loader, and if so, how?

Let's make a deal.

If you post how you use the 'chainloader' command in XP to pass control to the mbr of another partition, I'll show you how to do it under Vista :ph34r:/2008/7.

jaclaz

[WizardOfWoz]

I know in XP is was possible to use the 'chainloader' command to pass control to the mbr of another partition.

Is this possible with the Vista/7 boot loader, and if so, how?

Let's make a deal.

If you post how you use the 'chainloader' command in XP to pass control to the mbr of another partition, I'll show you how to do it under Vista :ph34r:/2008/7.

jaclaz

C:\SUSE.MBR="openSUSE 11.3"

[jaclaz]

C:\SUSE.MBR="openSUSE 11.3"

Good.

There is NO 'chainloader' command involved and definitely not a MBR of another partition.

That is an entry in BOOT.INI.

It doesn't exist such a thing as "the MBR of another partition", it may exist the "PBR of another partition" (i.e. "bootsector of another partition") or "the MBR of another disk" (that I doubt will work).

It seems like BOOTMGR will read a BOOT.INI contents and add it's entry to the BCD entries (or you can add manually the "legacy" entry to the BCD):

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=12557&st=7

What is not clear is whether it needs a NTLDR also in order to boot an entry (exception made for "arcpath ones").

The safer/easiest would be to add an entry in BCD for grub4dos' grldr.mbr and add it, together with grldr and menu.lst to the drive.

Once in grub4dos you can boot any Linux, using the old (and nowadays deprecated) chainloading of bootsector method or the more elegant and less prone to error direct loading of the kernel and initrd.

Here:

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/install_windows.htm#windows3

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showforum=66

jaclaz