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Which boot manager for Win 7 x64-based system, based on your experienc


x509

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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.

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grub4dos.

http://reboot.pro/forum/66/

http://reboot.pro/14/page__st__1

http://reboot.pro/5187/

For the simple reason that (unless you want to) needs not to be installed to the MBR or PBR, but it can be chainloaded by either the NTLDR/BOOT.INI or BOOTMGR/\boot\BCD.

Without a DETAILED report on how you plan to setup your system (partitions, their type, size and filesystems used) it is difficult to give you a senceful advice about how it would be more handy to set it up.

jaclaz

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grub4dos.

http://reboot.pro/forum/66/

http://reboot.pro/14/page__st__1

http://reboot.pro/5187/

For the simple reason that (unless you want to) needs not to be installed to the MBR or PBR, but it can be chainloaded by either the NTLDR/BOOT.INI or BOOTMGR/\boot\BCD.

Thanks you. I'll need to spend some time reading these pages.

Without a DETAILED report on how you plan to setup your system (partitions, their type, size and filesystems used) it is difficult to give you a senceful advice about how it would be more handy to set it up.

jaclaz

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.:rolleyes:

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I hope that this explains better what I'm trying to do. Thanks in advance.:rolleyes:

Sure :), and you have a wise :thumbup 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 :ph34r:):

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/

Particularly:

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/system.html

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/articles/windows_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

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I hope that this explains better what I'm trying to do. Thanks in advance.:rolleyes:

Sure :), and you have a wise :thumbup 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 :ph34r:):

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! :D has tested a whole bunch of boot managers. Here is his full list. Note that grub is not on the list:

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,

:no: 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

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[

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,

:no: I 'm going to believe him.

We can remove the guesses, BTW all or most of them plainly wrong :ph34r: 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)

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?

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 :thumbup ) it's your choice. :)

JFYI:

http://www.winimage.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3231

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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[

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,

:no: I 'm going to believe him.

We can remove the guesses, BTW all or most of them plainly wrong :ph34r: 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)

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?

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 :thumbup ) 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.

:yes:

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X509's post is valuable information. I read the Multibooters site thoroughly nearly a year ago, when I migrated from Win2000 and boot.ini to Win7, then tried GAG and OSL2000. The latter, OSL2000, is vastly superior to all the others. I have used OSL 2000 now for over 6 months, starting with the free version. But that version will drive you nuts waiting for the ever-increasing (designed to annoy you) pause when booting with the (if you want to eliminate this delay/annoyance, buy the paid version) message.

So I paid the $39 or so, and haven't looked back. Run multiple Win7 and 4xLinux distros, plus DOS (don't ask why). Never failed me, and the fact that it quickly (1-2 seconds) rescans the whole disk at boot, ID'ing new OS's for you, is a definite plus. Just remember to install Linux loaders (eg., Grub 1/2, LILO, etc) to the root partition, so they will be picked up by OSL2000. I probably test 2-3 new distros/month, and no probems to date. PS. You will have a LOT less problems, and more flexibility re: portability, etc., if you do NOT have the 100 mb "win 7 boot" partition but, instead, have it as a directory within each Win 7 install. Easily avoided when initially setting up partitions on fresh disk.

I did not put XP on the system, since I was worried about the bad (disappearing partitions) interaction with Vista/Win7 noted on Multibooters. I also did a DD (dd if=/dev/sda of=/trac-reg.bin bs=32256 count=1) of the Superblock where OSL2000 installs everything, then did a restore of it, to test, and everything worked fine. So that's invaluable if something trashes the superblock.

One thing. I notified the Multibooters author that you will never get support from OSL2000 author. Maybe corporations will, but not mere mortals. Fortunately, everything works without problems.

YMMV

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X509's post is valuable information.

Thanks. B) B)

I read the Multibooters site thoroughly nearly a year ago, when I migrated from Win2000 and boot.ini to Win7, then tried GAG and OSL2000. The latter, OSL2000, is vastly superior to all the others. I have used OSL 2000 now for over 6 months, starting with the free version. But that version will drive you nuts waiting for the ever-increasing (designed to annoy you) pause when booting with the (if you want to eliminate this delay/annoyance, buy the paid version) message.

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.

So I paid the $39 or so, and haven't looked back. Run multiple Win7 and 4xLinux distros, plus DOS (don't ask why). Never failed me, and the fact that it quickly (1-2 seconds) rescans the whole disk at boot, ID'ing new OS's for you, is a definite plus. Just remember to install Linux loaders (eg., Grub 1/2, LILO, etc) to the root partition, so they will be picked up by OSL2000. I probably test 2-3 new distros/month, and no probems to date. PS. You will have a LOT less problems, and more flexibility re: portability, etc., if you do NOT have the 100 mb "win 7 boot" partition but, instead, have it as a directory within each Win 7 install. Easily avoided when initially setting up partitions on fresh disk.

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 did not put XP on the system, since I was worried about the bad (disappearing partitions) interaction with Vista/Win7 noted on Multibooters. I also did a DD (dd if=/dev/sda of=/trac-reg.bin bs=32256 count=1) of the Superblock where OSL2000 installs everything, then did a restore of it, to test, and everything worked fine. So that's invaluable if something trashes the superblock.

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). :o I have no idea why, but I'm telling my work colleagues to stay away from this company's products.

One thing. I notified the Multibooters author that you will never get support from OSL2000 author. Maybe corporations will, but not mere mortals. Fortunately, everything works without problems.

YMMV

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. :whistle: 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.

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Just to highlight how the idea that for using grub4dos is in any way "much more work necessary" is not actually true (for the very simple chore of hiding one or more paritions) here is a sample menu.lst that covers an hypothetical system with a single disk with three primary partitions on it, each with an operating system that is supposed to NOT see the other two partitions:

title First partition
hide (hd0,1)
hide (hd0,2)
unhide (hd0,0)
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title Second partition
hide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,2)
unhide (hd0,1)
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

title Third partition
hide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,1)
unhide (hd0,2)
root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

Last command:

chainloader +1

can be replaced by

chainloader /bootmgr

in the case of a Vista :ph34r: or Windows 7

And, though I personally recommend to always establish root, it is not strictly *needed* (at least not for a NT based system) , so the two commands:

root (hd0,n)

chainloader +1

can be replaced by either:

chainloader (hd0,n) +1

or:

chainloader (hd0,n)/bootmgr

Maybe it's because I do know a bit about grub4dos syntax, but it does seem to me like rather intuitive. :unsure:

jaclaz

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@X09:

Do you need a Linux loader if you aren't planning any Linux installs?

No. Any loader needed for an OS that you install just goes in the partition of an install, so if no Linux partition/OS, then no other loader/s needed. And, no, I didn't try BootIT NG, based on Multibooters' comments. The thing I like about OSL2000 is it's rescan of all partitions at boot time. Adding new OS's is a snap, and all that's usually necessary is to make sure that install/partition has a loader of some type in it. Then, when OSL2000 boots, just interrupt the screen that appears briefly telling you what partition/system is will default to (if not interrupted), and choose your partition from the list OSL2000 presents.

The sequence is: Post > MBR (when installed, OSL2000 puts its MBR in Track 0 where the usual MBR would be, plus another 27K of code consisting of all its tables and logic and user settings, etc; IOW, OSL2000 is totally contained in Track 0, nowhere else). There are no "OSL2000 directories" required in one or more directories on your hard disk ... nada ... zip ... zilch.

assume you are referring to the 100 MB SYSTEM RESERVED partition as the "win 7 boot" partition. What did you call that directory?

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.

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@X09:

assume you are referring to the 100 MB SYSTEM RESERVED partition as the "win 7 boot" partition. What did you call that directory?

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.

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Just to highlight how the idea that for using grub4dos is in any way "much more work necessary" is not actually true (for the very simple chore of hiding one or more paritions) here is a sample menu.lst that covers an hypothetical system with a single disk with three primary partitions on it, each with an operating system that is supposed to NOT see the other two partitions:

title First partition
hide (hd0,1)
hide (hd0,2)
unhide (hd0,0)
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title Second partition
hide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,2)
unhide (hd0,1)
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

title Third partition
hide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,1)
unhide (hd0,2)
root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

Last command:

chainloader +1

can be replaced by

chainloader /bootmgr

in the case of a Vista :ph34r: or Windows 7

And, though I personally recommend to always establish root, it is not strictly *needed* (at least not for a NT based system) , so the two commands:

root (hd0,n)

chainloader +1

can be replaced by either:

chainloader (hd0,n) +1

or:

chainloader (hd0,n)/bootmgr

Maybe it's because I do know a bit about grub4dos syntax, but it does seem to me like rather intuitive. :unsure:

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. :realmad: And as a boot manger, it's quite complicated, probably more complex that grub4dos, in fact. :no: So mea culpa :angel 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. :yes:

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