A couple questions about OS Selector

Discussion in 'Acronis Disk Director Suite' started by theholygod, Aug 30, 2008.

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  1. theholygod

    theholygod Registered Member

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    Hi

    I've been dual booting Vista and XP for quite a while now (although I never use Vista) and the startup screen that loads Vista in 30 seconds if I don't intervene has started to annoy me.

    I decided to look up boot loaders and came across the Acronis OS Selector demo.

    My first problem is that my USB mouse doesn't seem to work in the Selector, can this be fixed?

    My second problem is that after the Selector is shown, I still get the usual Windows boot loader. Is there a way to disable/remove that?

    I've only actually used the loader once, so I'm hoping it doesn't do the disk check every time as one of my drives is damaged and the errors just keep telling me what I already know!

    Chris
     
  2. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Chris:

    It sounds like you have a typical Microsoft dual-boot setup wherein you installed XP first followed by Vista second. So the boot files for both operating systems are probably in the XP partition.

    If this is the case then OS Selector won't be of much help. You would need completely independent installations in isolated partitions that are hidden from each other in order to do what you want with OS Selector. It can be quite messy to "untangle" the two operating systems to make them independent, but it can be done. Forum member MudCrab has written a guide for doing this.

    But here is an alternative suggestion. If you usually boot to XP then why don't you make it the default OS choice in the boot manager? Also, you can set the timeout to be shorter so that the menu doesn't remain on-screen for as long.

    To do this, boot into Windows Vista and go to the control panel. Click on "System", then on the "Advanced" tab, then on the "Settings" button and change the settings for the boot manager as shown in this figure. Make XP the default and make the timeout shorter, perhaps 3 sec:

    boot.PNG
     
  3. theholygod

    theholygod Registered Member

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    Thanks loads Mark, I will do this shortly.

    I've also decided not to use Acronis OS Selector simply because when I tried to turn on my computer just now I needed to use Windows recovery to fix the MBR.

    I was thinking of formatting my Vista partition and installing openSUSE Linux. Am I going to have to do this in a specific way in order to not mess up my booting order?

    I tried installing Ubuntu a few years ago and it booted first even though I had installed it to a secondary partition.
     
  4. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Chris:

    If you delete the Vista partition and use it for another purpose then just remember that you're now booting the machine from the XP partition, but the Vista boot manager is installed in the XP partition and will still be in control, so don't be surprised when you still see a Vista boot screen.

    You can use MudCrab's guide to delete the Vista boot manager from the XP partition and return to using the XP boot manager, ntldr, if you want.

    Most Linux distributions today will use GRUB for a boot manager. When you install OpenSUSE you may be given a choice of where to install GRUB. If you install to the MBR then it will manage the booting for all of your operating systems. If OpenSUSE puts itself as the default OS to boot (it probably will) then you can edit the GRUB menu file to change that. Post back if you get to that point - it's a simple matter to change the boot order by editing a text file.
     
  5. theholygod

    theholygod Registered Member

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    I followed your tips on getting XP to boot by default, works perfectly. Thanks a lot.

    It's probably going to take me a week to download openSUSE but I will be sure to follow the other guide when I get ready to install it.

    Thanks again
     
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