OS Selector won't recognize Vist or XP partition

The basic question here is that after installing OS Selector, it will not recognize either my Windows XP or my Windows Vista partitions on my hard disk. Doesn't even come up as an unknown OS, just fails to detect them at all. When I try to run the manual OS Detect tool and point it to each partition it just says there is no valid OS on that partition.

In the past I've used PartitionMagic 8 and it's BootMagic tool to dual boot multiple XP partitions and XP and Win 98. Always worked flawlessly. I'm building a new computer and the primary OS is Vista (off the shelf, not OEM) but I want to dual-boot XP for some apps that aren't Vista compatible. I've read that PM8 can cause problems with Vista so I'm trialing some other things including DD10 with the OS Selector.

Before trying DD10 I had tried another product called BootIt Next Generation. Worked pretty well but I wanted to compare to DD10. With BootIt I successfully got Vista and XP installed on different partitions on the same hard drive and was able to dual boot between them just fine.

I've got the same PC with the same Vista and XP partitions and just trying to replace BootIt NG with DD10 and OS Selector.

DD10 and OS Selector installed, and I get OSSelector to come up when booting, but it absolutely will not detect either OS at all. To be able to boot back in to Vista I had to boot from the Vista install CD and run the startup repair function on that.

What the heck is OS Selector looking for to decide there's a valid OS on a partition?

Thank you.

 

clh:

I can't help with OS Selector but perhaps you might be interested in an alternative suggestion. What has worked very well for me is to download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and install XP to a virtual machine, using Vista as the host OS and XP as the guest. On my 3-yr old hardware I can't tell the difference between running XP natively and running it in a VM; it's just amazing. This won't be a good solution for games with 3-D graphics, but for standard applications it works very well.

Sorry that I can't help with OS Selector but forum regular MudCrab will probably jump in here later today (he's on West coast time).

 

Actually I plan to do the VM thing too for some things. The main reason I want to also dual boot though is games. I'm not sure all the games I have will run well in Vista, and I'd think for games I'd want to ensure the full performance of running XP raw rather than in a VM.

 

This is one of the problems with OSS. Acronis made it too automatic. If it can't find an OS, it won't setup the entry.

I have also used (and currently have) BING on one of my computers. I haven't run test with switching between OSS and BING using the latest version of BING, but previous tests showed some problems moving from BING to OSS. A wipe of the drive fixed that.

Just so it's clear, these are the exact same partitions that you used with BING. All you did was uninstall BING and install OSS (or did you just install OSS)?

After you did a repair of Vista, I assume OSS still didn't find it (it usually won't).

I really have no idea what Acronis was thinking in how they designed OSS to "find" an OS installation. If a person looking at the partition can tell what OS is installed, you'd think a program could. Perhaps it's looking for a certain sub-atomic particle vibrating at a certain frequency associated with certain versions of Windows...

I do this too. Running games directly from a "real" XP is the way to go. Also, quite a few games still run better on XP than Vista, though Vista support is better than it was a year ago (at least that's my experience).

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How were XP and vista installed?
Were they isolated from each other (XP couldn't see Vista, Vista couldn't see XP)?
Are XP and Vista both on Primary partitions?
Are XP and Vista both on the same drive?

In most cases, XP and Vista can be added manually to the BOOTWIZ.OSS file when OSS refuses to detect them.

Can you post a screenshot of what Disk Management shows for your drives?

Can you also post a copy of the BOOTWIZ.OSS file (instructions can be found here)?

I suspect that if you wiped the drive and started over with OSS that it would detect both XP and Vista properly as it seems to do pretty good with clean installs.

 

Thanks for all the info.

I totall agree on OSS being "too automatic". It's bunch of BS if you ask me. At they very least they ought to provide an advanced function of a manual override of some sort that I can just set it up anyway. I know you said the Bootwiz.oss file but they ought to provide a way to do it in the GUI interface.

Correct, exact same Vista partitions as I had with BING. I did not uninstall BING first, but the way BING works it doesn't really have an "uninstall". It doesn't touch the OS partitions themselves at all. I have BING installed to it's own small partition. That shouldn't affect the XP and Vista partitions. So it's just a matter of overwriting the MBR, which OSS did do (the OSS screen does come up when I reboot the PC, but there's no OS's in it to boot from except the floppy drive).

Correct, after repairing the Vista boot (so it now boots directly into Vista and no longer displays the OSS screen at all), OSS still will not detect Vista (or XP).

To answer your other questions...

Vista and XP were both installed to their own Primary partitions on the same drive (there is only 1 drive) directly using retail off-the-shelf install CD-ROM's. Yes, I had BING set up so it hid the other OS's partition.

Attached is a screen shot of the Disk Director view of the hard drive and the Bootwiz.oss file (as .txt). Oh, don't freak out over the size of the hard drive (40 Gb). This is on a test PC. I wanted to get it sorted out how to set up with the software I wasn't used to (compared to PM before I set up the real PC. The real new PC has a 500 Gb hard drive so plenty of room.

Thanks again!

 

Doesn't look like the attachments to my previous post made it through. Try this.

 

That's what I thought too, but it did make a difference. When running tests and comparing products, it's important to start from the same point. This can mean wiping the drive between products.

I still have a 2GB hard drive laying around (it still works) and several others slightly larger. I still remember my first 20MB drive and how big it seemed at the time and how error-prone it was (I don't miss it).

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Here is the modified BOOTWIZ.OSS file to try. Hopefully, it will work. Note that this will only work on this computer.

Next, since this is a test computer, I would recommend you start over with the drive as you would on the new computer. I would Clear the drive, Wipe it and then proceed to install XP, OSS and Vista. That will be the test you'll want to be successful for when you setup the other computer.

 

Ah, nostalgia. I remember dealing with 10 Mb "sider" drives (or something like that) that were hard drives on an add-in ISA card for PS/2's at work in the early 90's. My first personal computer, a Pentium 66 MHz right when those first came out, had a 540 Mb drive. I remember paying $500 for a 1 Gb drive to upgrade it a year or two later. Then I remember paying about $350 for 13 Gb hard drive in the late 90's. ('Course on that first personal computer I also paid Gateway $400 to upgrade from 16 to 32 Mb of RAM.)

Thanks! This worked like a charm!!! Shame Acronis doesn't just provide a way manually add OS's in the GUI. This will help me figure out how to modify the bootwiz.oss on the real PC in the end if it still doesn't detect them.

Yes, on the real PC I will be starting from scratch on a brand new clean hard drive that's never even been used. Will it really matter which OS I install first? I want Vista as my primary OS so I planned to install Vista first, then DD10 and OSS, then XP.

 

It shouldn't make a difference which is installed first. Just keep them isolated like you did before.

 

Well below is a quote from my most recent post regarding OSS - you just couldn't make it up could you?

 

Well below is a quote from my most recent post regarding OSS - you just couldn't make it up could you?

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=221909

 

MudCrab, quick question on manually editing the Bootwiz.oss file. When you create the entries in the file for the different OS's, each OS has an ID number (as to partitions, disks, etc.).

How do you come up with what that ID number is for an OS? Or is it just random and it can be anything as long as it's 10 digits and not the same as any other ID in the file?

 

The ID just has to be unique. I'm not sure on the length. I usually just grab one from a file I have on hand or copy an existing ID and change a number or two (the last digit or two, for example).

 

Thanks! All the rest of the ID's in the file I was looking at were 10 digits so I was just assuming they all had to be. Although my latest bootwiz.oss has mostly 10 digit ID's but a couple 9 digit ID's on a couple different partitions.