Should I use BootIt Bm?

I started with two drives, a new one with Win 7 installed, usual way with partition 0 as WinRe and partition 1 as Win 7 OS. Partition 2 is extended, holding two logical partitions D: and E: for data and installs respectively.

Second HDD is a previous XP-pro OS in which partition 0 is the XP recovery partition, and partition 1 is XP OS

I have the two OS's dual booting by using EasyBCD, which simply added XP to the BCD store automatically and all is well so far.

A few days ago I bought the full bundle from Terabyte Unlimited and so far have installed just IFW in Win 7 and also integrated IFW into the windows Recovery Environment. So I can backup anything in Win 7 and can restore anything either in Win 7 or via the TbLauncher boot process to start IFW.

Now the only two minor snags are seeing each OS drive and respective recovery partition from the other OS, which I would rather not see. And my drive letters are not fully compatible.

They are not fully compatible because In Win 7 I can set the data and installation partitions to D: and E: as I want, but this is not possible in the XP boot. The reason seems to be that in XP the WinRe partition on the first drive is visible (despite being a system volume) and gets mapped to drive D: and cannot be changed.

So my question is - would it be worthwhile to install BootIt BM with a view to solving both of the above little irritations, and if I do decide to do that, do I need to do anything to the TbLauncher modification of WinRe (like revert it to normal)? I'm hesitant because I can barely understand the BootitBM manual despite 30+ years in IT !!

 

gbhall, it took me six months.

In WinXP, Disk Management, can you remove the drive letter from that partition and any other partitions you don't want seen in WinXP. Does that help?

Edit....

What size is the WinRE partition? How is it described in Win7 Disk Management?

 

Ref the Win 7 disk management description ---
Volume WinRe, no drive letter, Simple, Basic, NTFS, Healthy (System,active,primary partition), 5.86 Gb, 1.59Gb free

In XP disk management, you can right-click for properties and select 'Change drive letter and paths'. On the form that comes up, the drop-down list box of letters shows just D and will not drop-down any other letters. Pressing the 'remove' button gives a message 'Windows cannot remove the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume'.

Also any partition manager you care to use in either Win 7 or XP just disables (greys out) all options regarding the WinRe partition. Several MS technotes I have found on the web also repeat this thing about not being able to touch the 'system and boot' partition. Pity that XP thinks that too, despite WinRe partition have nothing to do with XP (apart from storing the relevant BCD boot store of course).

This is why I am not at all hopeful that BootItBM can do better, and I am liable to waste a great deal of time finding the truth of that.

P.S. If you check here http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/want-to-de-assign-a-drive-letter.194608/#post-1329106 I have uploaded the XP and Win 7 screens of disk management. (I can't upload on here, it seems.)

 

I can't see your images in that link. It wants me to login.

I'm still trying to understand your system. Without EasyBCD, can you boot each OS via BIOS changes. I assume so and BIBM would have no problems hiding partitions. Or, does each OS boot if the other HD isn't in the computer.

BIBM works with independent OS. No OS sees the others unless you want them seen. You could boot WinXP and see no other partitions at all if that was your choice.

 

Can you try this ? http://www.techspot.com/community/forums/windows-os.15 Or register (free, quick)

yes, each drive has one active, bootable, system partition

I'm sure you're right, but it may get me well tangled up for days - for minimal gain ??

 

It's up to you. I'll help you and it won't take long. BIBM will definitely work. Each OS will see the partitions you want it to see. You can install extra OS if you desire. You can have over 4 primary partitions per HD (200 actually) so multiple OS is possible.

 

I registered. It will be easy to do with BIBM. Does Win98 boot?

 

So you do see my partitions ok now

Win98se does not boot via an entry in Easybcd. It fails with NTLDR not found. I assume this is because the BCD loader is not correctly configured to boot io.sys and so forth. I have not had time to do much on it so far - I wasted far too many hours trying to get it working in VMplayer and VirtualBox. Neither worked, but ye olde dos 6.22 and win3.11 do... It would only be for amusement, and so far, it's not been very amusing.....

 

Yes, I can see your partitions.

BIBM should be able to boot Win98 if it booted in the past.

Edit.. and your DOS etc too.

 

While you are thinking about this, some info on how to make a BIBM CD....

double click makedisk.exe, next
dot in BootIt Bare Metal, next
dot in I accept the agreement, next
select Image for DOS (GUI)
select Scripting Support, next
dot in Mouse Support Enabled, next
dot in VESA Video, next
dot in Video Mode 1024*768 - 64K Colors, next
dot in Normal, next
don't choose any Device Options, next
tick in Enable USB 1.1 (UHCI), next
tick in Align partitions on 2048 Sectors, next
in Additional bootitbm.ini Options put TimeZone=GMT-0, next
enter Name and Product Key, Next
select your CD burner drive letter (you can use a CD-RW or a CD-R disc)
Finish


How to install BIBM (it will be installed into the unallocated space at the end of HD0). Remove all external drives and USB flash drives.

Boot the CD
Setup... Click OK to install BootIt ...
Setup... Put a tick in Change all MBR type drives to EMBR and click Yes to enable support for more than 4 primary partitions
Setup... Click Yes to let setup choose the partition for you
Setup... Click Yes to install to a dedicated partition. No tick in Install to any drive
Setup... Click OK to begin
Setup... Click OK for Setup completed successfully
click Close
Setup... Click OK for the Remove the boot disk and click OK to restart

BM will boot to a Boot Menu
Click Maintenance

Don't do the install yet.

 

If you only want to remove the drive letter there is no need to use BIBM.
Just use commandprompt and diskpart.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757491(v=ws.10).aspx
Follow the instructions after the line:
"Using a command line"

Panagiotis

 

I feel an incentive to give BIBM a try, now you have promised to hold my hand

So far, have created the bootable CD. As instructed, I have not gone further at this time. In particular I have no plans to use more than 4 primary partitions. If I want more OS's to play with, I would probably have an extended partition and add them as logicals, so.....I think I should not enable extra primary partition support just yet.

Thanks for your encouragement so far.

 

And slightly further down....

remove letter= L

Removes the drive letter, L, from the volume with focus. If no drive letter or mount point is specified, then DiskPart removes the first drive letter or mount point it encounters.

The remove command can be used to change the drive letter associated with a removable drive. You cannot remove the drive letters on system, boot, or paging volumes. In addition, you cannot remove the drive letter for an OEM partition, any GPT partition with an unrecognized GUID, or any of the special, non-data, GPT partitions such as the EFI system partition.

 

OK. Let me think about it. You can do it with limited primaries but then you would have to Hide partitions you don't want to see. And that doesn't always work if the OS has seen the partition and given it a drive letter. With Unlimited partitions you don't have the unwanted partitions in the partition table. I highly recommend Unlimited partitions. It is much easier and better. But your choice. It took months before I accepted Unlimited partitions but I'd never use Limited partitions on my systems again. Even if I only had 2 partitions.

Let me know what you want to do. Bedtime for me now.

Edit...You can still use your Logical Partitions with Unlimited primaries.

 

So?
I do not know how you configured your multiboot OS but that volume for your XP shouldn't be neither system nor boot and certainly should not contain paging files.

Panagiotis

 

I don't want it to be anything to do with XP, that's the whole problem - I can't stop it being visible to XP. It is the Windows Recovery Environment partition that any install of Windows 7 creates. It got there before XP was added - by plugging in the old XP drive.

So far as Win 7 is concerned, it is active, bootable, system and hidden, and does not participate in the running of any OS, it is just a boot and recovery device.

But unfortunately, XP knows nought of all that, and seems to accept it as a system and boot partition belonging to itself, which it doesn't.

 

Because WinXP is on HD1 it is booting from the WinRE partition. The WinRE partition is the System partition for WinXP.

 

OK, I see that I think.

Now booting under BIBM changes that situation? The boot partition is then the BIBM partition, which transfers control to the XP partition for NTLDR to continue. XP would then correctly assume it's system and boot partition is XP ? Is that right ? Or would the BIBM partition be the 'boot' and thus take drive letter D: ?

 

When BIBM boots an OS on the second HD it "swaps" the HD so it appears temporarily to be HD0 in the BIOS. Just for the boot. So booting files in the real HD0 aren't needed. WinXP will be the System, Boot partition.

The BIBM partition never gets a drive letter. It's not a recognized file system in Windows.

We could use limited primaries if you like and if it doesn't work change to unlimited primaries. It's just a matter of selecting a box. You can go back and forth between limited and unlimited primaries. It sounds frightening but it is no big deal.

By the way, does boot.ini in WinXP reference partition(0) or partition(1)? That's something we need to know to set up a boot item.

After BIBM is installed it can be Deactivated or Uninstalled. Not that you would want to do this as BIBM is extremely useful as a boot manager.

 

That's fine - let's see what happens with limited partitions and take it from there.
Boot.ini says this
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Which is still working, despite the fact that the XP partition is now the FIRST partition on the second drive. I removed the first (useless XP recovery partition), and so far there is unassigned space where it used to be. Odd. Partition numbers start from 1, drives from 0, so we are seeing a drive swap probably done by easybcd.

 

Removing that partition could create problems. Boot.ini refers to the relative position of WinXP in the partition table, not to the partition slot or the physical position on the HD. WinXP was second in the partition table. Now it is first. Does it still boot?

Edit... You said it still boots. That might be due to BCD Edit. Can you create an empty NTFS partition in front of the WinXP partition and make sure WinXP still boots. Let me know.

 

It makes sense. When you check partition manager, the XP partition is listed second, and simple 'unallocated space' comes first. So as far as BCD is concerned, there seems no distinction between a real partition and empty space. It is counting MBR entries I suppose.

What I will do is slide the XP partition up to the start of the drive, then see if it still boots. If it does not, I'll change boot.ini to say partition(1).

I'll report back.

 

Good idea.

 

No problems to report. Slid the partition to the drive start. XP is now drive 1 partition 1, blank space after. XP booted fine, but quickly reported 'new hardware found....reboot to implement...' which I did. XP still booted fine, yet boot.ini STILL says partition(2) !!! How I know not.

Not going to worry about it. Lets just install BIBM. Your instructions after boot from install CD will leave me at a boot menu, and I am to click 'maintenance'..... then what ?

One question -- I always sleep/hibernate my PC and on pressing the start button, the system reads the bios, but then goes straight into Win 7 (there is no bcd boot menu). I like that, it is so much quicker than a full boot. I hope BIBM does not alter that behaviour ??

 

Time to install BIBM....

Uninstall Easy BCD

How to install BIBM (it will be installed into the unallocated space at the end of HD0). Remove all external drives and USB flash drives.

Boot the CD
Setup... Click OK to install BootIt ...
Setup... Put a tick in Change all MBR type drives to EMBR and click No to not enable support for more than 4 primary partitions
Setup... Click Yes to let setup choose the partition for you
Setup... Click Yes to install to a dedicated partition. No tick in Install to any drive
Setup... Click OK to begin
Setup... Click OK for Setup completed successfully
click Close
Setup... Click OK for the Remove the boot disk and click OK to restart

BM will boot to a Boot Menu

Which OS are present? Win7, WinXP, Win98?

Click Maintenance

Click Boot Edit, Select Win7, Edit
In MBR Details on the right, for HD0 don't hide anything
In MBR Details on the right, for HD1 Hide WinXP, Win98
click OK

Still in the Boot Menu window select WinXP, Edit
In MBR Details on the right, for HD0 Hide WinRE, Win7
In MBR Details on the right, for HD1 Hide Win98
In the left pane (Boot Details), the first Swap choice should be ticked
click OK, OK again.

Click Resume and boot Win7. Are the relevant partitions hidden?

Restart and boot WinXP. Are the relevant partitions hidden?
If you get a hal.dll error when trying to boot WinXP go into Boot Edit, Edit for WinXP and in MBR Details for HD1 use the Move Up/Move Down buttons to put WinXP into the second slot. Have Imaging in the first slot.

Leave Win98 alone for the time being. It's too far into the HD. We can move it later.

Sleep/ Hibernate should be the same.

Questions?