Where is OSS

I dual boot Vista and Ubuntu and this works flawlessly (says he touching wood) and I'm not about to mess this up. My question however is this - I have seen many posts about OSS on this forum, including the problems people seem to have with this feature but where on earth in DD is it? If I go to the toolbar I can see OSS as an option but it is greyed out. I do have a fully paid for version of DD 10.

 

I usually do a Complete install when I install DD so I don't know for sure if OSS is included in the default option. If the OSS program is installed, it should show up in Start >> Programs >> Acronis >> Acronis Disk Director.

 

Thanks MudCrab, I can always rely on you - yes it's there in all programs. I just usually access my progs from Desktop icons. As I say I can see it but don't know if I am brave enough to install it - given all the negative posts surrounding this application!

 

If you're happy with your current boot manager and it's working correctly, there's really no reason to switch unless you just want to try it.

For what it's worth, I haven't had any problems with OSS and Ubuntu, though I usually install GRUB into the Ubuntu partition's boot sector instead of the MBR since I have several installations and like them separate.

 

Well I took a deep breath and installed OSS - what a hoot that turned out to be. I have two identical 500 gig HD's installed, on the master drive Vista is installed plus the factory recovery image. On the slave drive I have that split into two, one half for backups and the other is used for Ubuntu.

All OSS can see is Linux and Linux 2 - if I look at the drives in detail they are all according to OSS Linux OS labled /dev/hda1 or Ubuntu dev/hdb1 right up to numbers 6. I didn't have the heart to tell OSS that it had got it completely wrong as it looked so pleased with itself I just thought ho hum Acronis has struck again and uninstalled it.

My PC wasn't very happy with the OSS Acronis loader in any event as it had the HD chugging plus noise interference coming through my speakers.

 

Does anyone have any idea why OSS cannot see a Vista installation as it is after all the De Facto Microsoft OS?

 

As previously stated many times, OSS is very picky about detecting Vista (and, in some cases, XP). Acronis has not released an update that provides better detection, though I think some have received a newer build from support. The newer build (if I remember correctly) is supposed to detect Brand-name OEM Vista installations (something the current build often doesn't).

In my opinion, the detection method used is pretty worthless as anyone can look at a partition and see it has Vista installed, but OSS can't. It is very easy to make a change just to the BCD file so that OSS won't find Vista.

Personally, I would like to see an option in OSS to manually add a menu entry to boot a partition regardless of the OS (just chainload). It would be very easy to implement and would solve a lot of problems.

The "chugging" noise happens on some computers and can delay the booting process by a very noticable amount on some systems. I think it sounds like when a drive has a read error and it's attempting to read the sector over and over. I have no idea what causes it or how to stop it.

 

I hear what you say MudCrab but in my case not only has OSS not been able to detect Vista it thinks it's Linux as that is what OSS is saying is on all my drives Linux Linux 2 etc. etc. - quite bizarre. I think the dual boot that I have now on boot up i.e. Ubuntu, Ubuntu recovery, Longhorn safe mode and Longhorn boot is a far better executed programme.

 

OSS does that sometimes. Also, it will sometimes keep "finding" Linux installations every time you reboot even though they already exist.

If you have a system setup that works for you, stick with it.