Who is familiar with OS Selector

Until a couple of days ago, I had to remove OSS because it kept screwing up my operating system boots when I restore with True Image. Right now I am doing the selection of OS by manually hiding and setting partitions active with Disk Director. Here is what I have:

OS 1 - Primary Active
OS 2 - Primary Hidden
OS 3 - Primary Hidden

I switch between those three. Now when I install OSS, only OS 1 is correct to boot as C:. The rest show no drive letter and show the (1-3) etc. So if I try to boot from the other two, they won't boot cause they can't find C:. Now all this operating system work fine individually without OSS. Any idea of what I have to do so they all work with the OS Selector? Do I have to unhide all of them prior to installing OS Selector or maybe do something else?

dja2k

 

That is one of the most irritating bugs of OSS and it should have been fixed ages ago.

Yes, you need to unhide all OS partition before you install OSS. Boot from the DD CD and unhide all the OS partitions. Then reboot to the DD CD and install OSS.

When OSS is installed, reboot and it should find your OS's. Check the properties for each and make sure that the correct partition is marked Active and the others are marked Hidden. If you run into the "grayed out checkbox" bug, you'll have to manually edit the bootwiz.oss file to fix it (easy to do, see this thread). Note: You may be able to edit the bootwiz.oss file in your current setup and fix the problem without needing to reinstall OSS.

If you want to avoid the "grayed out checkbox" bug and have another non-OS Primary partition on the disk, set that partition as Active (using DD) before you install OSS. Another option I've used is to create a small Ext3 Primary partition on the drive and set that Active before installing OSS. The idea is not to have any OS partition marked active when OSS is installed. However, you may not have room and fixing the bug is easy.

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If you're going to use OSS, make sure you're using the latest build (2,160) and if you install OSS into Windows, make sure you install the same build into each Windows you install to (you'll run into problems otherwise).

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If you have further problems, please post your bootwiz.oss file. It's very helpful to see it when troubleshooting. (You'll need to make a copy and rename it to bootwiz.txt to attach to the post.)

 

Yes, this is a major drawback of OSS and it is time Acronis alloted some developer time to correct the problem.

One could also use Disk Director "proper" to toggle between your OS's (no OSS) but I found it to be temperamental (requiring repeated 'hiding' and setting 'active' mostly). Once a method is hacked out I find it is an adequate way to toggle between OS's.

It also has problems when restoring an image which may require visits to the recovery console, disk management and back and forth hiding and un hiding to finally get the restored partition to boot up past the welcome screen (this is on my machine but I'm sure it probably happens on other systems, so heads -up and back up if you go the DD "proper" way).

Again, once one has found a method to get DD "proper " to boot a restored image it can be an adequate way to manage multiple OS's ( I would call using DD "proper" a high maintenance way to toggle/ restore [ again this is on one of my HD's set-up with 3 primary OS's and 2 data partitions]).

 

Acronis has mentioned a new build of DD/OSS that will support OEM Vista installations. Hopefully, they'll also fix at least a few of these VERY, VERY OLD bugs. There is no excuse for them to still exist.

 

Thanks I have all my partitions backed up without OSS installed, so let me try this again and if all fails, I am safe. Oh I have four partitions, three OS and one TEMP, do you recommend I put the three OS as primary only and put TEMP as ACTIVE? Also do you install OSS to one of the OS partitions or do you install it in a non-OS partition? I don't really use OSS inside windows, so I probably won't install it or maybe just in my primary partition.

dja2k

 

In my tests, having a non-OS Primary partition as Active when installing OSS from the DD CD let it recognize the OS's correctly. In your case, that would be setting your TEMP partition as Active (assuming it's a Primary partition).

I prefer to install OSS into a non-OS partition because that way I can restore the OS partitions without having it mess with any of the OSS files.

 

Thats exactly what I though and thanks for the help.

dja2k

 

Excellent this worked! Now a few more questions to clear up. I made sure each OS had C: as native OS directory, which they did. So I went and manually ticked the hid button of each other two OS in each. Also do you have to use the OSS "Protect Folder" option in the settings? Also you have to use in each OS the "Force Hidden Partition"?

Now what is the proper way to restore once this OSS is working correctly using True Image, will my restoration change OSS from working correctly. In the past it did, don't know now as I haven't checked.

I am assuming to use True Image, not to use the "default OS" feature or that doesn't matter?

dja2k

 

You don't need to worry about the "Protect Folder" option. It applies to "copies" of an OS. You don't need to use "Force hiding" if you're not using Windows 2000.

Create a backup image of your current OSS setup. (I prefer to have an Entire Disk Image of the setup.) If you need to restore a partition, I think that as long as you restore to the original partition, you shouldn't have a problem with OSS (I've done this before okay).

If you leave OSS installed and it is installed to a non-OS partition, then the OSS files for all your OS's will remain when you do a TI restore of an OS partition.

The default OS is used for the OS you automatically want selected when the OSS boot menu comes up. You can also set a time-out for when the default OS will boot (say after 10 seconds) so it will start without you having to manually select it (say if you just turn on the computer and leave). Personally, I don't use this feature because I always end up missing and then having to reboot to get the OS I want. Besides, the computer boots fast enough that I just wait for the menu and select what I want.

 

Yeah I understand this and I used to use the "default" to immediately boot to my primary OS, just though since I do that, OSS will hide 2nd and 3nd OS and vise versa which could interfier with True Image recovery, since in reality, I set 1st, 2nd, and 3rd to Primary without hiding any.

dja2k

 

It shouldn't interfere with TI recovery. Because the OSS information is still in the non-OS partition, OSS still knows which partitions to hide and which to make active for each OS.

For example: You could boot from your DD CD and unhide all your OS partition. Then reboot to OSS and boot into an OS. OSS knows to hide the other two partitions even though you just marked them as unhidden with DD.

 

So with what you said, when I go into the True Image Recovery CD, will I see all 3 OS partitions that I have or only the Active one that I am booting into which is not hidden?

dja2k

 

My rescue TI10 shows all partitions hidden or not, plus it also shows all unallocated space. It shows this when in restore mode after one reaches where the .tib file backup pane (tree) is.