gHacks technology news » boot-loader http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:26:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Windows Boot Manager http://www.ghacks.net/2008/09/20/windows-boot-manager/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/09/20/windows-boot-manager/#comments Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:38:49 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=7130 Many users shy away from installing multiple operating systems on their computer because of problems that can arise in the boot sector. Some operating systems like to replace the existing boot information with their own which would mean that the user would have to find a way to replace or add those boot information again so that all operating systems would show up when booting the computer.

Windows boot manager Boot-US is a universal boot manager that can boot many operating systems properly including all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 to Windows Server 2008, MS-Dos, Linux, Free BSD, VMWare and several exotic operating systems like Oberon, Novel-DOS or QNX Realtime Plattform.

The boot manager itself can be installed in the MBR (Master Boot Record), the primary partition or on disk. The latter being an excellent way of testing the boot manager before installing it on the hard drive.

Other interesting functions of the Windows boot manager are (Windows because it is a Windows application):

  • Support for hard disks up to 2048 GB (2 TB)
  • Allows booting beyond the 8 GB limit
  • Partitions can be created, deleted, activated and hid
  • Password protection for boot manager and configuration program
  • Command-line and GUI version
  • True hiding of partitions

During program start the Windows boot manager is displaying the discovered partitions and the existing operating systems. It is important to make sure that the information that are displayed are correct before installing the boot manager. The user should also consider making backups of the list of partitions and boot sectors to be able to revert back if the installation of the boot manager goes wrong in any way. Those are just precautionary measures.

After that the user should install the boot manager to a floppy disk first if one is installed on the computer system. Most modern computers come without a floppy disk drive. Those users can check out the Copy and run Floppy Boot Disks from USB to add the boot manager to an USB device and boot the computer system from that device to be able to test the boot manager. Make sure to select Do not change partitions IDs in step four of the boot manager creation.

When the test is going through without errors the boot manager can be installed on the primary partition or Master Boot Record. The software developers recommend to install the boot manager in the primary partition if possible.

The Windows Boot Manager Boot-US was tested on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system without difficulties.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/09/20/windows-boot-manager/feed/ 8 How to Repair the Vista Bootloader http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/15/how-to-repair-the-vista-bootloader/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/15/how-to-repair-the-vista-bootloader/#comments Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:23:38 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/15/how-to-repair-the-vista-bootloader/ I encountered a problem after I installed Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux next to my Windows XP operating system. Ubuntu and XP were loading fine but Vista was showing an error that it could not load a file which made me think that the bootloader was trying to access Vista on the wrong partition. Vista unfortunately has a new location where the boot information are stored, it is called BCD Store.

I first tried editing the boot.ini but did not find an entry for Vista in there. After searching the internet for about half an hour I discovered many forum entries about the problem that I faced and finally a link to a program called Windows Vista Boot Pro, a freeware which displays the boot information in Windows XP and the option to edit the entries.

The first tab of the Vista Boot Pro displays the boot information that are stored in BCD Store. My previous assumption proved correct because there was no drive assigned to my Vista operating system which was strange. I switched to the Manage Os Entries and created a new entry for Vista with the correct drive letter. I also deleted the old non-working one.

After that I rebooted the machine and was able to load Vista without problems. I hope that everyone who encounters Vista boot problems will find this tool as well. As Borat would put it: It is nice..

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