Need a bootloader, any ideas

[eepunk]

I was a bit worried about trying out Vista but the dual boot situation did a bit to ease my mind but I ran into some problems.

The first install worked well, or at least seemed to.

I found the partition I'd set, wasn't big enough so I booted back into MCE and used partition manager to expand it.

Unfortunately this borked my Vista install, so I re-installed. Now I have two options on the bootloader menu to start Vista, and no option to start MCE.

Does anyone know of or can recommend a bootloader that will detect my installed OS's and be easily configurable?

E.E.

[Astrotoy7]

EE! I really think you should know more about Vista's bootloader....it is quite configurable

to quote Gatesy.com

Windows Vista introduces a new boot loader architecture; a new firmware-independent boot configuration and storage system called Boot Configuration Data (BCD); and a new boot option editing tool, BCDEdit (BCDEdit.exe). These components are designed to load Windows more quickly and more securely.

The traditional Windows NT boot loader, Ntldr, is replaced by Windows Boot Manager (Bootmgr.exe) and a set of system-specific boot loaders. In the new configuration, Windows Boot Manager is generic and unaware of the specific requirements for each operating system, and each system-specific boot loader is optimized for the system that it loads.

see the full article here im sure it will contain you answer

It sounds like you're just going to need to get into vista bootloader and fix it

I think this is how you do it:
<vista drive letter>:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe
Add a /? to the end to know all the commands etc.

If you hane no luck here try msbetas.org great forums.

good luck
Astro

ps. check ur pms

[nogga]

Originally Posted by eepunk

Does anyone know of or can recommend a bootloader that will detect my installed OS's and be easily configurable?

I had a few problems awhile back and used a program called vistaboot pro. Fixed the problem and even I found it relatively easy to use although the suggestion in the previous post seems quite straight foward.

[eepunk]

As Nogga said, Vistabootpro.

Great little prog, did the trick without issue and was extremely simple to use.

E.E.

[Astrotoy7]

Originally Posted by eepunk

As Nogga said, Vistabootpro.

Great little prog, did the trick without issue and was extremely simple to use.

E.E.

nice work. noted for future reference

Though in recent travels have discovered that anything vistabootpro achieves can be done within vistas bcdedit.... as long as you use it right

When Vista goes live on my HTPC, this wont be an issue for me. Nice to know though, in case I get a clients who insists on twiddling

cheers
Astro

[benneh]

no more fiddling with boot.ini is a good thing, as a little incorrect syntax could render a computer unbootable (not to mention unless locked down correctly can be deleted by non privileged users!)

but, dual booting with linux is something MS don't and probably never will support, even though the linux bootloaders fully support MS.

[philzgr8]

Personally I have always used Powerquest Partition Magic for configuring dual boot systems and it has its own configurable bootloader. I'm sure there are other solutions and I'm not sure if it will support Vista yet but I quite like the way it works. Every time Microsoft has come up with a generational OS upgrade I have dual booted for the first few months to give M$ time to issue service packs and I've found that a pretty good way to learn the new OS. Once I'm happy I can just delete the old OS's partition, expand the new one into the unused space and disable the powerquest bootloader.