Hi All,
Listen, before I get you all ticked off at me, I just want to say that I really appreciate your help with my prior situation - Grav!ty, you DID help me to find out why I could not get XP and Vista to want to boot together. As it turns out though, I do not think I ever really needed your program at all for anything except "naming" the operating system what I wanted - and I could have used a simple text editor to do so...

So, not to *beep* in your cornflakes, but... when I boot my machine, which has 5 different operating systems on it, VBP recognizes NONE of them except Vista and ONE instance of XP (but I have 2 separate XPs). I understand that VBP is designed for Vista only compatibility, but I really have to know... can the user add a boot for LINUX, old DOS, Windows 3.1 or 95, etc... or anything else other than XP with Vista using your program - and does that XP entry have to first be recognized by the new Vista OS? Is there a hierarchy? Or is it simply Vista, and whatever Vista may or may not have picked up as your old OS while installing itself? Somehow I can't help but feel like someone had a blindfold on when this thing was put together - and it bothers me...

Plus, can VBP scan and/or search for other OS installations and add them to your multiboot? It seems like I can "add" OS entries all day long, but VBP won't change the behavior of the boot process (except the text entry for the named OS -> GREAT! So I have 5 Operating Systems - they are all named here when I boot my machine!!!, but when I select one, it does nothing but go back to POST!!!) - nor will it recognize anything other than what Vista tells it to... does it do more than just edit text entries to rename your installed OS to what you want to see it named as? Not to be sarcastic, but that does seem to be all it does...
Thank you in advance for any helpful information in your responses and I hope this doesn't stir up too much sh-t...

I've gotten some great help here from you all, but I'm just curious after working with some real situations here... I'd like to know what to expect from your endeavors, like my LINUX installation that does NOT want to work with your boot program, and vice-versa...

Happy New Year all and please don't take this as an attack on your product or your hard work - it may simply be that I am blind and did not read where I needed to... it wouldn't be the first time...

Justin B.

ej_blackburn,

First of all let me say that VistaBootPRO is more than a text editor but most individual users will not go beyond those simple means for their own sake. This is the main feature of the program due to inexperienced users not knowing what to do or possibly they don't even have a clue when it comes to boot orders or how to edit the boot manager. Now for your questions.

ej_blackburn wrote:

So, not to *beep* in your cornflakes, but... when I boot my machine, which has 5 different operating systems on it, VBP recognizes NONE of them except Vista and ONE instance of XP (but I have 2 separate XPs). I understand that VBP is designed for Vista only compatibility, but I really have to know... can the user add a boot for LINUX, old DOS, Windows 3.1 or 95, etc... or anything else other than XP with Vista using your program - and does that XP entry have to first be recognized by the new Vista OS? Is there a hierarchy? Or is it simply Vista, and whatever Vista may or may not have picked up as your old OS while installing itself? Somehow I can't help but feel like someone had a blindfold on when this thing was put together - and it bothers me...

It sounds like you are trying to install OS's after you have installed Vista. As stated in one Vista Installation Guide it is always recommended to install the older OS first and work towards the newer one. Currently VBP does not support other OS's (Linux, MAC) but we are working that issue. You can easily "Add OS's" under the Manage OS Entries screen using Windows Vista or Window Legacy options. The Window Legacy option only support XP and again we are working this issue as well. In the next version we will add support for Windows 95 and newer.

ej_blackburn wrote:

Plus, can VBP scan and/or search for other OS installations and add them to your multiboot? It seems like I can "add" OS entries all day long, but VBP won't change the behavior of the boot process (except the text entry for the named OS -> GREAT! So I have 5 Operating Systems - they are all named here when I boot my machine!!!, but when I select one, it does nothing but go back to POST!!!) - nor will it recognize anything other than what Vista tells it to... does it do more than just edit text entries to rename your installed OS to what you want to see it named as? Not to be sarcastic, but that does seem to be all it does...

VBP does not automatically change anything in your BCD Store. This is for the users security and is unethical not only in the computer world but also the programmers stand-point. This is a long held standard between all programmers and VBP will never go against that. However, if you click on the "Diagnostics" menu and then select "Run Diagnostics" it will search your BCD Store and add entries into your BCD Registry that have been lost. However, again, these are already there but for some reason are not visible to the user. VBP will just make them visible to the user again.

Now, when your PC is automatically rebooting back to POST then it is going to be a misconfigured drive. This is something that we have been working on and trying to figure out why Vista does this to other OS's. When you add a legacy entry it will automatically add the \ntldr path. We are currently adding support for other configurations. Something to check is to make sure that all the entries have the correct drive and to make sure that ntldr, ntdetect are on the correct drives.

I hope this somewhat gives you and idea of how to maximize your VBP experience, if it doesn't then let us know and we are always opened for suggestions. Also, if I misunderstood any of your questions just let me know.

Thanks,
Jason

For users comfortable using the command line, AND who are familiar with both bcdedit.exe and bootsect.exe and the various commands one can call using those two applications, there is no need for a program such as VistaBootPRO. By the way renaming entries on the Vista boot menu is not possible using a "simple text editor".

Perhaps you have the ability to use bcdedit.exe and bootsect.exe ej_blackburn, but the majority of Windows Vista users do not. The vast majority of users of VistaBootPRO have found it useful and it is a utility which has a role to play for most Vista users and in particular those booting Vista together with other versions of Windows.

More than a year ago we identified quite correctly that one of the major issues Vista users would have is in coming to terms with the new Vista bootloader and Boot Configuration Data store.

In the year or so that VistaBootPRO has been in development we have become used to all sorts of attitudes towards what we are doing and in one case theft of our application. We will not let the negative criticisms we fully expect from some and other challenges presented along the way, sway us from our development path, objectives, and where we intend to take the application. We are not too proud to learn from such criticism though, and even to be guided by it to some extent. All input to what we are doing is welcomed and taken into consideration by us

ej_blackburn wrote:

So, not to *beep* in your cornflakes, but... when I boot my machine, which has 5 different operating systems on it, VBP recognizes NONE of them except Vista and ONE instance of XP (but I have 2 separate XPs).

This last sounds like half glitch half change --- change-wise, the BCD store of Longhorn/Vista lumps all previous Windows versions into a single line ; glitch-wise, you may have some logical partitions present in your hard drive environment, but this can cause installing Vista to change the boot environment so that the data in your boot.ini file may no longer point to the correct partitions. This is NOT a bug in VistaBootPRO, it is a change in the behaviour of the Windows pre-boot environment.

Careful editing of boot ini rdisk and partition numbers (using trial and error, failing any better method) can in certain cases restore full 2k/XP/2k3/Vista multi-booting (in cases where I/O errors during LH/Vista setup create LH/Vista boot files elsewhere than in the current Windows boot partition, the method won't work so easily).

ej_blackburn wrote:

I understand that VBP is designed for Vista only compatibility, but I really have to know... can the user add a boot for LINUX, old DOS, Windows 3.1 or 95, etc... or anything else other than XP with Vista using your program - and does that XP entry have to first be recognized by the new Vista OS? Is there a hierarchy? Or is it simply Vista, and whatever Vista may or may not have picked up as your old OS while installing itself?

Info we have about multi-booting XP, Vista, and Linux can be found HERE :

http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=78184

I'm guessing that adding the pre-NT versions of Windows would require similar procedures (via GRUB).

Personally, I'd be VERY happy if a future version of VistaBootPRO included GRUB multi-booting capabilities, but it was probably hard enough at the time for the coders to get it doing the basic NT/LH multiboot job that is ESSENTIAL without having to worry about GRUB at the same time...

ej_blackburn wrote:

Somehow I can't help but feel like someone had a blindfold on when this thing was put together - and it bothers me...

Hmmm ... no comment ...

ej_blackburn wrote:

Plus, can VBP scan and/or search for other OS installations and add them to your multiboot?

That's AFAIK a non-trivial programming task, although ideally it's a great idea

The scanner would need to be able to use very precise criteria of what constitutes a valid Windows setup, of whichever generation of Windows, and not just look for the presence of however many arbitrarily pre-defined files and folders --- failing which, it might automatically damage or trash your system

...

As for non-Windows setups, well ... of course it's possible, but from experience, sounds like a programming nightmare...

...

Or have I misunderstood, and you're volunteering ??

ej_blackburn wrote:

It seems like I can "add" OS entries all day long, but VBP won't change the behavior of the boot process (except the text entry for the named OS -> GREAT! So I have 5 Operating Systems - they are all named here when I boot my machine!!!, but when I select one, it does nothing but go back to POST!!!) -

Earlier versions of Windows continue to be managed by your boot.ini file --- Linux continues to be managed by GRUB --- these facts exist outside VistaBootPRO which is still essentially a NT/LH multi-boot management tool ; although I personally sympathise, and share your hope that future versions of VBP will be able to manage BCD, boot.ini, and GRUB as you would desire.

I personally don't understand GRUB, but it could be great if those that do could get the GRUB management capabilities into the VBP

Having spent a lot of time with VistaBootPRO I know where you are coming from. Windows Vista uses BCD while XP and down uses something different (is it NTLDR?). VistaBootPRO only can edit BCD and since BCD only supports Windows OSes... Your Linux installations are not compatiable with BCD.

But GRUB (or LILO) can be placed in front of the Windows Bootloader they can be used together. (Grub - VistaBootLoader - Windows XP or Vista)

And VistaBootPRO is not a simple text editor. Perhaps you would like to try editing the BCD store yourself: http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=79102 . Its no walk in the park.