Booting but referencing BCD on wrong partition.

I swear the BCD is what gives me the most grief when restoring Windows 7!

Anyway, I've got a working Windows 7 on HD0,2 and a working XP on HD0,0 and I've just restored a True Image Win7 backup to HD0,1. I'm preparing this for a HDD which only has two Primary partitions plus a Secondary data partition.

All of them boot fine from grub4dos and the Win7 in question is using the following:

title Win7 (hd0,1)
hide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,2)
unhide (hd0,1)
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

This shows a Win7 boot menu with one option (I haven't got round to setting it to skip yet) and then boots correctly. However, if I run EasyBCD or go to Control Panel - System - System Properties - Advanced System Settings - Startup and Recovery Settings, it shows the five entries I have in the BCD for my other Win7 installation on HD0,2. So what I need to do is make this Win7 install only look to HD0,1 for the BCD, not anywhere else as I imagine it will cause problems when restored to another HDD which doesn't have a Win7 on HD0,2.

I'm hoping there's a fairly simple way to do this with EasyBCD as if I have to use the Win7 Repair CD then it resets the MBR and might affect my other Win7 install as well. If someone can show me how to fix this, it will come in handy in future because I always seem to run into this problem when restoring Win7, certainly on systems with more than one Win7 partition.

Oops. sorry for the double-post, my connection was glitchy. Please delete one of the threads if you like

Turns out that EasyBCD and Windows settings look to the Active partition for the BCD, so I added makeactive to the grub4dos entry and that's sorted it

@doveman
Whilst I'm sure that EasyBCD is useful, what about using the command line tool BCDedit. diddy put together a useful guide for bcdedit - http://reboot.pro/11513/.

It's easy to script bcdedit to target a different bcd store so that you don't have to mess around with changing the active flag on your partitions.

Regards,

Misty

It's easy to script bcdedit to target a different bcd store so that you don't have to mess around with changing the active flag on your partitions.

It's a internal bootmgr feature: search BCD store at active partition.
Bcdedit cann't change this behaviour.

Yes, If you use different bcd files at different partitions, change active partition.

It's a internal bootmgr feature: search BCD store at active partition.
Bcdedit cann't change this behaviour.

Yes, If you use different bcd files at different partitions, change active partition.

Or use a third party boot loader such as Grub4dos. I'll have to retest at some point, however I usually set my Windows partitions to be self contained (os and boot files in same partition) and hide other os partitions. I don't recall having any issues with other BCD stores in this case. In fact my active primary partition does not contain a BCD store - just grub4dos and various PE's.

I was thinking more of editing a BCD store when I suggested using bcdedit. The issue will then be cloning a system (+BCD store), which largely depends on the methods used.

Regards,

Misty

EasyBCD is "easy" .
Other tools (including BCDedit) are less "easy", but obviously more powerful. (in any case using the /store switch of BCDedit doesn't seem to me that much a complication)

A list was given here:
http://reboot.pro/7476/

Personally (and for a number of reasons I wish not to discuss) I would not have EasyBCD anywhere near any of my systems and use when needed BDEdit or jianjulin's nice thingy .


Wonko

Or use a third party boot loader such as Grub4dos. I'll have to retest at some point, however I usually set my Windows partitions to be self contained (os and boot files in same partition) and hide other os partitions. I don't recall having any issues with other BCD stores in this case. In fact my active primary partition does not contain a BCD store - just grub4dos and various PE's.

I was thinking more of editing a BCD store when I suggested using bcdedit. The issue will then be cloning a system (+BCD store), which largely depends on the methods used.

Regards,

Misty

I am using grub4dos but it still needs me to set the partition active with makeactive, even with the other partitions hidden (obviously WIn7 doesn't respect the fact that they're hidden and refers to the BCD store on the hidden but Active partition anyway).