4 replies to this topic

[Grooonx]

This is about cosmetics only.

Years ago, the Linux multiboot loaders were ugly things. The first impression made when a computer is switched on, the multiboot loader appearance is often totally ignored. However, modern-day GRUBS are very good-looking creatures.

In XP, you can play with one or two lines so it greets you with, "Hi, Jack" or whatever you want, and the multiboot loader is—well, not a thing of beauty, but not desperately ugly either. Set for a 3-second display, it's—well, it's okay.

But Windows 7, with its most extremely basic multiboot loader, seems to want people to forget about their alternate OSs just so they don't have to see such an ugly screen. (Hmm. Maybe that's exactly what Microsoft had in mind?)

EasyBCD offers a nice-looking panel via which to modify the bootloader—certainly the EasyBCD devs are aware of cosmetics as well as function—but EasyBCD can't change the fundamental looks of the multi bootloader itself. Can anything? I doubt it, but I'm asking. Seems to me it would be impossible?

Even if a person chained a good-looking GRUB loader onto the front, his system would still be passed onto the ugly-ugly-ugly Windows 7 bootloader in chain-sequence before reaching the tolerably presentable XP multi bootloader (if he had, say, xp32 and xp64 on the same box).

My best guess is that some 5th columnist working for Apple got himself a job designing the multiboot loader for Windows 7.

If cosmetics aren't possible, so be it. I thought you'd be the right guys to ask. Thanks.

[Wonko the Sane]

Even if a person chained a good-looking GRUB loader onto the front, his system would still be passed onto the ugly-ugly-ugly Windows 7 bootloader in chain-sequence before reaching the tolerably presentable XP multi bootloader (if he had, say, xp32 and xp64 on the same box).

Not really *necessarily* needed to pass through multiple levels...

If you use a set of boot floppy images with grub4dos, you can have all the "MS" multiboot loaders set with a single boot options and with timeout of 0.

Some hints:
http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm
http://www.msfn.org/...nd-winxp-64-sp2
http://www.multiboot....uk/floppy.html


Wonko

[Grooonx]

Very cool, Wonko.

For which we might say, "a wonkool solution".

Thank you.

[pscEx]

Just for the record: The current versions of nativeEx_barebone and nativeEX_Win7 contain a MultiBoot option.
You define here what has to be included:

In the PEFactory Control GUI you define MultiBootEx:

And you boot into the Grub4dos menu:

To create an USB pen with the same boot menu, in the PEFactory Control GUI define"Create USB stick" rather than "create ISO", and use the settings of this dialog:

If you check "No prompt to format the drive" (SECURITY FORBIDS THAT!) the USB pen is created w/o any user dialog / interaction.

Peter

[Grooonx]

@Peter, thank you! This is MUCH better—much, MUCH better!!!—than the appearance of the multibootloader that comes with Windows 7.

Excellent!

I do wonder what is the thinking at MS. Such a gigantic, multibillion dollar corporation, and yet it would seem to have spent half an hour maybe to come up with one of the very first visual impressions that many people will have of the OS.

In one respect, it doesn't matter. In another respect—well, I guess Coca Cola never thought the shape of its Coke bottle mattered, either??

I would have thought every possibility of graphic display on each and every possible startup mode would have mattered a lot to MS. Whenever people touch any of the first dozen-or-so entrances into the program, the graphics should suggest a really fine OS. But they surely must have thought about that, and rejected the idea. Seems strange.

(Pardon my musing.) Thanks again.