Multibooters - Dual/Multi Booting With Vista

The information here is offered in good faith and I cannot accept responsibility for misuse that leads to loss of data or damaged hardware. There are any number of ways that the slightest mistake in procedure could trash a system. If you have a mission critical OS that you cannot restore, or have data that is not fully backed up, then you should not be thinking of installing another operating system.

Vista Quirks and Bugs
A brief summery of the issues that it is worth being aware of before you install Vista. A few are just annoying, but others can lead to lost partitions and data.

Installing Vista
How and when Vista decides to configure its own bootmanager with other OSes on the computer. What changes are made to another Windows OS and how to reverse these changes. How to install Vista as a fully independent OS without its bootmanager being placed inside another Windows install.

Vista's New Partitioning Rules
Details on the new partitioning scheme and how it can cause problems with dual/multibooting and imaging and cloning.

Vista's MBR Disk Signature
The Disk Signature is now an integral part of the Vista boot process and so needs to be maintained, particularly when imaging or cloning to other hard drives.

bootmgr and BCD
An examination of how the bootmgr and BCD files operate and how they find the OS to be booted. The disk signature and the offset of a Vista partition are crucial to their operation.

Cloning Vista
Solutions to the problems of cloning or moving Vista to other partitions or drives.

BootManagers
Details on the third-party bootmanagers I've tested so far with Vista.

Vista Boot Floppy
How to make a Boot Floppy that works for Vista.

Understanding the Multiboot Process
A straightforward and comprehensive introductory guide to the boot process in general and the Vista dual/multiboot method of operation. Goes on to cover how to avoid the pitfalls of the Microsoft way of multibooting and how third party bootmanagers operate.

System and Boot Partition
Just a brief explanation of what the Windows System and Boot partitions are and how to determine which is which.

Links Page
A few links to apps mentioned on the site.

I’m sorry but this site is not intended as a How-To guide on the subject of dual/multibooting or imaging and cloning. I don’t have the time for that so my main aim is to just try and offer useful information about Vista that I have not seen elsewhere. I have kept everything as non-technical as possible and tried to provide some introductory material, but there are numerous things I might not explain, usually because that information is readily available from other sources.