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Multibooters - Dual/Multi Booting With Vista




Links to Apps Mentioned on the Site.




Ultimate Boot CD
Everyone should have this in their tool box. One useful function is that you can add your own virtual floppy to the CD so you can still run floppy only apps if you don't have a floppy drive in your computer.



EasyBCD
Little app that gives a GUI interface to editing the Vista BCD file. Most useful if you are using the Windows bootmanager for dual or multibooting, but may have a few options that could be useful for people with third party bootmanagers. Can add Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD to the Microsoft bootmanager.



VistaBootPro
Another GUI app for editing the BCD file, similar to EasyBCD.



Partition Table Editor  -  ptedit.exe and ptedit32.exe
Small app supplied with Partition Magic that lets you view and edit partition tables and boot sector parameters. The DOS version is ptedit.exe, where as ptedit32.exe runs in Windows 2K/XP. Both can be aquired seperately from Symantec.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/ptedit.zip

To get ptedit32 to run in Win9x download this file and extract PQVXD.vxd and place it in the same directory as ptedit32.exe
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/vfd_folders.exe
Thanks to Ed for this tip.



MBRWizard
Small command line utility that can backup and restore the MBR. Can be run from Floppy, CD or within Windows. Has several other useful options, including changing or setting the Active partition and hide/unhiding partitions. Can now also read and write to the disk signature, allowing you to change or restore it.



HxD
Great free hex editor that runs inside Windows and includes raw disk editing, so you can see and change/restore your MBR Disk Signature.



PTS-Disk Editor
View and edit your Disk Signature from DOS. Thanks to Starman for the tutorial and for hosting the download.






Home     Installing Vista    BootManagers     bootmgr and BCD    Vista Quirks and Bugs
     Vista's New Partitioning Rules     Vista Boot Floppy    Vista's MBR Disk Signature
Understanding the Multiboot Process     System and Boot Partitions       Cloning Vista

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