My dual boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Domey
  • Start date Start date
D

Domey

apparently went ok. I decided to leave the Partition Magic setup and install
Vista x86 to the new partition. Vista apparently had no problem with it. .
..however. . .during boot, when the select boot screen loads, my choices are
listed as

"Microsoft Windows"
"Microsoft Windows"
I had to boot and re-boot just to determine which selection was x86 or x64!
Surely that could have been better implemented. Is there a way to edit that
for less ambiguity?
 
Domey said:
apparently went ok. I decided to leave the Partition Magic setup and
install Vista x86 to the new partition. Vista apparently had no problem
with it. . .however. . .during boot, when the select boot screen loads,
my choices are listed as

"Microsoft Windows"
"Microsoft Windows"
I had to boot and re-boot just to determine which selection was x86 or x64!
Surely that could have been better implemented. Is there a way to edit
that for less ambiguity?
Click to expand...


Probably. Consult the documentation that came with your boot manager,
Partition Magic.


--

Bruce Chambers

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Thanks, I will do that. But what does the boot screen have to do with
Partition Magic?
 
You can edit your boot.ini (that's what it used to be) you will find two
lines each having the "label" you see on the menu. You can edit or add to
this label as you wish.

Actually the lines may be so long that they are compacted over several
lines, but you will have the number of lines corresponding to the number of
items you see on your boot menu.

Tony. . .
 
Tony said:
You can edit your boot.ini (that's what it used to be) you will find two
lines each having the "label" you see on the menu. You can edit or add to
this label as you wish.

Actually the lines may be so long that they are compacted over several
lines, but you will have the number of lines corresponding to the number of
items you see on your boot menu.

Tony. . .
Click to expand...

No, that won't work if Vista is the boot manager, as I believe it is in
this case. It doesn't use NTLDR and BOOT.INI. It uses a Boot
Configuration Data (BCD) store, instead, and it cannot be edited in a
text editor like BOOT.INI could. There is a command-line editing
program, BCDEDIT.EXE, included with Vista, which is arcane and to be
avoided by all but the most savvy of users. To edit the boot process --
names of the operating systems, specifying the default OS, and setting
the wait time before proceeding without input -- get a copy of
VistaBootPRO here http://tinyurl.com/fs9ll .

Ron
 
Ok, I got VistaBootPRO, installed it and ran it, edited the choices to read
"Vista x86" and "Vista x64. I closed the program and now i get a bluescreen
msg when i boot up.
 
Ok, I got VistaBootPRO, installed it and ran it, edited the choices to read
"Vista x86" and "Vista x64. I closed the program and now i get a bluescreen
msg when i boot up.
Click to expand...

Man, it's difficult to understand how an editing program could do
that. It worked nicely for me. I renamed "Older version of Windows"
to "Windows XP" without any glitches.
I'd contact the authors of VistaBootPRO to ask for an explanation.

I'm inferring from your statements that you have ONLY the two versions
of Vista on this machine, right? I think that no matter what you do,
Vista setup is going to give you two dual-booting operating systems
with the same name. After you reinstall, if that's what you end up
doing, there's a command-line editor called "BCDEDIT.EXE" in the
Windows folder. You can run it in a command window with the /? to get
an idea of what you can do with it -- i.e., you'd type "bcdedit.exe
/?" at a DOS prompt to see a [somewhat confusing] explanation of the
switches and parameters. You may have better luck with it than you
did with VistaBootPRO.

VistaBootPRO and BCDEDIT.EXE are the only two methods I know for
changing the names that appear on your dual boot menu. It may be
easier to just memorize which version is listed first.
 
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