Installing Windows 7 in a separate partition with DD11
Somehow I lost my Windows 7 partition, which was no big deal since I have been using Windows Vista as my main Windows OS for a long while.
I have DD11 and OSS installed.
I have a Windows 7 upgrade installation, but I want to install Windows 7 in a separate partition from Windows Vista. I want to do this so that the Windows 7 upgrade does not see the Windows Vista partition and just installs itself in its own partition as if it were booting the hard drive alone. Then I will reactivate OSS so I can multi-boot from either Windows Vista or Windows 7 ( along with some Linux distros ).
What is the best way to do this ?
I think the best way is to copy my Windows Vista partition into another primary partition on my boot drive, set this drive as the Active partition hiding my original Windows Vista partiton, and then tell Windows 7 to upgrade my current active partition. Is this enough to get Windows 7 to upgrade over my copy and leave my original Windows Vista alone ? Or is there a better method of doing it ?
If installing that way, I would do this: copy the Vista partition, boot to DD and hide the original Vista partition, set the new Vista partition Active. Then make sure the new copy boots okay (boot it and look in Disk Management to verify that the partition is System and Boot). Then go ahead with the upgrade install.
When you have Windows 7 ready, unhide the Vista partition before installing or reactivating OSS.
Unfortunately that did not work. I followed your suggestions above, with OSS disabled. I tried to boot my new partition by setting it Active and my original partition inactive and hidden. The copy of Vista booted but eventually put out a console screen which flashes by so fast it is impossible to read before my machine gets rebooted. This repeats itself each time I try to reboot the copied partition.
I guess next I will try to just install Windows 7 while hiding my other partitions. I will let it choose unallocated space, let it ask ( I hope ) for me to insert my Windows Vista to prove I have a valid copy of Vista, and then hopefully it will install itself again. I will of course back up everything before I start. I would have much rather let Windows 7 upgrade my copied Vista partition, but since I can't boot my copied Vista partition to begin with it seems impossible.
Getting Windows Vista or Windows 7 to install itself and/or boot properly is an incredibly aggravating task.
You can disable the auto-reboot on failed startups by selected that option in the Safe Mode (F8) menu. Then you should be able to see the error stopping the booting.
As far as I know, Windows 7 won't ask for a DVD. Windows has to already be on the drive. Have you tried just doing the upgrade on the Vista-copy partition? You don't have to start the upgrade from Windows. You can boot to the Windows 7 DVD and start it from there. This might work even though Vista-copy doesn't boot properly.
You can disable the auto-reboot on failed startups by selected that option in the Safe Mode (F8) menu. Then you should be able to see the error stopping the booting.
As far as I know, Windows 7 won't ask for a DVD. Windows has to already be on the drive. Have you tried just doing the upgrade on the Vista-copy partition? You don't have to start the upgrade from Windows. You can boot to the Windows 7 DVD and start it from there. This might work even though Vista-copy doesn't boot properly.
Thanks for the note on seeing the error stopping the booting.
When I look at OSS for the copied partition what I see is that the Boot partition is set to my original copy of Vista as C: and that the copied partition is set as the System Partition. How can this be ? Is Windows Vista smart enough to change the setup when you try to boot it by looking at all parttions on a hard drive, even hidden ones, and figuring out that there is another version of Window Vista around which it decides it must boot with ? It really baffles me for I made a complete copy of my original Vista partition. Does Windows boot and BCD actually hardcode some sort of partition identifier as the Boot partition. if this were so it would explain whay my copied Vista still wants to boot from my original Vista partition. When I look at the BCD from within my original Vista using EasyBCD I see:
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=C:
path \bootmgr
description Windows Boot Manager
default {36e9ee06-820b-11e1-b736-d3d724d4b672}
displayorder {36e9ee06-820b-11e1-b736-d3d724d4b672}
timeout 10
resume No
displaybootmenu Yes
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {36e9ee06-820b-11e1-b736-d3d724d4b672}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows Vista
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {2051d6e2-97b3-11e1-bb15-806e6f6e6963}
Are those GUIDs actual partition identifiers somehow ? The one in the Windows Boot manager which says 'Default' and 'Display Order" appears to just point to a particular Windows Boot Loader entry, since it matches the 'identifier' of the single entry. However the Windows Boot Manager 'identifier' and the Windows Boot Loader 'resumeobject' GUIDs are a mystery to me. If I look in DD11 I do not see any GUID identifiers for partitions, but perhaps this is something left out of DD11.
When I look at the BCD for my copied Windows Vista partition it is exactly the same as above. Yet it does not want to boot and OSS is showing me something different which would explain why it does not boot according to OSS ( since my original Vista is hidden and OSS is saying this is the Boot partition ).
I can access and change my copied partiton's BCD from within my original Vista since I can Unhide the copied partition, give it a drive letter, and use EasyBCD to change the BCD store there. So if you understand the BCD store and what I need to do to change it so OSS ( and my copied Vista ) sees the Boot drive as the copied Vista partition and not the original Vista partition, I would appreciate your tellin me what I must do.
It sounds like there could be BCD changes necessary and also maybe the drive letter for the Vista-copy partition isn't correct for Vista-copy.
Can you post a screenshot of what Disk Management shows when booted to the original Vista system?
I haven't used EasyBCD much. Are you actually browsing to the BCD file on the Vista-copy partition and loading it? It should not look exactly the same if it's been adjusted. If it is the same then that's part of (or all of) the problem. What you need to do is set the {bootmgr} device to the Vista-copy partition (it won't be C:) and also set the Windows Vista item's device and osdevice to the Vista-copy partition. For example, if (when booted into Vista-original the Vista-copy partition is assigned F:, you would assign all of these to F:.
After you do that, use DD and select the Disk Layout link in the top-right corner of the DD window. Then select the Vista-copy partition. What drive letter does DD show is assigned to the Vista-copy partition? If it's not C:, change it to C: so it will be C: when it's booted.
It sounds like there could be BCD changes necessary and also maybe the drive letter for the Vista-copy partition isn't correct for Vista-copy.
Can you post a screenshot of what Disk Management shows when booted to the original Vista system?
I haven't used EasyBCD much. Are you actually browsing to the BCD file on the Vista-copy partition and loading it? It should not look exactly the same if it's been adjusted. If it is the same then that's part of (or all of) the problem. What you need to do is set the {bootmgr} device to the Vista-copy partition (it won't be C:) and also set the Windows Vista item's device and osdevice to the Vista-copy partition. For example, if (when booted into Vista-original the Vista-copy partition is assigned F:, you would assign all of these to F:.
After you do that, use DD and select the Disk Layout link in the top-right corner of the DD window. Then select the Vista-copy partition. What drive letter does DD show is assigned to the Vista-copy partition? If it's not C:, change it to C: so it will be C: when it's booted.
I can post a screenshot of Disk Management in my original Vista partition but first I want to respond to your other comments/questions because i am really confused and I hope your answer can straighten out my confusion and I can then understand how BCD works.
I am browsing to the BCD on the Vista-copy partition and loading it with EasyBCD so I can look at it. As stated before the BCD it is the same as the BCD on my original Vista partition.
I do not understand how the (bootmgr) device on the BCD of my Vista-copy is set to the Vista copy partition. You say it will not be C: but when booting the Vista copy partition, certainly the Vista copy partition then becomes the C: drive and I want to have "device partition=C:" for Windows Boot Manager. And that's what the copy shows it to be. If I set it to F:, then when I attempt to boot the Vista copy partiton it will look in its F: drive for the Boot Manager and of course it will not be there. What am I missing about this ?
For my Vista-copy partition's BCD file you want me to set the "device" and "osdevice" to the Vista-copy partition. But again when booting the Vista-copy partition the partition itself will be the C: drive so why would not the "device" and "osdevice" say C: ? Again what am I missing here ?
Finally you say to look at DD. Do you mean from within my original Windows Vista or do you mean at bootup from the bootup CD ? If I look at DD from within my original Windows Vista it only shows a single "Disk layout" for my current original Vista partition. Am I supposed to see more ? I will look at it from the bootup CD when I next boot and tell you what I see there.
Eddie
What you're missing is the fact that the drive letters used in the BCD entries are not absolute. They reflect the letter assigned to the specified partition as reported by the currently booted Windows. You are actually connecting it to the partition not the drive letter. So, when you boot into Vista-original, the drive letter assigned by Vista-original to the Vista-copy partition would be used to reference that partition. When you then boot into Vista-copy, it looks at the BCD and locates the referenced partition and continues. The actual drive letter used for the Vista-copy partition when Vista-copy is booted is stored in Vista-copy's registry, not the BCD file. Does that help clear it up?
Yes, I meant DD in Windows, though it should be the same as the CD version. In some cases, DD will not recognize another Windows because of how strict it is when it looks for them. I suspect it's not seeing Vista-copy because the BCD isn't fixed yet (it's still pointing to Vista-original).
What you're missing is the fact that the drive letters used in the BCD entries are not absolute. They reflect the letter assigned to the specified partition as reported by the currently booted Windows. You are actually connecting it to the partition not the drive letter. So, when you boot into Vista-original, the drive letter assigned by Vista-original to the Vista-copy partition would be used to reference that partition. When you then boot into Vista-copy, it looks at the BCD and locates the referenced partition and continues. The actual drive letter used for the Vista-copy partition when Vista-copy is booted is stored in Vista-copy's registry, not the BCD file. Does that help clear it up?
Yes, I meant DD in Windows, though it should be the same as the CD version. In some cases, DD will not recognize another Windows because of how strict it is when it looks for them. I suspect it's not seeing Vista-copy because the BCD isn't fixed yet (it's still pointing to Vista-original).
But what I do not understand is that when I copied my Vista-original partiton to the Vista-copy partition, it must have copied my BCD file exactly as well as copied the registry exactly. Since it did, and what you say is correct about EasyBCD reporting back the drive letters as they exist now, why when I view the Vista-copy BCD from within Vista-original does it have the drive letters point back to the Vista-original rather than its own boot partition ? This seems impossible unless the boot code which Windows Vista places in the MBR changes the BCD on the fly. Can that really be happening ?
Because the BCD entries point to the physical partition, not the drive letters. The drive letters shown are just there to make it easy for humans. If you take the BCD file and copy it to another location it does not change anything in the file. If the Vista entry is pointing to Partition1 it will still be pointing to Partition1 regardless of what letter Partition1 might be assigned.
For example, if you are booted into Vista and look at the BCD file and it says C: is the booting partition and the Vista partition and then you boot the Vista DVD or Vista Repair and look at the BCD it may have a different letter assignment. Basically, when the BCD entry is looked up to be displayed for a user it finds out which partition it is (Partition1, for example), then it looks up what letter is assigned to that partition, then it displays the letter.
If you're booted into Vista-original and you need to edit the BCD entry for the Vista-copy partition, you would find out the drive letter currently assigned to the Vista-copy partition (F:, for example), tell the BCD entry to use F:, it would find out what partition is assigned F: (Partition2, for example), and set the entry to point to Partition2.
Normally, when a drive is cloned or copied or restored the booting details have to be corrected. This should be taken care of automatically. Apparently, DD didn't make these changes. In those cases, the changes have to be done manually.
If Partition2 is assigned D: and you set a BCD entry to "partition=D:" it is actually telling it to point to Partition2. All I am trying to have you do is set the Vista-copy's BCD entries so they are correct and then see if DD's Disk Layout will let you look at the drive letters for it (you may need to set the Vista-copy partition's drive letter assignment to C:).
If I saw the screenshot I could tell you more specifically what you need to do.
Because the BCD entries point to the physical partition, not the drive letters. The drive letters shown are just there to make it easy for humans. If you take the BCD file and copy it to another location it does not change anything in the file. If the Vista entry is pointing to Partition1 it will still be pointing to Partition1 regardless of what letter Partition1 might be assigned.
For example, if you are booted into Vista and look at the BCD file and it says C: is the booting partition and the Vista partition and then you boot the Vista DVD or Vista Repair and look at the BCD it may have a different letter assignment. Basically, when the BCD entry is looked up to be displayed for a user it finds out which partition it is (Partition1, for example), then it looks up what letter is assigned to that partition, then it displays the letter.
If you're booted into Vista-original and you need to edit the BCD entry for the Vista-copy partition, you would find out the drive letter currently assigned to the Vista-copy partition (F:, for example), tell the BCD entry to use F:, it would find out what partition is assigned F: (Partition2, for example), and set the entry to point to Partition2.
Normally, when a drive is cloned or copied or restored the booting details have to be corrected. This should be taken care of automatically. Apparently, DD didn't make these changes. In those cases, the changes have to be done manually.
If Partition2 is assigned D: and you set a BCD entry to "partition=D:" it is actually telling it to point to Partition2. All I am trying to have you do is set the Vista-copy's BCD entries so they are correct and then see if DD's Disk Layout will let you look at the drive letters for it (you may need to set the Vista-copy partition's drive letter assignment to C:).
If I saw the screenshot I could tell you more specifically what you need to do.
Your very first statement turned on the light and now I understand. Thank you very much. Using EasyBCD I was able to create the correct BCD on the Vista-copy drive and now I am able to boot to it successfully. Next step is to install Windows 7 as an upgrade of my Vista-copy partition, while keeping my Vista-original partition hidden. I assume that Windows 7 upgrade will probably write over the MBR currently used by OSS, but I should be able to reactive OSS from the bootup CD to bring it back and then boot separately into Windows Vista or Windows 7. I will back up all my partitions first anyway.
BTW I notice that if I backup a partition to a GPT drive, there is no way of hiding that partition. At the same time since each GPT partition is distinguished by a GUID it seems as if this is not a problem and does not confuse Vista or cause it to assign a drive letter to it even if it can see it because it is not hidden.