Boot Manager Unavailable

[Basie]

I have WinXP and Win7 in a dual boot. Then I added a few Linux Distros, Yoper, Fedora and PCLinuxOS. Using Grub as bootloader. Everything is working fine. Except when I want to change the order or default in the Win7 Boot Manager the boot.ini file is non existent. Is that
because Grub and Boot Manager don't get along very well?

 

[ViRGE]

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. but Windows 6.x doesn't use a boot.ini file. The Windows 6.x bootloader (BCD) uses a separate database in /Boot.

As for GRUB, its configuration file is usually located on a Linux partition (which means Windows can't see it under normal circumstances).

So if you're looking to change the boot order on BCD, you'll need to boot in to Windows and use a tool such as EasyBCD to do it. To change he boot order on GRUB, you'll want to boot up Linux and do the same with an equivalent tool.

 

[Basie]

I tried running bcdedit from the cmd prompt running as Admin. I get the follow message
The boot configuration data store could not be opened. The system cannot find the file specified. EasyBCD did not seem to work on Win7. It asked for Vista.

 

[ViRGE]

Weird, EasyBCD has no problems with Win7 that I'm aware of. Are you sure all of this was run as Admin? Otherwise it sounds like the BCD database is corrupt, which doesn't make any sense.

 

[JackMDS]

This is the best solution for your problem.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Image...INGWIN KF-1000-BK 3.5" Internal hot swap rack

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817990001

 

[Basie]

That solution might be fine except I have all the OS's on one drive. I am beginning to discover that others have had problems also and that it's probably the way I added the Linux distros after XP and Win7 were installed. To me it's a minor issue and will be solved when I get tired of the distros and try new ones.