TeraByte Unlimited

Hi,

Can Windows 7 be installed to a volume in an extended partition through BootIt Bare Metal?

I currently have XP on a primary partition, Win7 on a primary partition, BootIt Bare Metal on a primary partition, and an extended partition with some volumes and plenty of free space.

I vaguely seem to recall that Windows 7 may have to be on a primary partition. I don't see anything definitive in the FAQ, etc. There is the how-to video that shows installing Windows 7 to its own primary partition.

Thanks for any answer.

--
Mark Miesfeld

Okay, I went ahead and installed Windows 7 to the logical volume and used the BootIt Bare Metal disk to reactive.

I ended up being able to boot into all 3 operating systems, but not in an ideal way. What I had was:

primary partition Windows XP
primary partition Windows 7 64-bit
extended partition with Linux volumes
primary partition BootIt Bare Metal

and I needed a Windows 7 32-bit.

I ended up with this:

primary partition Windows XP
primary partition Windows 7 64-bit
extended partition with Windows 7 32-bti and Linux volumes
primary partition BootIt Bare Metal

I see now that the Windows 7 32-bit install put its boot files on the XP partition. (As would be expected, it's hard to remember all these details.)

So, in my boot menu, I had an entry for XP and one for Windows 7 64-bit, (and some for the Linuxes.) I added one for Windows 7 32-bit before the install with the extended partition in the 1 slot.

Now, the boot menu items behave this way:

Windows 7 64-bit -> goes straight to the 64 bit Windows 7

Window XP -> goes to a Windows boot menu where I can select Windows 7 or Previous Windows. Windows 7 goes to the new 32-bit install and Previous Windows goes to XP.

Windows 7 32-bit -> goes to BOOTMGR is missing.

This is acceptable, I can still access all the operating systems.

Is there any way to get the BootIt boot menu to go directly to each of the 3 Windows OSes?

Thanks.

--
Mark Miesfeld

Mark,

I think you will agree that you have a mess. Workable, but a mess. It's easier if you install into primary partitions. Then the booting files don't go to another partition.

And you need to successfully hide the other partitions from
each other when installing.
Mary

On 3/23/2013 7:06 PM, Brian K wrote:
> Mark,
>
> I think you will agree that you have a mess. Workable, but a mess.

It's easier if you install into primary partitions.

Then the booting files don't go to another partition.
>
>

See http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=324


"miesfeld" wrote in message news:[email protected]...

Okay, I went ahead and installed Windows 7 to the logical volume and used
the BootIt Bare Metal disk to reactive.

I ended up being able to boot into all 3 operating systems, but not in an
ideal way. What I had was:

primary partition Windows XP
primary partition Windows 7 64-bit
extended partition with Linux volumes
primary partition BootIt Bare Metal

and I needed a Windows 7 32-bit.

I ended up with this:

primary partition Windows XP
primary partition Windows 7 64-bit
extended partition with Windows 7 32-bti and Linux volumes
primary partition BootIt Bare Metal

I see now that the Windows 7 32-bit install put its boot files on the XP
partition. (As would be expected, it's hard to remember all these details.)

So, in my boot menu, I had an entry for XP and one for Windows 7 64-bit,
(and some for the Linuxes.) I added one for Windows 7 32-bit before the
install with the extended partition in the 1 slot.

Now, the boot menu items behave this way:

Windows 7 64-bit -> goes straight to the 64 bit Windows 7

Window XP -> goes to a Windows boot menu where I can select
Windows 7 or Previous Windows. Windows 7 goes to the new 32-bit install and
Previous Windows goes to XP.

Windows 7 32-bit -> goes to BOOTMGR is missing.

This is acceptable, I can still access all the operating systems.

Is there any way to get the BootIt boot menu to go directly to each of the 3
Windows OSes?

Thanks.

--
Mark Miesfeld

TeraByte Support wrote:
> See http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=324

Thanks for the pointer.

Will this work even though I have the Windows 7 32-bit installed on a logical partition?

--
Mark Miesfeld

Brian K wrote:

> I think you will agree that you have a mess. Workable, but a mess. It's
> easier if you install into primary partitions. Then the booting files don't
> go to another partition.

Well, yeah I agree. But, I didn't have a primary partition left, and the free space I had was at the end of the extended partition.

I suspect I should have set things up differently, but I'm not sure how. What I had was:

primary partition: Windows XP
primary partition: Windows 7 64-bit
extended partition:
volume: Linux swap
volume: A fedora install
volume: A SuSE install
volume: A SuSE install (different version)
free space
primary partition: BootIt Bare Metal

I do have the Limit primary partitions unchecked.

Starting with that, what should I have done?

Thanks.

--
Mark Miesfeld

mjnelson99 wrote:
> And you need to successfully hide the other partitions from
> each other when installing.
> Mary

Thanks for the reply. From my other post, I'm not sure how I should have gone about this with the existing set up I had.

--
Mark Miesfeld

miesfeld wrote:

>
> Well, yeah I agree. But, I didn't have a primary partition left,

>
> I do have the Limit primary partitions unchecked.
>

Mark,

You can create another 200 Primary Partitions. You aren't limited to four. Get some free space out of the extended partition so you can create more primary partitions.

miesfeld wrote:
> mjnelson99 wrote:
> > And you need to successfully hide the other partitions from
> > each other when installing.
> > Mary
>
> Thanks for the reply. From my other post, I'm not sure how I should have gone about
> this with the existing set up I had.
>
> --
> Mark Miesfeld

Well you say "I didn't have a primary partition left" and "I do have the Limit primary partitions unchecked". Those two statements are pretty much contradictory. You seem to imply that you didn't have a primary partition left because you already had four, but the whole point of having "Limit primaries unchecked" is to be able to have more than four with the caveat to not use other partitioning tools which may think some of the primaries are unpartitioned space.

As to what you should have done given the assumptions that you can have more that four primaries and you want the new installation in a primary, I won't say what you should have done, but what I think you could have done is:

Reduce the size of the extended partition so that the free space is no longer part of it.

Allocate a new primary in the free space which became unpartitioned space.

Install the new Win 7 in the newly created primary.

You probably should have created a Boot Item for the new Win 7 such that the new primary was the only partition available. Clear the four MBR slots in that Boot Item, then fill one of them with the new primary.

Attempt to boot the new boot item. This will fail because there is nothing there to boot, but will leave a state such that only the one partition is visible. The installation should install into that partition and not be able to see any others to confuse matters.