How do I tell Windows Boot Manager to mind its own business?

E

EnderW

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Sep 25, 2003
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I have Windows 7 RC installed on my SSD and I want to have Vista on a second drive. I want it completely seperate, with the only way to boot into it via the F8 boot menu.

I thought it would work since I had nothing in the BIOS boot order but the SSD and I installed Vista to the second drive, but upon reboot, here is the fucking Windows Boot Manager asking me what I want to boot. How does it even know Vista is there? It should be booting from the SSD and not looking at anything else. So I deleted the partition and now the Boot Manager menu is gone.

Any ideas how to keep it from coming up?
 
EnderW said:
I thought it would work since I had nothing in the BIOS boot order but the SSD and I installed Vista to the second drive,
Click to expand...
!!!



- Independent Operating Systems
Give boot priority to the physical drive you are installing on.
No multi-boot menu at post. Must use motherboard boot device menu. :(
Installation order does not matter. :)
Isolation between the boot loaders. :)
Example:
Vista installed on drive 1 when drive 1 has boot priority in the BIOS.
Windows 7 installed on drive 2 when drive 2 has boot priority.
XP installed on drive 3 when drive 3 has boot priority


- Multi-boot menu
Give boot priority to the physical drive of the first OS.
A boot menu at post. :)
Installation order is important (old to new) unless you want to use a third party boot loader. :(
Re-install the first OS and lose access to all the other operating systems. Must repair boot loader. :(
Example:
XP installed on drive 1 when drive 1 has boot priority.
Vista installed on drive (or partition) 2 when drive 1 has boot priority.
Windows 7 installed on drive (or partition) 3 when drive 1 has boot priority.
 
Last edited:
I can boot between XP, Vista, and 7. I physically disconnect the other boot drives when I install an OS. So to install Vista, I unplug the XP drive and 7 drive and so on. No windows boot window, just F12 on boot to choose HD.
 
MrF said:
!!!



- Independent Operating Systems
Give boot priority to the physical drive you are installing on.
No multi-boot menu at post. Must use motherboard boot device menu. :(
Installation order does not matter. :)
Isolation between the boot loaders. :)
Example:
Vista installed on drive 1 when drive 1 has boot priority in the BIOS.
Windows 7 installed on drive 2 when drive 2 has boot priority.
XP installed on drive 3 when drive 3 has boot priority


- Multi-boot menu
Give boot priority to the physical drive of the first OS.
A boot menu at post. :)
Installation order is important (old to new) unless you want to use a third party boot loader. :(
Re-install the first OS and lose access to all the other operating systems. Must repair boot loader. :(
Example:
XP installed on drive 1 when drive 1 has boot priority.
Vista installed on drive (or partition) 2 when drive 1 has boot priority.
Windows 7 installed on drive (or partition) 3 when drive 1 has boot priority.
Click to expand...
thanks, I will try that
it's just strange to me that the OS is looking at the boot order
I always thought they were independent
 
Easiest thing to do would just be to setup the timeout to 0 or 1 second as suggested....

This is one of those cases, where for your more basic users is great, but to advanced things like this: Vista is too smart for it's own good.
 
EnderW said:
I have Windows 7 RC installed on my SSD and I want to have Vista on a second drive. I want it completely seperate, with the only way to boot into it via the F8 boot menu.

I thought it would work since I had nothing in the BIOS boot order but the SSD and I installed Vista to the second drive, but upon reboot, here is the fucking Windows Boot Manager asking me what I want to boot. How does it even know Vista is there? It should be booting from the SSD and not looking at anything else. So I deleted the partition and now the Boot Manager menu is gone.

Any ideas how to keep it from coming up?
Click to expand...

The Windows installer has a tendency to the overwrite the boot loader on the primary disk device without prompt. To prevent this, I typically remove all the drives except the one I am installing to.

Afterwards, plug all your drives back in, and you can boot to them via the BIOS. Additionally you have the option of installing any boot loader you want and chainloading into Window OSes.
 
I owned the dual boot scenario for awhile. Windows is trying to be smart for a less than 1% user scenario.

The boot loaders are not forward compatible, they can boot everything below them, but cannot boot the newer operating systems, so Windows checks if the bootloader is older then the current one, and replaces it. Most users who dual boot Windows with Windows are fine with this behavior. The problem comes in, when people who don't want to use the windows loader. The problem there is, there is no way for Windows to know it's a valid bootloader, or a damaged bootloader. Yes, Windows could ask, but think of the usual case, your grandparents. If Windows asked, is your bootloader damaged or has it been replaced? They would call you, because the computer is asking them questions they cannot answer. For the people who like their own loaders, it's a trivial fix for them.

(And yes, I used to test windows/linux dual boot on a regular basis, to make sure the ntldr could boot Linux...)

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
OP it doesn't matter that the other HDD was not in the boot order because the boot order only controlls what drive boots first. Vista looks at all the installed HDDs when it's installed. You have to actually disconnected the HDD from the system or disable the port it's on in order to install Vista/7 and not detect the other drive.
 
EnderW said:
it's just strange to me that the OS is looking at the boot order
I always thought they were independent
Click to expand...
If that was the case and you chose drive 2 while drive 1 had boot priority, and the installer wrote everything into drive 2, the PC would fail to boot after the first reboot.
Because at reboot the BIOS would hand over control to drive 1, which would be missing the boot loader.

If you want to try the different, and sometimes conflicting, advice you get, you can easily try them inside a virtual machine and see for yourself what exactly happens without jeopardizing a real system.

A part of the confusion is that a lot happens during boot. There are so many different components involved and at any point in time a different component may be in charge.
http://www.geocities.com/asoke_dasgupta/boot-xp.html This may be a good reference to show how the control is handed over at each stage.
 
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