DualBootPRO to run two or more Windows systems


DualBootPRO ($8.95, direct) is an essential utility for any expert user or IT professional who needs to run two or more Windows systems on the same computer. It offers a clear graphic interface to the obscure controls used by Windows Vista and Windows 7 to control its boot menu—the menu that lets you choose between multiple versions of Windows on the same machine. I use it to help manage a system that can boot to four different Windows versions. If the app can manage the boot menu for a system as complex as that one, it can handle any multiple-boot environment it's likely to encounter.
Windows Vista and Windows 7 use a method called BCD (Boot Configuration Data) to manage the boot menu. This is a lot more complex than the simple BOOT.INI text file used by Windows NT, 2000, and XP to control their boot menus. The BCD method stores its data in a binary file you can't edit directly. Instead, you need to use either the confusing command-line tool BCDEDIT that comes with Windows itself, or a well-designed front end like DualBootPRO. A similar front-end called EasyBCD has the advantage of being free, whereas DualBootPRO costs $8.95 for personal use, but a fully Windows 7 compatible version of EasyBCD still hasn't come out of beta testing (www.neosmart.net).


Getting Started with DualBootPRO
When you first run DualBootPRO, it prompts you to let it make a backup of your BCD data so that you can restore it later in case you want to undo any changes you've made with the program. After making an initial backup, I use DualBootPRO for simple housekeeping tasks and complicated repair jobs. One of those simple housekeeping tasks involves rearranging the menu so that my different Windows versions appear in the right chronological order, from XP through Vista to Windows 7. To accomplish this, I go to DualBootPRO's menu that lists my Windows systems, and move the items up and down by clicking on buttons.
From the same menu, I can also change the menu item for my XP system from "Previous version of Windows" (which doesn't tell me much) to "Windows XP Pro SP3"—or any other name I might choose. (If I wanted the XP menu item in the boot menu to say "That comfortable old version from long, long ago," DualBootPRO would let me do that.) This same menu also lets me specify the Windows version that my system will boot into by default, and it lets me add and remove systems from the boot list.
I also use DualBootPRO to repair damage done by Windows itself. When I had to reinstall Windows XP on a system that also had Vista and Windows 7 on it, the Windows XP installation process wiped out the ability to boot into Vista or Windows 7. I could have fixed this in a time-consuming way by booting from my Windows 7 DVD and running Windows slow-moving repair processes, but I didn't need to. I simply booted into XP, launched DualBootPRO, went to the System Bootloader tab on the main menu, and clicked on the option to reinstall the Vista or Windows 7 bootloader. The Windows XP installation had left the BCD data intact even while disabling the Windows 7 boot menu, so this simple repair was enough to give me back the full Windows 7 boot menu again. If the BCD data had somehow got damaged, DualBootPRO's Operating System tab would have let me reconstruct it by identifying the drive letter that had the systems I wanted to restore to the boot menu.
You can use the Windows command line to do everything that DualBootPRO can do, but take my word for it—you don't want to. Windows' built-in command-line controls for the boot menu are obscure and complicated in a way that seems designed to discourage anyone from using them. When I need to touch up or rebuild my Windows boot menu, DualBootPRO gets the job done quickly, cleanly, efficiently, and safely.

1 comments:

blinkky said...

Sound like very useful =)

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