I've seen a lot of discussion on how to get Ghost 2003 to work with a dual Win XP / Win 7 system. 

I'm planning to someday go to just Win 7 (no XP dual boot) and would like to know how to get Ghost 2003 to work on a Win 7 system only.  Will Ghost 2003 install on a Win 7 system?  And how does the oft mentioned BCD editor fit into the picture?

If I have several partitions I back up under Win XP do I need to worry about restoring the non-boot  (partitions not containing the OS) partitions?

To be safe I would be installing Win 7 on a new clean HD and then over time I would reinstall all my applications.  I would disconnect my HD containing the Win XP OS.  I would "swap" the Win 7 HD with the Win XP HD until I got a stable Win 7 system working.  No matter what the Win XP HD would always be at hand for insurance.

Also all my backup images from that drive would be made to my dedicated HD just to storing those images.  No OS on this drive.

@ texdawg

I've no idea if Ghost 2003 will install in Win7 but you can create and restore images from the Ghost boot disk although I think most or all restores will need a Startup Repair (BCD Edit).

When you install Win7, don't use a blank HD. Otherwise Win7 will create a 100 MB System Reserved Partition which contains the boot files. It will be the System, Active partition and will complicate your image/restore work. Create a partition for Win7 before you boot from the Win7 CD. When you get to the Advanced button in Setup, do let Win7 format your partition, even if it is already formatted. Otherwise you won't get past the first reboot.

A Win7 install is the easiest of all the Windows installs and it is amazing how it sets up an internet connection, automatically connects to Windows Update and finds most of your drivers.

@ texdawg

Just a suggestion. If you had BING you could have both your Win7 and WinXP HDs installed in your computer. Each OS would be independent and neither would see the other. Your non OS partitions could be seen by both OS, but only if you wish.  At the boot menu, select which OS to boot.

BING also is a partitioning and image create/restore app. Win7 compatible. It includes a BCD Edit tool.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.htm

Here is a video on how to install Win7 from BING. Not quite your situation, but interesting. Don't mind the key strokes. It is just a demo showing how to do it without a mouse. A mouse is easier.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/videos/bing/win7.wmv

PS You may have noticed a format isn't needed during the Win7 install.

The Terabyte package for $49.98 looks attractive.  It looks like it could replace my Norton Ghost 2003 and Partition Magic 8.  Dare I take the plunge?  I downloaded the documentation to take a much closer look.

I bought the Bundle about two years ago. Best $50 I've spent on a computer.

Currently I have about 15 OS on my first HD. All image backups are automated. Restores can be automated too. Double click a batch file and the restore happens. TeraByte support is excellent. Your email is answered within an hour.

This is a helpful site.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/index.htm

And the Newsgroups..

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/webnews.htm


Edit... I forgot to mention a license covers 3 computers.

Brian wrote on Dec 29^th, 2009 at 2:35pm:

I bought the Bundle about two years ago. Best $50 I've spent on a computer.

I purchased, downloaded and installed the suite.  I tested imaging in both Windows and DOS with no problems.  Thanks for the tips.

texdawg wrote on Dec 30^th, 2009 at 10:43am:

with no problems

Good to hear.

Let us know if you need any help with BING. It is certainly confusing when you first start using it. If you aren't dual booting there is little need to install it to your HD. All other functions work from a boot disk (floppy, CD or USB).

I got BING on a CD and boot it up to look over things.  I like the options to build and resize partitions among its many features.  But, no, I didn't install it to my HD.

IFW, IFD and IFL are version 2 and create/restore each others images.

BING creates version 1 images and they aren't compatible with the above. There should be a major BING upgrade to version 2 images in about 6 months. Anyone who purchased BING after July 2009 will get  a free upgrade to the new BING. I don't know what other features it will contain.

Well, I have an almost clean 750 GB drive in which to install Windows 7.  You mentioned a pre-format.  What is a good size to build the boot partition on which I will install Windows 7?  Right now my boot partition for XP is 40 MB will about 20 MB free space.

A Win7 install takes up 10 GB plus. It depends on how much data and programs you intend to add to your C: drive but I suggest a partition of at least 50 GB. You can always resize it up or down later with BING but it's nice to get it "right" before you install the OS. Better too big than too small as it is easier to resize down. Other partitions don't have to be moved.

So create a 50+ GB NTFS partition in BING. I create cylinder aligned partitions but you can create 2048 sector aligned partitions if you desire. Create any other partitions you need while you are in BING or leave the space free and create other partitions at a later time. Click View MBR and "Set Active" the intended Win7 partition. Boot from the Win7 DVD and install to this partition. You don't have to format the partition at the "Advanced" button. The video on installing Win7 has some good pointers even though you don't have BING installed on the HD. You can install BING on the HD if you like but as you aren't multi-booting it isn't essential. You can do it later.

In case you don't know, any NTFS partitions you create in BING have to be formatted by the OS in Disk Management. It's a good idea. The OS does a better format than a partitioning app.

I did a 50 GB using Partition Magic.  It still works great with Win XP.

Don't let Partition Magic anywhere near Win7 if you have 2048 sector aligned partitions. There are lots of threads about Vista/Win7 no longer booting after Partition Magic offered to correct the "errors" it found with the partitions.

I don't know about Partition Magic but with Acronis Disk Director you have to let Win7 format the partition during the install. Win7 won't accept the ADD formatting.

Brian wrote on Jan 3^rd, 2010 at 2:26pm:

Don't let Partition Magic anywhere near Win7 if you have 2048 sector aligned partitions. There are lots of threads about Vista/Win7 no longer booting after Partition Magic offered to correct the "errors" it found with the partitions. I don't know about Partition Magic but with Acronis Disk Director you have to let Win7 format the partition during the install. Win7 won't accept the ADD formatting.

I guess I'll reformat my partition using BING.

I created a 50 GB partition with BING.  (I think?)  I'm confused about your statements about cylinder alignment and my options in BING to format a partition are greyed out.

@ texdawg

I missed your post.

BING creates non formatted NTFS partitions. That's why the option is greyed out. The partition will be formatted automatically by the Win 7 install process.

Please see these posts by Dan Goodell re alignment and offsets. BING's default is for cylinder aligned partitions. I usually create cylinder aligned partitions for a Win7 install as it doesn't really matter which alignment you use and I forget to change the default. Both alignments work.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1190587619/30#30

I successfully installed BING yesterday with no problems.  So now Win XP shows as my one and only choice.  My student daughter was able to get Windows 7 at a very good price so I'll be installing 7 soon on my empty HD into the 50 GB partition. 

Just make sure that 50 GB partition is Active by clicking View MBR in BING. It probably will be Active anyway.

Win7 is the easiest of all the Microsoft OS to install. And the fastest to install.


Quote:

I successfully installed BING yesterday with no problems.  So now Win XP shows as my one and only choice.

Did you mean WinXP or Win7? Do you have both HDs installed? When you install Win7, only have one HD in the computer so the HD is recognized as HD0. You can attach the other HD later and set up the dual boot menu.
I think installing to a single HD in the computer is easier than...

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=339

Thanks for pointing me to article 339.  The instructions are very clear as what to do.

I'm glad you said that. I read it again and it's not so bad.

texdawg wrote on Jan 6^th, 2010 at 4:40pm:

My student daughter was able to get Windows 7 at a very good price so I'll be installing 7 soon on my empty HD into the 50 GB partition.

That was a sweet deal, wasn't it?  $29 for either Win7 Home Premium or Professional!  My daughter (recently graduated) picked up one of those, and my son (now back in college) picked up another.  As an engineering student he also got a free one through MSDN Academic Alliance, and my wife was pleasantly surprised to discover she also got a free MSDNAA copy through her adult ed. class at the local community college!

Sadly, the $29 student deal expired Sunday.

My son's Inspiron 6000 is dual-booting XP and Win7-Pro, my wife's aging Dimension 4600 is smoothly running XP and Win7-Pro, and my daughter's Pavilion 6823 is now on Win7-Pro.  (The Pavilion came with Vista, so she had no desire to dual-boot--"good riddance!" was her sentiment.)

I agree that BING is one of the industry's best bargains.  I concur with Brian's preference for cylinder-aligned partitions (I still do a lot of quick partition adjustments with Partition Magic, which is not compatible with 2048-aligned partitions), and with his advice to pre-create partitions with PM or BING so Win7 doesn't stick you with a System Reserved Partition.

Depending on hard disk size, I like to make the partition size for XP around 30-40 GB, and for Win7 around 50-60 GB.  With a 750 GB disk I might even go 70 or 80.  (For lurkers, bear in mind I don't keep MyDocs/Pics/Music on the C: partition, but redirect them to a separate data partition.  That way, they can all be accessible regardless of which partition I'm booting from.)

I also stick a small DOS partition at the very front of the disk--about 50-70 MB is enough.  That's a good spot to install BING, but does double-duty as a convenient boot partition for running a number of DOS-based utilities like ptedit, editbini, mbrwork, tweakng, Partition Magic, Ghost 2003, et al.

(BTW, after you get your OS's setup, take a look at tweakng.  It will enable you to tweak BING's resolution and background image for a nice, classy look.)

---

Dan,

How did you get that nice background? I tried Tweak NG and couldn't do it.

In BING, Utility, Colors there is a menu very similar to Tweak NG but I had no luck there either.

Brian wrote on Jan 7^th, 2010 at 6:13pm:

In BING, Utility, Colors there is a menu very similar to Tweak NG ...

Well, how about that!  All these years, and I didn't realize the 'Colors' tool had been added there.  I've been using BING since 2002 (v1.29), so I went back and checked my old installation disks ... nope, the 'Colors' tool wasn't in BING back then.  So that's why I began using TweakNG.  It wasn't in my copy of v1.60, either, but looks like it was added in v1.70 at the end of 2004.

Nevertheless, TweakNG has the added feature that you can import/export your color scheme.  'BING->Utility->Colors' doesn't have that.  Setting the colors is tedious because you're not sure which characteristics you're changing, so after laboriously adjusting my colors way back then, being able to export the settings to a file was a welcome feature.  I've used the same file for years to quickly import my color scheme each time I moved to a new computer or added BING on one of the family computers.  (I've attached my color scheme file below.)

You specify your background picture in 'BING->Settings->Background'.  You need to set the color depth to one of the 64K settings or the picture's colors will be all wacky--I mostly use 1024x768x64K.  As I recall, the picture had to be in .pcx format.  (The current manual doesn't mention any other formats, so I guess support for other formats hasn't been added since I started doing this.)

So, pick the photo you want to use, and in a graphics editor resize/crop it to the desired dimensions (e.g., 1024x768), then save it in .pcx format.  (If your graphics editor can't do that, the freeware IrfanView can.)  Copy the .pcx and my .ng file into your BING partition.  Reboot into BING Maintenance, and in 'Settings' browse and select your .pcx file.  Boot into DOS, launch TweakNG and import my .ng file.  Note this instantly changes both your color scheme, and the resolution to 1024x768x64K.  Adjust the color scheme to suit your taste, then export your color scheme to your own file for safekeeping.  (I gave mine a .ng extension, but you can name it anything you want.)

---

Thanks. It took me ages to work out how to copy a 2 MB file to the BING partition as I couldn't access the BootIt EMBRM partition. I'm not sure how you did it but I found this...


Quote:

Method 2:  Drive Letter Access (Advanced users only) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please note:  This procedure is only applicable if you have BootIt NG installed to a dedicated hard drive partition. 1.  Boot with a BootIt NG floppy diskette or CD/DVD disc, and when the      "Floppy Boot Menu" window appears, click the Maintenance button. 2.  On the BootIt NG desktop, click the "Partition Work" icon.  The "Work      with Partitions" window appears. 3.  Select the hard drive and partition where BootIt NG is installed, and      then click the Properties button.  The Properties window appears. 4.  In the "File System" drop-down list, select "6/6h: FAT-16". 5.  Click OK on the Properties window and close the "Work with Partitions"      window to return to the BootIt NG desktop. 6.  On the BootIt NG desktop, click the "Boot Edit" icon.  The "Boot Menu"      window appears. 7.  Select the boot entry that points to your normal operating system      (e.g. Windows or Linux), and then click the Edit button. 8.  Ensure that, under "MBR Details", the partition containing BootIt NG      is present, and not hidden.  Make changes if necessary. 9.  Reboot into your normal operating system.  The BootIt NG partition      should now be accessible as a drive letter. 10.  If you wish to save your current BootIt NG color scheme, you will need      to either save a copy of the existing BOOTITNG.ACS file on the BootIt      NG partition, or rename it in place.      Rename the desired color scheme (.ACS) file to BOOTITNG.ACS, and copy      it to the BootIt NG partition.  The color scheme will be in effect the      next time you use BootIt NG. Notes on Drive Letter Access: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -  If you are running Windows 2000 or later, and wish to remove the     BootIt NG drive letter, you may do so as follows:     1.  Run the "Disk Management" applet.     2.  Right click the BootIt NG partition, and select the "Change Drive         Letter and Paths..." menu item.     3.  Click the Remove button. -  If desired, you may change the file system ID of the BootIt NG     partition back to its original value.  To do this, follow steps 1-4     under "Method 2" above.  In step 4, set the file system type to its     previous value (the default is "223/DFh: BootIt EMBRM").

I'll keep your Color scheme. Nice.

In the Tweak NG readme there is a discussion on BOOTITNG.ACS which makes managing the color sets possibly easier.

Brian wrote on Jan 8^th, 2010 at 2:15am:

It took me ages to work out how to copy a 2 MB file to the BING partition as I couldn't access the BootIt EMBRM partition. I'm not sure how you did it ...

I don't use a dedicated partition for BING.  I install it in my DOS partition.  I like to have a DOS partition anyway, so there's no point to giving BING its own partition.  Naturally, I then make the DOS partition one of my boot items.

Modern machines can see a USB flash drive from DOS, so no problem transferring files back and forth via flash drive.  In years past I've used a common FAT32 partition as an interim transfer location, or I temporarily made the DOS partition visible to Windows (like the reference you cited), or I transferred the files via network connection from DOS.  (I customized my DOS partition with a batch menu to load a tcp/ip driver via the techniques NetBootDisk uses.)

Moving/replacing .acs files looks like more work than using TweakNG, but I guess that's the way to do it if BING is in a dedicated partition.  My BING and DOS are the same partition, though, so I can boot straight into it.  From there, it's "tweakng", three mouse clicks,  and I'm done.

More ideas came to me. Using TBOSDT from WinXP, I can copy files to or from hidden partitions such as my BING.

For those unfamiliar with TBOSDT, type

list hd 0    (lists the partitions on HD0 and their IDs)

If BING has an ID of 77, mount BING as drive 0: by

mount 0:  0 0x77

Then the copy line..

copy c:\path\filename 0:\
exit

list hd 0    (lists the partitions on HD0 and their IDs)

If BING has an ID of 77, mount BING as drive 0: by

mount 0:  0 0x77

Nice tip, Brian.  I haven't tinkered around with tbosdt much before.  It's not just for Terabyte-proprietary partitions, so looks like a nice tool that could come in handy at times.

Stumped me a for a moment until I figured out those are all numeric-zeroes--no alpha-oh anywhere in there.  (I was expecting 0: to be the drive letter.)

I find TBOSDT very challenging. One of the tools that has a lot of potential is the OSDTOOL. This can...

install IDE and SATA drivers to a non booting OS
enable and disable Services in a non booting OS
change the HAL in a non booting OS

I've used it after restoring an image of an IDE HD computer to a SATA HD computer with a different HAL. The SATA HD computer boots into Windows and then you need to deal with hardware specific drivers.

To play with the OSDTOOL in Windows, double click tbosdtw.exe in the win folder, type
runtbs ..\scripts\osdtool.tbs
and press Enter.

You can also try the beta version with
runtbs ..\scripts\osdtool_beta_304.tbs

From Windows, you can only use it to see non running OS.

The offline version is present on the IFL CD (for working outside Windows). Or you can add it to a TBOSDT USB flash drive.

Dan,

I'm using your colors but I prefer 640x480 resolution. However the Boot Menu does cover most of the background image. Oh well.

Brian,

Installing Windows 7 as a dual boot has been a real nightmare today.  Hours of attempts to no avail.

What's the nature of your problem, texdawg?  Is the problem with Windows 7, or is it with the dualbooting?  Can we assume you've run the Win7 compatibility report and that Win7 would install successfully if you were single-booting?

I have dual booting set up and I'm trying to install Win 7 on an empty drive.  I'm installing an upgrade version of Win 7 Ultimate.  My existing version of XP is XP Professional.  I'm consistently getting a generic message during the installation concerning a hardware problem.  I wish the pop-up would at least say which specific hardware.  I did look at the Win 7 logs and saw some hardware devices with the message ...Failed!.  I disconnected everyone of these as they are peripherals.  My last problem is that Win 7 can't find an ACPI driver to match my MOBO and things it is a hardware problem apparently.

By looking at the log files I see that Win 7 is digging into the *.inf files in my Win XP installation to get hardware information.  It seems that BootNG is not "hiding" my Win XP partition from Win 7.

I wish I could understand the log files a little bit better.

I'm ready to pull my HD with XP on it so Win 7 will truly only see one HD, the one I'm installing to.

Anyways, although a bit frustrating, this is all a good learning experience.

Okay, so sounds like the issue is getting Win7 installed on your particular hardware, so it's not really a multiboot issue (at this point, anyway).

Your first step should be to download the "Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor" from Microsoft.  Boot into your existing XP and run the Upgrade Advisor.  It will tell you what hardware or software Win7 will have issues with.  If it's going to have driver issues with some of your hardware, you'll need to research that beforehand and see if you can find suitable drivers yourself.  In many cases, if Vista drivers are available those will work.  What you're mainly concerned with are your internal devices (video, audio, motherboard, etc.).  You can choose not to use peripherals or software, but non-functional internal devices could render Win7 a "no-go" on that system.

If it doesn't look like there are any real "show-stoppers" in the Upgrade Advisor's report, then you should proceed by separating the parts of your project and tackling them one at a time.  IOW, take multibooting out of the scenario for the time being and work on getting Win7 installed by itself and working properly with your hardware.

Since you've already installed BING, temporarily deactivate or uninstall it so you're not multibooting.  IIRC, you're using multiple hard disks, so remove any other hard disks (or disable them in the bios) except the one that Win7 will be installed on.  If the disk you are installing Win7 on has other partitions, hide those partitions and make sure the target for Win7 is the active partition.  (You can do this with ptedit or by booting from the BING CD and going into maintenance mode from the CD.)  Now you've got a simple one disk, one partition system for Win7 to deal with.

"I'm installing an upgrade version of Win 7 Ultimate.  My existing version of XP is XP Professional."

Are you trying to upgrade Win7 on top of (a copy of) an existing XP installation?  I don't recommend that.  Do a clean install instead.  The Win7 upgrade DVD can do a full install, so boot from the DVD instead of launching the DVD from within XP.

Refer to Paul Thurrott's site for some screenshots.  When you get to the first screen in Part 2 ("Which type of installation do you want?"), select "Custom (advanced)".  Your disk is already partitioned, so the next screen ("Where do you want to install Windows?") should show your partitions.  If you made it active earlier, the target partition for Win7 should be called C:.  Make sure it is selected, and click "Drive options (advanced)".  Format the partition so Win7 has a clean slate to work with.  Then let Setup continue with the bulk of the installation.

When you get to the bottom screen in Part 4 ("Type your Windows product key"), leave it blank and uncheck the box, "Automatically activate Windows when I'm online".  (I recommend getting everything working right before activating.  As Paul Thurrott mentions elsewhere, delaying activation can also avoid activation failures due to upgrade vs. clean install confusion.)

When Win7 is finished installing, manually install any drivers you need to take care of yellow question-marks in Device Manager.

Once Win7 is installed and working properly, you can activate it, reinstall other hard disks, reinstall BING, and let BING control which partitions are hidden or visible.

No, I'm not trying to install on top of XP, just a dual boot.

I'm going to disable all my other HD's so Win 7 can only see my blank one for the installation.

Thanks for the tips.  I'll have to wait to this weekend to try it again.

Dan,

Your instructions worked perfectly.  Thank you.  If you're ever in El Paso stop in and we'll have a few beers together.

And the dual booting is working great!

Glad to hear that, texdawg.  Next, you'll want to make a backup image of the Win7 partition before anything happens to it.

Before you do that, though, use BING to fix Win7's BCD store.  Once you do that, the image will be a little more versatile because you'll be able to restore it to any disk or any partition instead of only to the same partition it came from.  (Of course you can always fix it with BING after a restore, but I like having the fix already embedded in my image.)

Go into BING's maintenance mode, select [Partition Work], highlight the Win7 partition, click the [Properties] button, then the [BCD Edit] button.  Go through each item in the Menu and Boot sections, and edit any "Device" or "OS Device" entries so they show "{boot}" instead of a particular disk and partition.

I also have to do the registry changes in order to activate Windows 7 properly.  Right now I'm getting the message about doing a clean install with an upgrade version as being a no-no.

Hmm, okay.  I think you've seen this article, right?

Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media

Good old Method #2 worked.  I'm registered, did the BCD edits, backed up - the whole works.

Now the process of reinstalling applications in Win 7.

Question?  - Can WinXP and Win7 share the same mail folders for Outlook?  Right now I do have them on a small dedicated partition away from my WinXP partition.  I don't see any reason why Win7 can point to the same.

texdawg wrote on Jan 30^th, 2010 at 7:21am:

Can WinXP and Win7 share the same mail folders for Outlook? Right now I do have them on a small dedicated partition away from my WinXP partition.

I don't personally use Outlook--mashing everything into a single giant .pst file offends my programming sensibilities.  But I would think it should be able to work.  You might need to setup the mailserver settings again (I don't think they're in the .pst file), but sharing the mail folders should be no problem.

I haven't tried actively sharing one .pst between two Outlook installations, but on occasion I've copied the .pst file elsewhere and repointed Outlook to the copy and it worked fine, so I don't think there would be a problem, as long as you don't try to have the .pst open simultaneously from the two installations (which you can't do with a dualboot anyway).