EasyBCD

[Steve]

Experience with a multiboot loader called EasyBCD.

Its designed primarily to work with Vista but is compatible with a multitude of different OS platforms.

I put together a few spare PC parts I had lying around over the weekend and initially installed Vista on the primary drive.Ubuntu 8.10 went on the next drive and followed EasyBCD instructions eventually to enable a multiboot of the two.

Today, found another redundant hardrive and decided to install XP pro as the third OS (its nice to have an a vintage that you can take for a spin when the weather's fine )

Installing XP was the difficult part it didn't like the AHCI SATA settings in bios it would not install not even with the F6 floppy.Ubuntu installed in AHCI SATA mode with no problems. (Intel IP43 ICH10 chipset)

I switched the bios to IDE mode and installed XP eventually and then managed after modifying the registry and installing the relevant sata drivers into XP returned the bios back to to its original settings with AHCI and SATA enabled, as otherwise Vista and Ubuntu wouldn't boot.

Unfortunately when installing XP it modifies the MBR and vista will not boot This is solved by installing netframework 2.0 and EasyBCD into XP and using EasyBCD to restore the Vista MBR.

Then back into Vista set EasyBCD up to find XP and job done. A multiboot of Vista, XP and Ubuntu

Why??? it was cold outside today

[kinmel]

Windows just seems to get harder and harder once you have experienced Ubuntu 

I wonder why Microsoft has so much trouble mastering AHCI, Sata and dual boot, other O.S.s seem to develop coping mechanisms quickly enough.

XP still needs a floppy to install SATA drivers !

You are certainly off to a flying start with all this 

[Steve]

Thanks Alan, I did look at SUSE this am with the KDE desktop but struggled to get the NIC working,Realtek 8168 and then SAMBA couldn't find a host and LISa never appeared . At least Ubuntu worked out of the box,even the version of Ubuntu on my USB stick boots the laptop and gets a wireless connection automatically

[kinmel]

Ubuntu is definitely ahead of the rest of the Linux distros for straight out of the box working and there are big improvements coming on stream all the time, they have been concentrating on driver availability and it is certainly paying dividends.

Once you have Ubuntu fully up and running, the cleverest thing is that it will automatically find not just O.S. updates, but also those for every software package and codec on your machine. After updating, you rarely even need to re-boot, it simply implements the new stuff and keeps going.

[Steve]

Tried Ubuntu live on the Advent 4211 (MSI Wind U100) but really needs a different wireless card to make life easy, their are some that work out of the box, as compiling the one for my version is probably beyond my patience.

[kinmel]

Tried Ubuntu live on the Advent 4211 (MSI Wind U100)

I think that Advent uses Intel 3945ABG wireless, if so see Here

The original work on the 3945 was Here on sourceforge.net.

[Sebby]

XP still needs a floppy to install SATA drivers !

But then look how old XP is.

[Steve]

I think that Advent uses Intel 3945ABG wireless,

Mine has a realtek 8187, however the above mini pci card is an easy to fit replacement for about £15

[kinmel]

But then look how old XP is.

Younger than Linux, but stagnant 

[gizmo71]

In my day BCD meant binary coded decimal and nobody would've dreamt of calling anything else by that name.

[Rik]

Ah yes, I remember it well.

[kinmel]

Mine has a realtek 8187, however the above mini pci card is an easy to fit replacement for about £15

have a look at Ndiswrapper before you spend any money.

[Steve]

Looking as the MSI wind forum where they've had success with Ubuntu. The ndisgtk option has not been that successful.However I will say that the original Realtek wireless card has a few quirks in XP that are only solved by a reboot.