is there a free xp bootmanger with GUI?

[Unique]

is there a free xp utility like easybcd that has a GUI bootmanger for xp?

i'm having a problem with an old HD with windows installed so i've partitioined the drive and restored a couple of old images to the partitions and want to use a bootmanager with GUI to edit boot.ini to allow me to boot into the other partitions and use them instead. and ultimately later get rid of the currently booting partition

i've had a bit of a google but can't find anything

[jim]

I'm not sure anyone would've bothered, it's pretty easy to edit boot.ini in notepad?

[Unique]

I'm not sure anyone would've bothered, it's pretty easy to edit boot.ini in notepad?

yeah, but i'm not 100% sure what entries to make (as i have a few drives, one that's a GPT disc with 2 partitions), and i don't want to screw up the entry and it won't boot and then i have to boot from a disc or stick the HD in another computer to edit

there seems to be a few utilities for vista/win7 but not xp. there's even some for pre xp OS's. there's one as part of the acronis suite but i don't have that and whilst there is a trial version it's a bit much downloading and installing a big suite of programs for a tiny utility

[jim]

yeah, but i'm not 100% sure what entries to make (as i have a few drives, one that's a GPT disc with 2 partitions), and i don't want to screw up the entry and it won't boot and then i have to boot from a disc or stick the HD in another computer to edit

there seems to be a few utilities for vista/win7 but not xp. there's even some for pre xp OS's. there's one as part of the acronis suite but i don't have that and whilst there is a trial version it's a bit much downloading and installing a big suite of programs for a tiny utility

If it's currently booting, there's no need.

All you do is mark the current (working) entry as "Working", and then list all other alternatives. At least that's what I used to do.

So you get something like this:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(0)\WINDOWS="Disk1Part0" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Disk1Part1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Disk1Part2" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Disk2Part1" /fastdetect

Then you can just trial and error all the others until you get the result you want, and when you're done, boot into the original, still working entry, and remove all the ones you don't want any more.

[jim]

He's just posting Google in every thread he can find, wouldn't worry about it

[Unique]

He's just posting Google in every thread he can find, wouldn't worry about it

yeah i noticed the next thread i looked was just the same, and a stream of other one and two word replies. bloody scan spammers

anyways, i just did it manually in the end and realised that computer management shows the order of partitions so made it easier to get the right labels so i knew what i was booting into, which was confusing at first as they all looked the same as they were backups of the same drive at different times. i've changed the desktop look to make it more apparent

it's still strange that there are plenty of vista/win7 boot managers but none for xp

thanks for your help

[peterb]

Thread cleaned up - sp[ats aren't welcome anywhere in HEXUS, but are particularly unwelcome in the technical sections.

By all means direct someone to something useful, and say that you found it by googlingm, but a one word post is unhelpful. And people post here to be helped!