How to load other disks MBR/PBR with VBCDE

[TwoFace]

Hi guys, thank you for the excellent program when I turn on VBCDE it seems to load the primary drive and Im not sure how to browse to the secondary drive in question that needs fixed.

 

I tried the how-to page from the front-page without much info in my problem.

 

Can VBCDE Open other disks than just the primary disk windows is installed on?

[boyans]

Hi TwoFace,

The boot sequence for Windows 7/8 is firmware code then 

1. MBR of first disk (you can select another disk as first in BIOS).

2. Code from MBR loads PBR from active partition.

3. PBR code loads bootmgr

Boot manager reads BCD (boot config data) and displays boot-menu.

For every installed OS there is usually a loader object in BCD.

Loader objects can point to different partitions (and disks).

Always the first disk set in BIOS is used for booting.

You can make a disk bootable by writing to it 

1. proper MBR and PBR ( using "Repair Boot Records" ) 

2. boot manager and BCD ( "Repair BCD" creates new or fixes existing boot manager and BCD )

Dual-boot Repair utility (and VisualBCD editor) has the interface for doing 1. and 2. above

In VBCDE you can load and edit a BCD from any location not just the "system BCD" which is on first disk active partition.. Use "Open store" from menu.

If you want to add an OS to boot configuration the easiest way is type F9 in VBCDEditor - the program will search and add a loader for it automatically.

Hope this helps, but do not hesitate to ask for further help.