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Easy BCD

By Ian Urie

Playing with the Windows bootloader can lead to problems.




But there is an easy answer to the problem. EasyBCD , to be precise.
Click on the name of the article to go to their site.
It is, of course, freeware.
Above is a grab of, what was, my windows bootloader.
As you can see, I have Windows 7 beta and an earlier version of Windows on this computer.
The earlier version is XP.

Let's have a look through the menus for EasyBCD.



See, dead easy to customise your loader settings.



I could have added in another OS completely, with Linux, Grub and Mac catered for directly.



Be very careful with some of the settings.
 It is a very powerful tool and WILL allow you to completely mess up your personal settings.



One of the many features is the ability to back up and restore the settings.
I highly recommend you back up your settings BEFORE playing with them.
You just never know when you will have an "Ooh NO" moment.



As you can see EasyBCD is designed for Vista.
When you install it, it will tell you that the install has failed (it hasn't), if it can't find Vista on your system.
Since Windows 7 is the follow up to Vista, it works fine.



I'll only show one of the utilities.
Most of the rest are simply links to control panel, restore etc.



Ok, after all the grabs, here's me editing the name of the first entry.
Let's name it to something more appropriate .
Save the settings, and .......



Job done!
Oops, rebooted after this article to discover that I had altered the drive path (shown in the first grab)
to C: instead of \Device\Harddisk\Volume1
My bad!
Thankfully, I simply booted back into Windows7, deleted the entry,
and added a new windows entry.
This asks which version of Windows.
Specify the one that mentions XP, reboot, and my bootloader was working correctly again.

It does show that EasyBCD is a sturdy bit of kit, so all's well that ends well!

Of course, all those settings might confuse you, so the writers kindly
put in a help link.



Nearly forgot to show you the options part of the menu.




Nothing too fancy to confuse here.



As this is freeware, the writers don't make money from it.
As you can read (maybe), from the help grab, they do ask for donations to help with the upkeep of the site, however.
If you find it useful, and I think anyone who uses it will, show your gratitude.
After all, the more donations they get, the longer they will be able to continue updating, improving and supporting it.