[B0B]

Enjoy . . . .

BCDEDIT commands for a FREEDOM BOOT!


I have successfully used GHOST 7.5 corporate for DOS, GHOST 8.0 corporate for DOS, and GHOST32 8.0 corporate for Windows in BartPE, with Vista, WITHOUT using the "-IR", "-ID", or "-IB" switches.

Under the hood, Vista actually is NTFS.

So why doesn't it work?

In Vista, Microsoft tied the Booting of the OS to a particular Controller, Hard Drive and Partition. Ghost puts all of the files in place, but makes other changes that are supposed to be transparent to the OS.

These changes aren't transparent to Vista.

So how do you make Ghost 8.0 work?


***** Do the following at your own risk. No guarantees. Do not do the following, you may damage your computer. *****


Boot the computer into Vista, open a command window with Administrator privileges by right-clicking on Command Prompt and choosing "Run As Administrator".

Run the following three commands within the command window:

BCDEDIT /set {bootmgr} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} osdevice boot

Shutdown the computer.

Make your ghost image. That's it.



Now, what if you want to make a ghost image of your BRAND NEW computer that you just received?

Without booting Vista, make a ghost image of your Vista hard drive, say, by booting DOS or BartPE from a CD. We'll call this IMAGE1.

After you make and verify IMAGE1, boot the computer into Vista. Trudge through all of the new computer bloatware. Reboot. Follow the Command prompt instructions above. Reboot the computer.

copy the file:

c:\BOOT\BCD

to a USB stick or something. I did this by booting with a BartPE CD. I suggest you do the same, or use some other method whereby you do not have to boot Vista. In short, copy the file without booting Vista.

Restore Ghost IMAGE1. Boot with a CD, such as BartPE, again, not in Vista.

copy the

c:\BOOT\BCD

file that you backed up on your USB stick over the one on your newly restored Vista image from IMAGE1.

Shutdown.

Make a new Ghost image, Call it IMAGE2.

Done.

You now have a Ghost image, IMAGE2, that will boot Vista, without the huge size caused by using the -IR switch.

Why would ANYONE want to go through this?

Think about it . . . . I bought a brand new expensive laptop. I don't want to use Vista. In a few years, I might want to sell it. Think of the resale value of a computer with a wiped hard drive, verses a computer with the original unregistered OS intact. . . . .

. . . . mmmmmmmmmmm . . . .

Besides, I like ghost.

This process should also allow you to use the Boot manager of your choice.

Note: If you use Ghost 7.5 corporate for DOS, you'll need access to a FAT32 partition to save the image.