134 - Configure Windows to boot to grub4dos using the BCD 135 - How to MBR-boot to a Windows 8/10 3TB+ hard disk 136 - UEFI-boot directly from Ubuntu-based ISO files.
Bootable media builder of Acronis True Image and Acronis Disk Director cannot create multiproduct bootable media. Our development is working on implementing this feature. As workaround you can use grub4dos.
This solution will work for BIOS machines only. The media will boot in BIOS/Legacy BIOS/CSM mode and will not work if your computer is using UEFI.
In Windows 8/8.1/10: Start -> Search -> msinfo32.exe
If your computer is using BIOS, you will see BIOS Mode: Legacy. This solution will work on your machine.
If your computer is using UEFI, you will see BIOS Mode: UEFI. This solution will not work on your machine.
Dual Boot Windows Xp Linux
In Windows 7 or earlier:
- Open Windows Explorer.
- Navigate to C:WindowsPanther
- Find setupact.log.
- Right-click the file, select Open.
- Search for Detected Boot Environment.
If your computer is using BIOS, you will see: Callback_BootEnvironmentDetect: Detected boot environment: BIOS. This solution will work on your machine.
If your computer is using UEFI, you will see: Callback_BootEnvironmentDetect: Detected boot environment: UEFI. This solution will not work on your machine.
Downloading grub4dos
Download grub4dos utility and grub installer to your computer and unpack them.
Currently, the latest version of grub4dos is grub4dos-0.4.4.zip and the latest version of grub installer is grubinst-1.1-src-2008-01-01.zip.
Making USB bootable
1. In Windows Explorer, open the installer's folder and select grubinst_gui.exe:
2. Run the application:
Windows XP: Double-click grubinst_gui.exe
Windows 7 or later: Right-click grubinst_gui.exe and select Run as administrator:
3. Select Disk, then click Refresh and select the drive you want to create a bootable media on:
You can detect your drive by its size. In this example an 8GB flash drive is used.
3. In Part List click Refresh.
4. From the dropdown box select Whole disk (MBR):
5. Check the Don't search floppy option, leave all the other options unchecked:
6. Click Install.
If the installation completes successfully, you will see this message:
7. Press Enter.
8. In Windows Explorer open the grub4dos folder, locate grldr and copy it to the target drive:
Creating ISO files of Acronis products
- Run the media builder of Acronis True Image.
- Select ISO file when offered to choose media destination:
- Create the ISO. You can save the ISO file directly to your flash drive or copy in later.
- Run the media builder of Acronis Disk Director.
- Select ISO file when offered to choose media destination:
- Create the ISO. You can save the ISO file directly to your flash drive or copy in later.
Setting up multiproduct boot
Clean Boot Windows Xp
- Copy the ISO files to the flash drive if you haven't done it yet. Now you should have 3 files on the drive:
- Open Notepad.
- Insert this content:
timeout 10
default 0
title Acronis Disk Director
map --mem --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,0)/<DiskDirector>.iso (hd32)
map --hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot
title Acronis True Image
map --mem --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 (hd0,0)/<TrueImage>.iso (hd32)
map --hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot
title CommandLine
commandline
title Reboot
reboot
title Halt
halt
where <DiskDirector> is the name of the ISO file created in Acronis Disk Director and <TrueImage> is the ISO file created with Acronis True Image.
4. Save the file as menu.lst to the root directory of your flash drive. In Save as type select All files, otherwise the file might be saved as a .txt-file while we need a .lst-file.
You can double-check the file extention in Windows Explorer:
If you don't see the extention, check this article for help.
Now your USB drive is ready and you can boot your computer with it.
Grub4dos Boot Windows Iso
Can someone please help?I've been googling for hours now and I can't figure out why I can't boot the win8 install disc iso from my isolinux boot usb.
I can boot winpe 64bit with the following
But when I change it to the win8.1 64 bit install disc iso it doesn't work (I have checked the iso works fine and can boot from it with a vm)
This makes no sense to me since technically they are the same thing.Please tell me what I am doing wrong before I throw this computer through the wall :D
1 Answer
So, to provide a more extensive explanation on why this isn’t working.
In the early days, PC operating systems accessed hard disks by raising interrupts which are then handled by the BIOS (or something like that, anyway). Today, this type of access is only used in the earliest stages of booting the PC. After that, drivers talk to the storage controllers directly, providing vastly superior performance and features.
GRUB’s disk mapping is only compatible with the interrupt disk access type, unless the operating system has drivers specifically supporting GRUB’s disk mapping. Naturally, Windows doesn’t have these.
Windows Setup and Windows PE are very similar in that they both run from a WIM image that’s completely read to memory with interrupt type access by the boot manager. After that, they don’t have to access any disk at all. It’s just that the Windows Setup program itself needs to access configuration files that are not present in this WIM image but directly on the setup medium. Of course, the rest of the installation files are also not in the boot WIM image.
So what you need to do is inject Windows Setup’s boot image with drivers for GRUB’s disk mapping, if there are any available. Alternatively, you could also take a regular Windows Setup medium and tweak it with a boot manager and additional files. That way, the files Setup needs are present directly on the medium.
Daniel BDaniel B