Major differences between the windows xp and vista boot loaders

IT's solution was to format and reinstall losing everything. As the boss, I was called in. I launched Win95 from the command line and they were able to recover their stuff. The point to this is that everyone has their own areas of emphasis - and this affects their opinions of the available technology.

As a Connect member, I was involved in the early stages of beta testing Vista and found it to be a great OS. More robust than XP and the problem solving tools had much greater capabilities. Windows XP has been around so long that most people are very comfortable with it and it's abilities. There were issues with Vista before SP1 came out, but IMO most of them were due to poorly written software being used on it.

He swore he hadn't done anything to it. I'd get the Vista system as long as it comes with a certificate for a Win7 upgrade after June And you can use the Vista system for a short bit while waiting for Win7. People, who don't like Vista fall mostly in these categories: 1. Posted 02 July - PM. Runaway New Member Member 1 posts. Hi folks. I've read a few articles on this site, and there is generally good info here.

But I just HAD to register to address this thread. I test drive all operating systems. You name it, and I've driven it, or at least tried to. It remains a rather expensive investment, for little in return. Windows 7 addresses all the problems that Vista brought to the table, and makes actual improvements to Vista.

Windows 7 is selling for less money than Vista. To gain a better appreciation of Windows Vista's new boot loader architecture, let's begin with a quick look at how NT Loader worked.

With this in mind, you can appreciate that NT Loader was definitely an outdated technology. Essentially, as the computer boots up, the NTLDR file, containing the main boot loader, loads from the hard drive's boot sector. When Microsoft was developing Windows Vista, it decided to start from scratch and build the new operating system from the ground up. The new boot loader architecture is an excellent example of this methodology because it presents an entirely new way of booting up the Windows operating system that is both quicker and more secure.

To improve boot time and increase security, Microsoft's Windows Vista developers decided to do away with NTLDR and replace it with an entirely new system built around three main components: the new boot loader architecture, a new boot option storage system called Boot Configuration Data BCD , and a new boot option editing tool called BCDEdit. Now, the new boot loader architecture can itself be broken down into three main components: The Windows Boot Manager Bootmgr.

In this new system, as the computer boots up, the Windows Boot Manager loads first and reads the Boot Configuration Data, which is essentially a database of boot—time configuration information stored on the hard disk in a format similar to the registry.

The Boot Configuration Data database can include information about a current hibernation image, special configuration options for booting the Windows Vista operating system, and special configuration options for booting an alternate operating system.

In addition to this type of information, the Boot Configuration Data database can provide instructions for launching diagnostic or recovery tools that actually run independent of the operating system.

In the overall boot process scheme, the Windows Boot Manager is a completely separate entity and is totally unaware of any operating system boot loader operations. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Written by : lancemoho. User assumes all risk of use, damage, or injury.

You agree that we have no liability for any damages. Author Recent Posts. Latest posts by lancemoho see all. Help us improve. Rate this post! Instead, a new boot loader, bootmgr, reads boot configuration data from a special file named BCD.

A brand new tool called bcdedit. A Windows PE 2. This flexibility can be useful in recovery or maintenance scenarios. These text files have been replaced with an XML file. An example of unattend. You may still use separate files if you want, though. You don't need to put all configuration items in a single unattend.

The high-level schema of the new XML configuration file is well defined, with each phase of the deployment process represented. The actual configuration items are specified on the appropriate operating system components and these items are dynamically discovered from the components themselves. You can still do that, but the Windows System Image Manager tool I discussed earlier can be used to inspect the Windows Vista image, determine what settings are available, and allow you to configure each one.

It will also use XML configuration files in place of the. Different hardware abstraction layers HALs meant you had to maintain multiple images. For more on this see the Knowledge Base article "HAL options after Windows XP or Windows Server Setup" Most organizations needed two or three images per platform x86 and x64 and some chose to have even more—though each image brings added costs and complexity.

In Windows Vista, those technical restrictions are gone; the operating system is able to detect which HAL is required and automatically install it. It's not even possible to find these any more for some newer network cards and mass storage adapters. Better performance from bit and bit networking stacks and tools, as well as large memory support are also advantages. With Windows PE 2. All organizations will be able to download Windows PE 2. New tools like peimg.

For more information on Windows PE 2. There was no generic image creation tool available from Microsoft. Unlike many other image formats, WIM images are file-based, enabling them to be applied to an existing partition non-destructively. This has great advantages in deployment processes, since user state can be saved locally instead of on a network server, eliminating what is frequently the largest source of network traffic during a deployment.

Because WIM files are file-based images, they obviously are not sector-based, so there are no issues around different-sized disks or partitions. A WIM image contains only the contents of a single disk volume or partition, so if you have multiple partitions to capture, you create a separate image for each one.

But each of these images can be stored in the same WIM file, since the WIM file format supports multiple images per file. The WIM file format also supports single-instance storage, so duplicate files even from different images are automatically removed.

Between this and the advanced compression techniques employed, WIM images are typically smaller than images created by other tools. However, because of the extra processing, they do take longer to create. This size versus performance trade-off is fair enough; since you typically capture the image only once and then deploy it many times, the network traffic savings can be substantial.

It also provides a mechanism for mounting a WIM image as a file system. Once mounted, the image can be read and modified using standard Windows tools since it looks like a normal removable media drive.

This facility opens up whole new servicing opportunities. You could either deploy localized versions of Windows XP, requiring a different image for each language, or you could deploy an English Multilanguage User Interface MUI version with added language packs.

There were advantages and disadvantages to each approach, but in most cases organizations that needed to support multiple languages took the MUI route, dealing with the limitations of running with an operating system that was effectively English at its core.

Organizations that worked only with one language typically chose to use only the localized versions. Now with Windows Vista, the entire operating system is language-neutral.

One or more language packs are added to this language-neutral core to create the image that is deployed although only some versions of Windows Vista support multiple languages. Servicing of Windows Vista is also language-neutral, so in many cases only one security update is needed for all languages. And configuration is language-neutral, so one unattend.

Help Is Available The changes I've described mean that the image creation and deployment processes you've been using for Windows XP will need to be updated. In some cases, these updates might be minor; in others such as an MS-DOS-based process using cmdlines.

To help, Microsoft has created new tools, guidance, and step-by-step procedures. BDD breaks down the deployment process into more manageable pieces, with different teams managing each component. Guidance, checklists, and tools are provided for each team to help with the tasks they need to perform. BDD is currently available for download from connect. Contained in the download are all the required Windows Vista deployment tools, including Windows PE 2.

The goal of BDD is simplification. Even if you don't have an existing image creation and deployment process, you should be able to use BDD to set one up quickly. The new features in BDD include driver repository and injection, full computer backup processing, integration of all the Windows Vista deployment tools, and more. BDD will include all the source code for all of its automation tools, so you can modify it to meet your specific needs or copy and paste it into your own solutions.