Help with Acronis Boot Manager please?

[Horrgakx]

Hi all - I've installed an additional HD and put Win7 on there. My other drive has my previous WinXP install.

I want to be able to boot between OS's without having to pull SATA cables out of drives to do it.

So I used Acronis Boot Manager which installed ok, the system rebooted, and it said "Analyzing drives"... it did this for about 20 mins before rebooting without notice but it booted straight into WinXP with no boot menu or anything in sight. In fact it looked like it was booting as it has been doing! And this is repeatable if I reboot.

Does anyone have any advice? Acronis Boot Manager appears under Start > Programs but it seems only PDF's etc. and no config program.

Thanks.

OS; Win7 64bit & WinXP over 2 SATA drives
Mobo; IX48-GT3
Video; nVidia 8800GTS
CPU; Intel Quad Pro Duo
Drives; SATA
CD/DVD; HP Lightscribe
Memory; 4Gb low latency matched

 

[Ijack]

I'd recommend EasyBCD (Google for it) if you want to multi-boot Windows 7 and XP. It's free and it just works.

With two disks you could always use the BIOS menu to choose a boot device (the key to press varies with m/b - with mine pressing F11 as I boot gives the boot device menu; it will probably be another key with yours - check the manual). No need to pull cables.

 

[Horrgakx]

Thanks, I'll check that out.

Oddly, NONE of my SATA drives appear in the BIOS. I have 3x SATA HD's and 1X SATA DVD (Lightscribe) writer.
However during the boot process I can see that it detects the drives.

So, I can't even select the boot disk in the BIOS...!

 

[Horrgakx]

Just to let you know; I tried EasyBCD but it wouldn't boot WinXP from another disk. The options LOOKED okay but when I selected the XP menu option the PC simply rebooted.

I actually got into a mess with this because I removed the Win7 AND the WinXP options from EasyBCD, leaving only the memory test option. The system would ONLY do the memory test and not boot at all. So I managed to repair the OS with the Win7 installation CD and removed the software completely.

With bot Acronis and EasyBCD I've had nothing but bad experiences