See the MbrFix (CLI) program:
MbrFix

among many other things it can do is:

[i]
MbrFix /drive fixmbr {/vista|/win7}
[/i]

to “Update MBR code to W2K/XP/2003, Vista or Win7?

D/L from:
mbrfix.zip – direct download from sysint.no

or via
Download page at sysint.no

Found Mbrfix mentioned (first) among other utilities at;
Boot Tools

Lots of MBR info at that site
The Starman’s Realm

See also:
about Dual and Multibooting with Vista [and Win 7]

See the MbrFix (CLI) program:

among many other things it can do

MbrFix /drive fixmbr {/vista|/win7}

to “Update MBR code to W2K/XP/2003, Vista or Win7″

D/L from:

or via

Found Mbrfix mentioned (first) among other utilities at;

Lots of MBR info at that site

Multibooting Vista (and Win 7), lots of info at:

I am a bit intoxicated at the moment but this should be rite, feel free to correct me if I gave the wrong command

You guessed it, XOSL wiped out the win7 boot, I was able to repair XP boot but not win7 so this morning I went online in hunt of “win7 & missing ntldr”. No luck, “win7 & XOSL” brought me here, and XOSL is working like a champ.

Now I clone my backup copy of linux into my third partition and make sure grub boots via XOSL.

I would like an updated XOSL too, I have usb mouse & keyboard, usb legacy enabled, and can’t manage XOSL install on my desktop. ASUS P5K, Intel E4500 dual core, plenty of memory, drive space, etc….had to revert to GAG which is not a bad choice, just not XOSL.

I’ll have to give pLop a try, but I sure wish XOSL 2.0 was up to 2.4 or 2.5 with usb & CD booting enabled…how sweet would that be!

It is out of my league, the only thing I can program is my DVD or my TV with the remote.

Great post, thanks for the detailed description, and glad to hear others think XOSL is a decent loader that needs revisiting!

1)have XOSL preinstalled
2)have other OS preinstalled
3)have a partition avaliable for vista\win7 (recommend primary, NTFS, 15GB+)
4)In XOSL add the vista\win7 partition, (set it to activate partition)
5)boot into that partition, it will give an error, NTloader not found or something, it may just be black screen. Insert vista\win7 DVD then reboot PC
6)boot from the dvd and install vista\win7 to that partition
7)after vista\win7 is installed, use a boot cd to get back into xosl. in xosl, chose restore an existing installation.
8)on reboot you should now see xosl again, with all your existing os choices.
9)boot into vista\win7, this will throw an error saying your installation is broken. insert vista\win7 DVD and reboot
10)boot from the DVD, and wait to load and then chose your language and fix errors. when this is finished eject dvd and reboot
11)all done, now you can multiboot windows yay, lol

If I want to have a tri-boot system, being; windows xp, windows 7 and dos 7.10, I can simply activate each partition then install the OS to each partition, install XOSL on top of dos(recovery OS), and use XOSL to hide windows xp from windows 7 and to hide dos partition, so if i boot either windows, it will only show the added data partition.

GAG is not capable of this advanced hiding (trust me I have tried this to my wits end), plus it looks crap, plus it doesn’t support hot keys. The only advantage of GAG is it doesn’t need a partition to install on top.

XOSL is old and it doesn’t work to great on korean laptops (samsung), it works on eeepc 701’s, however it is buggy.

The alternative for korean laptops and eeepc is pLop boot loader, which a german dude is developing, which is more of a power tool, but it has the added advantage that it can render selected partitions cleared instead of hidden, which means windows wont detect it.

By the way, if you want to multi boot windows XP, eg xp english and xp arabic, you must hide the existing xp, then set the xp-about-to-be-installed-on partition to active, and this can be done in XOSL!

Another thing, if you format the drive XOSL is sitting on, while it is your boot loader, when the PC starts, the mbr kicks in and trys to find the XOSL, however its not there!, so you will have a black screen everytime you boot your PC. In order to fix that, you have to replace your MBR with a standard one.

Hopefully someone will keep developing XOSL, since the source is avaliable, and hopefully make it self contained onto the MBR, rather than requiring a partition, in the case where you don’t have another partition, and you want a nice GUI based, and advanced boot loader, use pLop boot loader!!

For Dell owners, i’ve made a customized version of XOSL to support the alternative powerup button (mediadirect), so you can remap it to whatever OS you want :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=373756

A guide for Hackintoch users :
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=162689