It looks like BCVE doesn't install any PBR code into the C drive. You could enable debug or even better single-stepping however, see: The contents of menu.lst are good enough (in a request for help/assistance), as an example if one of the commands in the menu.lst is evidently wrong someone may spot the problem, but for actual experimenting and troubleshooting the approach on command line, with commands one at the time and related feedback are the best way to proceed.īesides, this way you can issue/insert "diagnostic/lookup" commands (such as - only as an example - "map -status" or "set var") to see if the environment is correct, etc. When you use the menu.lst you have no way to know which command did what, all you can see is - maybe - the last feedback by the last command that either succeeded and provided the feedback or hanged, but you have no way to know WHICH was the last command that created the *whatever* you obtained as result of a menu.lst entry. The point is that each single command may (or may not) give feedback in the form of:ġ) actual feedback from the command interpreter (such as an error or a diagnostic message)
I also know that BCVE has an option to move the encrypted volume's key to either external storage or an ISO, but this seems overly complex in contrast to just chainloading an MBR image.Īm I correct in assuming that the G4D bootloader is little more than a command interpreter, that just reads the menu.lst and executes the commands line by line? If so, then wouldn't it be sufficient to write out the contents of menu.lst instead? I am not familiar with doing the commands manually. This attempt has failed, every time I try to chainload this MBR nothing happens, G4D goes to boot the entry and then hangs on a "_" cursor, no error is given. Create a menu.lst entry that chainloads the BCVE MBR file Install G4D by following steps 1-4 aboveĥ.
Reinstall original Windows 10 MBR boot code by running the 'bootrec /fixmbr' command from a 10 setup ISOĤ. Make a copy of the BCVE MBR with BootIce.ģ. Install and encrypt with BCVE, while first only having original Windows 10 boot code in the MBRĢ.
I think the best way to accomplish this is to:ġ. This isn't the desired behavior, I want G4D to be the first bootloader to load, so it needs to be in the MBR. It may also be relocating it to the 1MB unallocated space at the end of the disk, even though this space isn't shown in GParted when partitioning, I am sure that it is there because the ending sector of the last partition isn't the same as the ending sector of the actual disk.
BCVE loads first and then hands off to G4D after the correct password is typed. If I first install G4D and then encrypt with BCVE, it appears that BCVE relocates G4D to some area of the disk, probably outside a partition, or embedded somewhere in the C drive. Chainloading bootmgr directly is no longer an option, since it is located in an encrypted volume. Add a entry to menu.lst that chainloads 10's bootmgr, ensure that it bootsīut now I would like to throw BCVE into the mix. Install G4D MBR by using the "Restore" MBR feature of BootIce, restored file is grldr.mbr, target disk is the same (only one) disk that 10 is installed toĤ.
Extract file contents into an unencrypted NTFS partitionģ. Download, I am going with this because I think I remember the Easy2Boot dev stating that it is most stable version of G4D so farĢ. I have already been successful in creating entries that can boot Debian and Gentoo (not in a VM).ġ. Getting on with it, I've been toying around with G4D a bit lately, and it is a bit daunting because I am not familiar with maintaining its' menu.lst config file. With VMware there is no issue booting while encrypted with BCVE. And with a System Reserved volume containing boot files, and a separate partition for Windows. I had tried with a single NTFS partition as the C drive, containing Windows as well as boot files. I had tried encrypting Windows 10 with BCVE in VirtualBox, but 10 kept complaining that it couldn't find the boot volume. OK, so I'm doing some tests in a VMware Workstation VM, and I would like to chainload BCVE's bootloader with G4D.