Moving Vista Boot Manager (BCD)

The Scenario:
While performing a fresh Vista install with more than one HDD's installed, the Vista boot manager (BCD) at times get installed on a different drive than the drive you chose to the install the OS onto.

If you don't know on which drive is the boot manager installed, open Command Prompt, type in bcdedit, Notice the second line "partition=X:" under both the heads.
Partition=C: under Windows Boot Manager means that it is located in Drive C and the same under Windows Vista Bootloader corresponds to your OS installation.

If they are same then your boot manager(BCD) is in the same partition as your OS, you're good to go. If they are different then keep reading.



This solution provided herein can also be applied in the condition where the installed OS and the BCD is located at different partitions instead of different drives.


The Reason:
This may happen due a set HDD priority in bios or sumthing else.


Why is this a problem?:
This is a problem because, say you have 2 HDD's i.e C: & D: and Vista is installed on C, whereas vista's boot manager is installed on D.
Now for whatever reasons you need to take out D:, but since the boot manager is installed on D, taking it out would render your machine unbootable.

Now removing the Drive D: and then using vista installation disc's repair menu doesn't help cuz it doesn't detect the installed OS.


The Solution:

Download VistaBootPro from HERE (Bottom of the page)

Step I.
Start the Application. It'll redirect you to the BCD backup page. Click on browse the save a backup copy at say C:\Backup.



Step II.
Goto the root directory of the drive where the BCD is installed say Drive D:.

Tools->Folder Options-> View -> Select show hidden files & Uncheck hide protected OS files

Copy
i. bootmgr
ii. grldr
iii. BOOT (folder)

Paste the same into the root directory of the drive where Vista is installed say Drive C:.
It will give an error copying 2 file's i.e BCD and BCD.log, saying they are currently being used by someother application. Skip these files






Step III.
Goto the folder C:\Backup where we backed up the BCD earlier in step I.
Rename the files like this (make another backup first).

xxx.bcd -> BCD
xxx.bcd.log -> BCD.LOG
xxx.bcd.log1 -> BCD.LOG1
xxx.bcd.log2 -> BCD.LOG2

Copy all these files and paste them into the C:\Boot folder, replacing all files.


Step IV.
Reboot.
Open Bios.
Change HDD Priority from Drive D: to Drive C:.
Boot to Vista Installation Disc.
Select repair my computer and proceed further.
Congratulations You're BCD and OS are in the same Drive now.