Haiku in Windows menu with BCEdit

Can i add Haiku partitions into the Windows menu using BCEdit?

No idea?

No one tried to add haiku into the Windows bootmanager before?

Never tried it with Haiku but I did boot Linux from the Windows boot manager quite some years ago (with Windows Vista or might even have been XP) . It involved copying the bootsector (with dd) into a file and then registering it in the windows boot manager. I assume that would work in a similar way with Haiku.

I found a link where the procedure with Linux and bcdedit is described. Linux aus Windows-BootmenĂź starten | krausens-online.de
Shouldn’t be too different with Haiku I guess. You just have to make sure Haiku doesn’t overwrite the MBR when installing it (I assume you are using a machine with BIOS, not UEFI).

That said, I think it would be much easier using grub as the main bootloader and chainloading windows from there.

You can, but it’s even easier to use EasyBCD, (i’m using it), it’s dead easy just install it and in the left panel choose add a new entry, in the right panel choose ‘linux/BSD’ and leave the type of the bootloader as grub legacy, in the name section type Haiku and finaly in the type menu list pick the haiku partition which will have the “0xEB” ID in the string and save.
Click on “edit boot menu” and on the right panel below uncheck the timer to make the boot menu to wait until you make choice when you boot.

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Thanks for the reply, i will try it.

It would be great to have this information on the website, alongside the instructions for Grub?

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Sure, where do i add it to? i never had to deal with documentation updates.

Booting Haiku appears to be the relevant guide. PRs are done at github, this should be the file to edit: booting.md

I’ll take a look at it tonight.
Thanks.

Better idea (if someone has to run Windows, that is) is to put Windows on one disk and Haiku on the other. That way, it’s harder for the bootloaders to interfere with the other.

It does not run like you descript

Haven’t you been able to add Haiku to the menu?, i may have mistyped an option or 2 because i was typing it from the top of head, but i figured you would find your way by yourself as you’re an experienced user, the options are really easy to understand.
What did you do exactly?

-Starting up EasyBCEdit 2.3
-Add new entry
-Linux/BSD
-GRUB (old version)
- Name to Haiku
- Selecting haiku partition
- Add entry

click on the “Add entry” button, after you select your partition, and then on the left panel click on “edit boot menu” and on the right panel choose which OS you whish to make the default by checking its checkbox, and below you choose the amount of seconds the bootloader should wait before it boots the default OS, or you click on the radio button "wait for user selection, and next to it click on “save settings”.

I can write the steps to add a Haiku entry with native tool bcdedit if you need.

would be fine, then i can, if i understood, creating a tutorial on besly :slight_smile:

There is something I find strange in this process. As far as I know, the Haiku and Windows MBR do exactly the same thing:

  • Look for the active partition
  • Load the PBR (Partition Boot Record) from it and run that

So, it should not be needed to change the MBR. Just make your Windows partition the active one, so that the Windows bootloader is run.

Then, you don’t need to run our MBR to boot, you need the PBR (partition boot record). This one is the one installed with makebootable in our case, and is indeed specific to Haiku. It lies not at the start of the disk, but at the start of the Haiku partition.

I think your instructions will work in the case where there is no active partition. In that case, both bootloaders have a fallback: the Windows MBR will try to locate a FAT or NTFS partition, while ours will locate a BFS partition. So they both end up booting what you expected. But this may be a bit fragile, especially if you have multiple partitions using these filesystems on the disk.

I have submitted Pull Request, though it still needs futher improvments.

Here are my tutorial about adding haiku into the BCD boot manager menu on Windows:

http://www.besly.de/index.php/de/overview/111-systemprogramme-8/167-lelldorin (german)

Well, I have updated the PR a few days ago, i think it looks better now.