"One of the more questionable tactics that Microsoft has implemented in Vista is to automatically overwrite any existing MBR during the installation process without asking if you mind or giving you an option to back up. Microsoft says that the Windows installation system can't intelligently interrogate an existing non-MS MBR, although such features are quite common in the install routine for other OSes."
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Member since:2005-07-08
Who cares about how many bootloaders are there? I'm just asking for a "don't overwrite the MBR, let me configure it" option.
Although the REAL reason why microsoft don't ask users to overwrite the MBR is because their install procedure needs a couple of reboots (yes, even in vista). If they didn't overwrite the boot sector the windows partition would be left in a half-installed state.
Member since:2005-07-06
During the installation, after the reboot you typically boot on the CD (which is still in there), and it then transfers control to the hard disk boot partition.
So they could just do the same, have the cd detect the vista partition and let it boot so it can resume their unwieldy multi-reboot installation procedure, and just ask for confirmation before overwriting an unrecognized MBR.
I mean, overwriting the MBR isn't even remotely helping them fight linux, it's just an unecessary, mild inconvenience. It's basically just them being petty at this point. "no, we don't want to deal with anything non-windows in any way, shape and form, even if it's just a trivial data check somewhere"
Member since:2005-06-29
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Member since:2006-09-01
Member since:2005-12-31
Well easy solution (and more elegant one) would be to look at the MBR if it's different from the one they plan to install then notify the user(with option to restore MBR),
this way any regular windows user won't get prompted and other users can easily avoid a new MBR (or even get it restored)
Member since:
2005-06-29
They'd have to identify something like 3 different boot loaders (lilo, grub, and bsd's)! Can you imagine the time it'd take to learn to do that! I mean, it's not like people have done it before (they have)! And if they did, they certainly wouldn't give these secrets away (GPL'ed, I'm sure).