Operation Manual

8 Acronis OS Selector

Acronis OS Selector is a powerful, reliable and easy-to-use boot manager that allows several

operating systems on a single machine and lets you create different configurations for any installed

operating system, including Windows 7. With Acronis OS Selector, you can:

 Install several different operating systems on a single machine

 Load installed operating systems from any basic MBR disk volume or boot the machine from

CD/DVD

 Load installed operating systems from under Windows

 Install several operating systems on a single volume

 Hide or protect any operating system on your machine with a password

 Duplicate installed operating systems and define different configurations for each copy

In this section

Starting the work ..................................................................................... 57

Setting the boot menu ............................................................................. 58

Operations ............................................................................................... 58

Editing operating systems ........................................................................ 61

Detecting operating systems ................................................................... 63

Setting Acronis OS Selector options ......................................................... 64

Installing and using several operating systems on a single machine ....... 65

8.1 Starting the work

After Acronis OS Selector is installed together with Acronis Disk Director, all operating systems that

exist on the given machine will be automatically located and added to the boot menu. The software

will also automatically set the parameters and properties for every operating system found — see

Setting operating system properties (p. 60).

You can run Acronis OS Selector as a separate application by clicking Start -> All Programs -> Acronis

-> Disk Director -> Acronis OS Selector

You can control Acronis OS Selector in two ways:

 From its main window under Windows

 From the Acronis OS Selector boot menu invoked at bootup before the operating system is

booted. The boot menu has the same interface and structure as the main window.

The key part of the main window, Operating systems, contains a list of operating systems available

for loading on this machine. Acronis OS Selector automatically determines all operating systems

installed and lists them in the boot menu at machine bootup and in the Acronis OS Selector main

window under Windows. If you insert a bootable CD/DVD, it will be detected and displayed in the

boot menu/main window as well. The CD/DVD can contain an operating system or any bootable

program – in all cases, you will see a new icon in the operating systems area.

The left part of the window (the sidebar) contains the following sections also available in the main

menu and customizable toolbar: