Tiny boot manager (TBootMgr) ver. 21/09 is a small boot manager which will only occupy the master boot record of your fixed disk. Uppon install it removes any active flag, to allow you to choose booting from up to 4 installed primary partitions. It will handle multiple primary Dos/Windows partitions by unhiding the selected partition, while hiding other conflicting partitions. It recognizes FAT-12, FAT-16, FAT-32 (also LBA and larger than 2 Gigabytes) and NTFS/HPFS partitions for hiding and unhiding. Tiny boot manager also supports booting from disks larger than 8 Gigabytes up to 2 Terabytes.
The user must reply by pressing key 1, 2, 3 or 4 to boot from that partition. Pressing 'Esc' will try to invoke ROM-Basic, which would normally occur if no partition has the active flag set. Most computers have no ROM-Basic anymore, but BIOS will then try to boot the next boot device as specified in the BIOS-Setup. It makes it possible to place the fixed disk first in the BIOS boot sequence and still allow to boot from diskette, CD/DVD-ROM, USB device or network.
TBOOTMGR.COM is the only file needed for installation. It is advisable to do the installation outside the Windows environment. Also disable the virus-check option in your BIOS. Some computers may need this option to remain disabled during normal use of the boot option, since hiding and unhiding partition changes have to be written back to disk. It is also advisable to make a backup copy of the master boot record using the build-in option. The program requires DOS version 2 or higher.
After restore a partition must be set active again with e.g. FDISK.
Start TBOOTMGR.COM /? (or with any invalid parameter) to see an explanation of command parameters.
To enable creation of multiple partitions under Dos/Windows with only FDISK,
TBootMgr allows the selection of unused space at boot. Of course no boot will
occur, but other partitions will be hidden. This will allow you to create a new
partition in unused space with FDISK. Do not use the FDISK option to allocate
all free disk-space for the new partition, since FDISK then also sets the
active flag for that partition.
If an other tool (e.g. Powerquest PQMAGIC, Ranish PART, PTTE, etc.) is used to
create multiple partitions, do make sure that only one primary FAT-partition
remains unhidden (TBootMgr will not hide other partitions if the choosen
partition is not hidden).
Partition selection prompt is activated by setting all partitions inactive at installation. This means that when a partition is set active with e.g. FDISK, PART or PTTE after installation, the boot select prompt is deactivated. The boot process is then not different to what FDISK normally installs.
As of version 21/08 it is also possible to start an extended partition. At
installation TBootMgr will install additional code in the primairy extended
partition which activates a chain boot function to boot from the first logical
volume. This is incompatible with DOS or Windows, but works fine with Linux.
In that case you should place GRUB or LILO also in the same logical volume.
(source listing)
If no partition remains marked active on disk as with TBOOTMGR, MS Windows
10 refuses to enter sleep mode and updates requiring reboot will fail.
Sleep mode can be disabled to solve the first issue, and temporarily setting
the Windows 10 boot partition active while updating can solve the second.
This can be annoying and therefore a modified version TBOOTSEL
is added as a MBR file.
This bootcode is essentially the same, but always leaves the last selected
partition marked active on disk. The user prompt however can not be disabled and
an unused table entry or an extended partition can hence not be choosen in this
version.
(source listing)
If you have problems, questions, bugs or suggestions regarding this software, please feel free to contact me at ton@daas.info