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I'm having a wee bit of a problem on my new system.
I installed Visual Studio 2008 on my new laptop (my old system died). I had already tried to use
ML and Link and mspdb80.dll which were in my TOOLS directory, but the system said that "mspdb80 is
the wrong version, check installation", so I tried the install. I had already used bcdedit.exe to
modify the path to add my TOOLS directory (there is no more autoexec.bat in Windows 7 - and I was
coming from Windows XP).
Now when I execute bcdedit.exe (as administrator) I now just get a flash on the screen (starts to
execute then immediately quits). I wrote a pathedit.bat file to execute bcdedit.exe (from its
location in the Windows 7), then pause. I get the following when I execute it
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
\mail\autoexec>pathedit
(which contains:
C:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe
pause
\mail\autoexec>C:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe
'C:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
\mail\autoexec>pause
Press any key to continue . . .
Several interesting things are apparent. Why does the batch file execution identify itself as
"Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]"
My system is Windows 7 Home Premium (from Control Panel:System).
Secondly, why does Windows now say that bcdedit.exe "is not recognized..."
Has the installation of Visual Studio 2008 clobbered Windows 7? It did not report any errors,
but I have not tested Visual Studio yet.
Note the following PATH display.
The first entry is where I added the path to my TOOLS directory before I installed Visual Studio.
The last entry (at least the last entry - I don't have a copy of the path from before the Visual
Studio install) is where Visual Studio added the entry for "Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\binn\" and
I had noticed that installation as it installed.
PATH=F:\DATA(F)\xxxxxxxxxx\yy\TOOLS;C:\Program Files (x86)\HP SimplePass 2012\x64;C:\Program Files (
x86)\HP SimplePass 2012\;;C:\Program Files\Broadcom\Broadcom 802.11\Driver;;C:\Program Files (x86)\A
MD APP\bin\x86_64;C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Sha
red\Windows Live;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\Windows\system
32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files
(x86)\Common Files\Roxio Shared\DLLShared\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Roxio Shared\DLLShare
d\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Roxio Shared\12.0\DLLShared\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows L
ive\Shared;C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static;C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Blue
tooth Software\;C:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth Software\syswow64;C:\Program Files\Broadcom\WHL\;
C:\Program Files\Broadcom\WHL\syswow64;C:\Program Files\Broadcom\WHL\SysWow64\;C:\Program Files\Broa
dcom\WHL\SysWow64\syswow64;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\binn\
What should I do other than restore the system from before the installation attempt?
I did take a full system Norton Ghost save to my backup external drives (actually, a Symantic
Recovery Disk full save with the system shut down).
Has anyone else run into this?
Has anyone got any ideas?
Dave.
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I don't think your system is hosed.
Windows version 6.0 was Vista. 6.1 is "Win 7"
Forget what I wrote below. I was wrong.
Go to your start menu and locate the Visual Studio Tools folder. Then launch the "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt".
This will set the environment variables to their proper values. BCDEdit is located in the SDK folder, not \Windows\System32.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Richard,
Thank you for the prompt reply. Without Visual Studio installed, The path I used for bcdedit.exe was correct, and I used it to add my TOOLS path. I guess that there is a registry entry that pointed to it, and the registry was changed when Visual Studio installed. Now that the registry does not point there anymore, Windows 7 refuses to accept the old .exe. The "help" didn't say how to get into bcdedit,exe, only that it was the new method to replace autoexec.bat, so I used explorer and search to find it the first time.
I'll try your method.
Dave.
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I modified my previous post to indicate that I was indeed wrong about the path to bcdedit.
I'm afraid I do not know what's causing your problem.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Richard.
Thank you for trying.
My system still seems to be running correctly except for that one little problem.
I will try to search the directory to see if bcdedit appears somewhere else, or if there is a registry entry for it.
Dave
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Richard,
The only other entry I could find was in Program Files (x86) for Norton Ghost, which seems appropropriate since it is used to recover systems especially when using the Symantic Recovery Disk.
Dave.
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Richard,
I checked with regedit. No entries for bcdedit.exe at all.
Dave.
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I find the Explorer search feature quite useless.
Have you tried opening a command prompt and doing "dir bcdedit.exe /s" at the root directory?
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Richard.
You don't want me to comment on how many of the Windows 7 changes I find worse than useless. What a re-learning curve.
I will try your suggestion.
Dave.
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Richard,
I tried and got thousands of entries saying that the directory name is too long. I was at C:\ and entered "dir bcdedit.exe /s".
The explorer search method works, works differently then XP, but works.
Dave.
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Richard,
I just caught your message edit. Am I still up in the air?
Dave.
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Did you check in C:\Windows\System32 to see if bcdedit.exe is still there? If it is not then it may well be that some other system files have been destroyed (who knows how), so it may be safer to re-install Windows 7.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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Richard II,
Thank you for responding.
Yes, I did check. It is there, but Windows 7 does not recognize it as valid.
I doubt that the file is modified, it is just that something is telling Windows that it is not valid.
I will copy the file to another location, then boot from the Symantic Recovery Disk and restore bcdedit.exe from my backup, then boot up and use FileCompare (FC) to verify that the actual content is the same.
Dave.
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Member 4194593 wrote: I doubt that the file is modified
You can usually tell by looking at its properties.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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Richard II,
Here is the FC result where bcdedit1.exe is a copy of the restored backup file, BCDEDIT2.exe is the copy of the system file after the Visual Studio file install:
Comparing files bcdedit1.exe and BCDEDIT2.EXE
FC: no differences encountered
The report tells it all. The file is the same as the original (which used to work), but now is ignored.
OBTW, Symantic Recovery Disk works just fine. This is the first time I ever used the recovery feature (have done several backups). The interface is almost exactly like my Windows XP mainstay of Partition Magic DriveImage 7 (Symantic bought Partition Magic and, I guess, Norton Ghost). They did not make too many changes in the basic engine, the Help is different, and they implemented recovery points, and they implemented recovery of individual files and folders.
Dave.
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Sorry, I have no further ideas what may have happened to your system, but I find it difficult to believe that this is due to the install of visual Studio.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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Richard II,
I watched the install, there are about 30 things it installs, not just a simple Compiler and IDE (including SQL server, etc, etc).
All I know is that bcdedit.exe was working before the install (I used it and set a path to my TOOLS), but not after the install.
Dave.
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Given the number of installations similar to yours it seems strange that no one else has seen this elsewhere. As I said before, my only advice would be to re-install windows 7 and try again.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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I just went back to your original message to review the problem. You wrote that when you tried to run bcdedit you get the message:
'C:\Windows\System32\bcdedit.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
This message normally indicates that the shell cannot find the program in the location that you specified. You then said that you checked and it is there so I don't understand how only that program can not be found when, presumably, all other executables in System32 run OK. If the file was just corrupted then you would get a different message.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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Richard II,
I have also been working with the masm32 project and one of the members suggested that I needed to elevate my access to cmd.exe. This results in the ability to at least list the contents of the bcd file with all of the variables, but still need a way to be able to edit the values to add new paths. This was not necessary when I first added my TOOLS path, but I cannot remember exactly how I did that at that time.
I also have a MS feedback waiting for my review.
Eventually, I may be able to actually use my system to do my work.
Thank you for your interest in this problem.
Dave.
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If I open a cmd window and call bcdedit it runs fine, without any elevated privileges; however my account is an administrator account.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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My account is also an administrator account. Still does not help me.
Maybe you can give me some tips on bcdedit usage (that I can use once I get it working). Can you give me the steps you would use to add a path to %path%? I am sure that I did this once (I added the path to my TOOLS to the %path% and it it still there), but can't remember exactly how I did this, and since I can't really use bcdedit at the moment, I can't really experiment with this.
On top of everything else, my mail server (Yahoo) decided to take a hike so I can't read my MS mail. Hopefully, Yahoo will return shortly.
Dave.
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Sorry Dave, I have never used bcdedit, to be honest I don't really know what it is used for. If you want to edit your path variable then use the System item in Control Panel, and select the Advanced Settings and then Environment Variables on the Advanced tab.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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Richard II,
Thank you, thank you, thank you! That is what I was looking for. Works as advertized, once you know what you are doing.
Dave.
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I think you actually did all the work, but happy to add my little bit.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
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