Multiboot XP and Change/Hide Drives

[Guest]

I did not see anything in the multiboot posts or articles about changing
drive letters or hiding drives when a disk has been partitioned for
multiboot. Is there a way to hide the C or D drive based on which partition
you are booting from? There doesn't appear to be a way in Disk Manager (both
boots are Win XP, one disk, two ntfs partitions).
The problem comes from my D drive boot. It has software that won't let me
select the default directory (c:\program files). It installs to the wrong
drive. I am trying to set up an engine diagnostic laptop with software from
two brands of equipment. They both want us to buy a dedicated laptop to avoid
compatibility problems.
Any solutions to this? Thx.

 

[Jerry]

Check the laptop's BIOS and see if you can't change the boot order and
selection from there.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I did not see anything in the multiboot posts or articles about changing
drive letters or hiding drives when a disk has been partitioned for
multiboot. Is there a way to hide the C or D drive based on which partition
you are booting from? There doesn't appear to be a way in Disk Manager (both
boots are Win XP, one disk, two ntfs partitions).
The problem comes from my D drive boot. It has software that won't let me
select the default directory (c:\program files). It installs to the wrong
drive. I am trying to set up an engine diagnostic laptop with software from
two brands of equipment. They both want us to buy a dedicated laptop to avoid
compatibility problems.
Any solutions to this? Thx.

Selectively hiding partitions is beyond the capabilities of the
native WinXP boot manager. On the other hand, it is standard
fare for third party boot managers such as XOSL (free!). Post
again if you're interested, and state exactly what partitions you
have, what type they are (NTFS/FAT) and what you intend to
use them for.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I did not see anything in the multiboot posts or articles about changing
drive letters or hiding drives when a disk has been partitioned for
multiboot. Is there a way to hide the C or D drive based on which partition
you are booting from? There doesn't appear to be a way in Disk Manager (both
boots are Win XP, one disk, two ntfs partitions).

That needs a third party boot manager. I recommend BootIT NG, from
http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)

With that when you set up a boot instance, as well as selecting the
partition to boot, there is a list of all partitions on the right where
you can highlight and choose to hide items. You can also use Up and
Down to set the order the partitions appear in the Partition table; this
is very useful if you clone an XP partition, so that in both the booted
partition is in the place in the table it had when originally set up

 

[Guest]

Selectively hiding partitions is beyond the capabilities of the
native WinXP boot manager. On the other hand, it is standard
fare for third party boot managers such as XOSL (free!). Post
again if you're interested, and state exactly what partitions you
have, what type they are (NTFS/FAT) and what you intend to
use them for.

I am interested in making it operate like it was two completely different
laptops. I'll download xosl and read about it. Basically I have one disk in a
laptop partitioned into two ntfs 14GB drives. I want to boot Brand1 or Brand2
and have that version of XP be independent of the other to eliminate any
possible compatibility conflicts between serial communications of the two
brand's software. The problem I had was hiding the partitions from each
other. It would also be nice for the D drive or #2 partition to be a C: drive
when it boots. Any additional info, especially xosl tips, would be helpful.
Thx.