Dual Boot System

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gabe
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Gabe

I installed a dual boot system on my computer using ME and
XP. Everything worked fine. My question is...in XP, I
can see both volumes, IE drive C and drive F. Is there
any way that I can stop drive C from showing up in XP so
no one tampers with the files I have on the ME system? I
looked at all the options for the "my computer" veiw in
XP, and none of them show how to hide a drive. ME doesn't
show both drives, only the one it is using.
 
Gabe said:
I installed a dual boot system on my computer using ME and
XP. Everything worked fine. My question is...in XP, I
can see both volumes, IE drive C and drive F. Is there
any way that I can stop drive C from showing up in XP so
no one tampers with the files I have on the ME system? I
looked at all the options for the "my computer" veiw in
XP, and none of them show how to hide a drive. ME doesn't
show both drives, only the one it is using.
Click to expand...

You would have to use a third-party boot manager to do this -
in fact, it is the recommended way to do multi-booting. XOSL
is one you could use, and it's free.

In your case it's too late for such an approach, because
everything is already installed. Incidentally, WinME does
not show both drives because you most likely installed
WinXP on an NTFS partition. WinME cannot read NTFS
partitions.
 
If I physically had two separate hard drives, would this
still happen. I don't want XP to know that the other
operating system even exists. Of course you would know at
startup. Does that program that you are referring to work
easily, and are you pretty sure that it would do
that...isolate the two OSs? I don't mind reloading
everything. I already have all of the important stuff
backed up anyway.
 
Even if you had two physical disks, you would still see
the WinME partition while running under WinXP.

Here are the steps involved in setting up a robust
multi-booting system. They assume that the boot
loader and WinME go onto disk A, and that WinXP
is already installed on disk B. Other combinations
are easily achieved.

1. Create a 15 MByte primary partition on disk A.
2. Create a further primary partition on disk A
for WinME, and make it the primary and active
partition.
3. Load WinME into this partition.
4. Load the XOSL boot loader into the 15 MByte partition.
6. Launch XOSL and include WinME in its menu.
7. Connect disk B: as a slave disk.
8. Include WinXP in the XOSL boot menu.
9. Instruct XOSL to hide the WinXP partition when booting
into WinME.
10. Instruct XOSL to hide the WinME partition when booting
into WinXP.

You should also consider setting up a data partition that
is visible to both OSs. It must be the last partition on disk B.

You will find that hidden partitions are completely invisible
to the currently active OS. It is as if they did not exist.
 
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