Dual Boot XP & Vista

[Tim]

Hi there,

I have one hard drive with 2 Primary Partitions on the first (active)
partition I have installed XP Pro and on the second (hidden) partition I
have installed Vista Ultimate. I'm using a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R MB with
SATA HD and for some reason can't use PM Boot Magic 8.

Is there another way of dual booting other than having to use Partition
Magic via DOS to change the hidden partition to active and vice versa?

Any help or pointers would be much appreciated.

Many thanks, Tim.

 

[Tim]

i am not sure why your partition is hidden,,i used acrondis disk
director suite 10...i created a active partition and installed vista
ultimate ,,then checked to make sure win xp was my default boot.. in
sys/startup and recovery tab.and when the screen starts it says earlier
windows os or vista ultimate and i boot into the one i want to use..i
tried partition magic and was confused..acronis tells you what partition
you want to create either for single os and data partion or dual os
boot..maybe someone that uses partiton magic can help you better. but
for me it was confusing to use. acronis is more user freindly i feel. i
am changing soon i am goning to install vista ultimate on clean install
and install xp on a partition i create either using vista shrink/ expand
or via setup if i can do.

Hi there,

Managed to sort it almost made 2 partitions loaded XP on the first then
loaded Vista on the second partition and the Vista bootmanager then kicked
in so now I have the dual boot option.

Then I used VistaBootPro 3.3.0 to modify the OS names and all is working now
my only problem is that in Vista I can see the XP drive. In XP I've used
Tweak UI to prevent XP seeing the Vista drive.

Is there a way of not seeing the XP drive in Vista apart from using
Bitlocker?

Many thanks for your reply I must try Acronis it sounds like a useful tool.

Tim.

 

[Don]

Tim wrote:
....

my only problem is that in Vista I can see the XP drive.

Why do you object to that? XP will delete Vista's restore points,
but not vice versa.

In XP I've used Tweak UI to prevent XP seeing the Vista drive.

That's very interesting. The only way to hide the Vista partition
that has been mentioned here involves using third-party booters
which are able to set the 'hidden' bit in the partition table.

Is there a way of not seeing the XP drive in Vista apart from using
Bitlocker?

As I said above, there are third-party boot-loaders which can hide
any partition you wish in the partition table at boot time. I'd like
to know more about what Tweak UI does, though. AFAIK it only fiddles
the registry, not the partition table.

Many thanks for your reply I must try Acronis it sounds like a useful tool.

Indeed. They allow a 30-day free trial download -- but I like it enough
that I bought it.

 

[Richard Urban]

Primary DOS partitions, containing operating systems, can be hidden from one
another. Then, by using a 3rd party boot manager, you unhide the one you
want to boot into. The other system is not seen, and therefore can not be
inadvertently damaged or corrupted by malware, which may attack the system
you ARE using.

To my way of thinking, it is the "only" way to set up a dual/multi boot
computer.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)