How to hide one of the operating systems on a dual boot system

[Belinda]

Hello All

On a laptop I am running Windows 2000 Server and Windows XP in dual
boot.

When I boot up initially I see windows 2000 and Windows XP as well I
will be giving this laptop to somebody and I do not want them to see
the Windows 2000 in the boot prompt menu all I want to appear is
Windows XP.

Is it possible to disable or comment off Windows 2000 from the boot
menu once I am in XP and later enable it to boot into it please
advice.

Thanks
Belinda

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Belinda.

Couple of ways, both from WinXP's System Properties | Advanced | Startup and
Recovery Settings. One way is to make WinXP the default and set the delay
time to zero or 1 second so that the other user won't see - or at least, not
have time to read - the menu screen. Or, click the Edit button there and
remove the line that boots Win2K.

MAYBE it would work to comment out the Win2K line. I haven't tried it, so I
don't know whether the usual trick of starting the line with REM or a
semicolon would convert the line to a comment. Let us know what you learn.
;<)

RC

 

[Jason Haynes]

From system properties|advanced|startup and recovery settings set the
default operating system to XP and uncheck time to display list of operating
systems. The computer will then boot into XP without displaying the prompt.
Just reenable the time to display option to display the choice again.

 

[George Hester]

In either system the changes suggested can be changed. So if there is some secure reason why you want to hide one Op sys over the other this really won't do anything. Both boot from the same partition and so both can access the boot.ini file which is the pertinent (hidden) file here. It's where your timeout will be set.

The only way to make sure the user cannot access Windows 2000 is by doing the above suggestions and since you have Windows 2000 on a different harddrive than Windows XP, remove it.