On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 06:35:53 -0700, ThemePark
I must admit, the nature of your questions confuse me a bit
I'm not even going to try to bounce up and down to see which bits of
my reply is referenced by which bits of yours; these long posts are
easier dealt with via in-line edits.
I do not have any problems whatsoever with starting or rebooting
Windows XP. The only problem I'm experiencing is not being able to
unhide my 2 hidden partitions no matter what way I go about with doing
so.
Sso, everything works, but two partitions that are hidden cannot be
unhidden. OK - prompts the question: Hidden from what?
That being said, to answer your questions, I looked up the model
number in Google, and from that it seems I have a Maxtor DiamondMax
Plus 40 harddrive. It's an IDE drive and it has a capacity of 20490
MB.
20G; OK...
You got the partitions a bit wrong. The MB wasn't a typo
I think I missed it ;-)
so my partitions are as follows:
Primary FAT32 55M (hidden)
Primary NTFS 7.5G (active)
Extended with 1 NTFS 305M volume
Primary NTFS 9.8G (hidden)
It's unusual to see FAT32 on a volume under 512M in size, so I have to
ask; what was used to create that partition? Or, what is reporting it
as a FAT32 partition? I'm also curious to know what it's for.
Here's a guess: It may not be a FATxx partition as such, but something
proprietary that a large OEM may be using to host pre-boot code that
would normally be in BIOS ROM or flash storage, e.g. CMOS setup.
Some reporting tools don't "fall through" properly, on partition types
they don't recognise. Instead of something like this...
- is it NTFS? Yes -> report NTFS
- is it FAT32? Yes -> report FAT32
- is it FAT16? Yes -> report FAT16
- ...etc...
- report UNKNOWN
....they do something like this...
- is it NTFS? Yes -> report NTFS
- is it FAT16? Yes -> report FAT16
- ASSume and report FAT32
You may also get tools that don't look at the type byte, but look for
familiar boot record structure and/or file system strings. This helps
filter out some "enhancements" that "add value" to these familiar file
systems (GoBack comes to mind) so that these volumes are recognised as
being familiar MS types.
For example, let's say GoBack changes the partition type byte in the
partition table to something other than what it should be, yet still
leaves the original boot record intact.
A tool that does the "correct" thing and checks the partition type
byte will not "see" the partition, or more particularly, see it as an
unrecognised type, or (if it has awareness) as "type=GoBack".
But a tool that ignores MBR partition type byte and looks at partition
boot record instead, may recognise the string "FAT32" and associated
data fields as valid, and report the partition as FAT32.
In practice, Windows seems to do the latter - which makes for problems
when the partition type byte is changed with the express intention of
preventing Windows from screwing around with it.
Now let's take a second example; an OEM's "special" partition,
reserved for BIOS or whatever. This may use a non-standard partition
type byte in the MBR to hide it from MS OS use, and yet use an MS file
system, complete with standard partition boot record. Once again,
some tools will report it as hidden, unknown, or "Blah blah BIOS" in
type, while other tools and logics may report it as FAT.
AFAIK, there is less patent/copyright constraint on FAT16 than FAT32,
so with that in mind, as well as the snall size, I'd expect OEMs to be
using the simpler FAT16 than FAT32 here. After all, the size is such
that FAT32's benefits don't really apply.
The hidden NTFS partition is another story, though... as NTFS is
proprietary, only MS would be likely to be using it, so that is either
a "real" NTFS from MS, or it's a spurious partition as perhaps
generated by a recovery tool, or it's not NTFS at all but may be
assumed as such by something that only knowns it isn't FATxx.
And of course there is also some free space somewhere on the harddrive
as well.
Alignment issues may apply there, especially where NTFS is concerned.
Often the first 8M is unused if the first partition is an extended in
type, and as it is, the next few sectors after MBR are unused.
I found out though that I was wrong about the boot manager. I have in
fact installed and am using PartitionQuest BootMagic, but since I
always bypass it straight away it never occured to me that I have it.
Ah, OK... that might be what the little 55M partition is, then
The Windows XP installation that I am using is on the first 7.5G
partition, which is also where boot.ini points to, partition(1).
That's odd; suggests the order in MBR may be different? Then again, I
can't recall the details of whether that syntax refers to slot order
in the MBR table, or address order on the disk - I do remember Alex
Nichol used to describe issues that arose when these got mixed up, and
I see BING has an option to re-order entries too.
For example, the disk may "look" like this...
MnnnnnnnnnEEEEEEEEEhhhhhhhhhh
....but the table may look like this:
1 = n (7.5G NTFS)
2 = M (55M "FAT32")
3 = E (extended partition)
4 = h (hidden NTFS primary)
The table would not know about whatever logical volumes are within the
extended - that's OS-specific information that is held within the
extendesd partition itself.
As for how the partitions have involved. I purchased the computer as a
used computer from a newspaper ad and it had at that time Windows XP
installed on what is now the last partition, the 9.8G partition,
although I am pretty sure I have resized it since then.
OK. How did it come to be the last partition? Was it like this...
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuNNNNNN
1 = unused
2 = unused
3 = unused
4 = N (NTFS primary)
....or like this...
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
1 = N (NTFS primary)
2 = unused
3 = unused
4 = unused
....which you then resized to this...
NNNNNuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
1 = N (NTFS primary)
2 = unused
3 = unused
4 = unused
....and then "slid" to this...
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuNNNNN
1 = N (NTFS primary)
2 = unused
3 = unused
4 = unused
....before populating the rest of free disk space and partition table
entries with your other partitions and volumes?
Else I'm having trouble fitting partition(1) with partition = 4.
I made my own user account on that installation when I brought it
home, and ... once I got a Windows XP CD I decided to install
Windows XP anew, but because I had a lot of data on the current
installation, I decided to hide the current Windows XP partition,
create a new partition BEFORE the current one (i.e. the first one in
my current setup, the one of 7.5G) and install Windows XP onto that.
OK, and this is where things get interesting: How did you let it come
to pass that the new partition was before the existing one?
I then purchased the MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 disk set through a
newspaper and installed both onto my current 55M partition. But for it
to work, it needs to be hidden in Windows, which somehow automatically
makes it visible when I run PartitionMagic from a diskette.
Are you using the term "hidden" to refer to "active"?
The two are different concepts.
To "hide" a partition, you generally set the type byte to a value that
does not "belong" to the OS, so that the OS doesn't "see" it.
But there's a separate byte in each of the 4 partition table entries
that is set as an "active" flag. The MBR code uses this flag to
indicate which of the 4 partitions is to be booted, then it does so by
jumping into whatever resides in the first sector of that partition.
Only one partition is supposed to be set as Active, and thus bootable,
and extended partitions are not supposed to be used in that way.
So there's one (or none) bootable partition(s), yet any or all 4
partitions may be "hidden" or visible to particular OSs.
Perhaps it is not that you have to "hide" the 55M, but that you have
to set it as not "active"? Most tools will only let you set one
partition as active; I dunno what happens if more than one is active.
Depends on the MBR code logic, it may:
- boot the first one found when searching 1.2.3.4
- boot the first one found when searching 4.3.2.1
- boot the last one found when searching 1.2.3.4
- boot the last one found when searching 4.3.2.1
- abort with an error (which I would prefer)
As for what I mean by hidden, well whenever I've needed to hide a
partition I have simply used PartitionMagic to do so, and that is what
I mean by hidden, that the partitions show as Hidden when I run
PartitionMagic.
Gah, I've no idea what Partition Magic does, and what terminology it
presents via UI to the user regarding what it does. I'll have to
leave it to others to clarify what PM's doing there :-/
