Dual boot and hiding partitions

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simple dave

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My name is dave, and I'm new here. I've a question.

I know you get a lot of threads about dual boot, and I'm sorry. but I did search and couldn't find any mention of this particular aspect of dual booting.so here goes....

I installed two instance of xp on two different partition (same hd). The idea was me and my brother will have each a different, separate XP. He won't be able to get into my files and vice versa. Also, he will be able to install his games, and I, my programs without slowing the os down.
Yet, I can't get windows to hide his partition when my xp boots up, or his to hide my partition. I tried using acronis OS selector, and it did suceed in hiding his partition (d) from my XP which sits on c, but not the other way around. It seems like the first partition has to be visible to any OS on the HD since the BIOS start booting from there. Any workaround?
 
Just make seperate, passworded accounts on one install. You can each have your own custom desktop with whatever icons, bookmarks, etc. you want. And anything you want to be private you can keep in your My Documents which will be protected.
 
Thanks for the reply Win.

Anyway, won't work. My brother's games slow down the computer considerably, and I'm using the computer for work, so separate installation are best. Also we tried working without hiding partitions and he ended up installing several programs into c becuase he kept presssing next.

any other solutions?
 
Need 2 partitions, then when installing the 2nd copy you have to choose advanced and just pick the other partition, as far as I know its that simple. then in the boot.ini file probably both are going to be named Windows XP Home or Pro whichever one, but obviously they will point to different partitions. You can rename both to whatever you like in the boot.ini once your done installing them. So one can say "Dave's" and the other "Your Brother's" in the OS list.

But really, you don't want your brothers games to slow down your install. So instead your going to slow it down even more by throwing another OS on the HD along with all his games? Plus on top of that your going to have to restart everytime you want to switch users. Beside's all that if you have a HD around the size of 40gig your really limiting your space.

Heres what i suggest man.
Install Windows on 1 partition and set the users for you and your brother password protected. Now instead of mixing everything together into the program files folder and such you could do this. Make 2 folders: Dave's Programs, and Your Brother's Programs. Each of you can install things corresponding to those folders. With the programs you will both be using like Antivirus stuff and other things you can just install into the Program Files or even make a folder called Shared Programs.

And tell your brother to pay attention to where he is putting things!
 
simple dave said:
Yet, I can't get windows to hide his partition when my xp boots up, or his to hide my partition.

WinXP dual boot management will not hide partitions.

simple dave said:
I tried using acronis OS selector, and it did suceed in hiding his partition (d) from my XP which sits on c, but not the other way around. It seems like the first partition has to be visible to any OS on the HD since the BIOS start booting from there.?

When you made the second XP installation, WinXP took over the dual boot management but it installed all the boot information in the boot sector of the first XP installation. There is no boot information in the boot sector of the second XP installation. Therefore, even if you could hide the first XP partition, you could not boot into the second XP installation.

simple dave said:
Any workaround?

Yes. Create a small third partition and install a 3rd party Boot Manager, like BootMagic (part of Partition Magic) for example, or GRUB a freeware boot manager(there are several others). Save what data you want in the second XP partition and reformat and reinstall WinXP in the second partition while using the boot manager to hide the first XP partition. You can then end up with two XP partitions, each one designated C: if you like, controlled by a boot manager in its own partition, thereby independent of WinXP, where one partition is always hidden when the other partition is booted-up.

As a note aside: If you do what is suggested, above, you will still have the boot sector of the first XP contain the dual boot information. You can correct this problem in one of two ways: 1) Boot to your WinXP CD, enter Recovery, and run fixmbr, or 2) Go to Bootdisk.com and download and create a Win98 Boot Disk, boot to the floppy and run fdisk /mbr. Either of these will create the standard single-boot mbr. If, after you do this, you still get the OS choice screen, you will have to edit the boot.ini to remove the invalid boot path to the second XP installation. Go to Start/Run/type "msconfig" in the dialog box (without the quotations)/select the Boot.ini tab/ and click on "Check All Boot Paths" and delete the invalid entry. I would suggest you do this after you delete and reformat the second XP partition, but before you reinstall XP to the second partition.
 
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