XP/Vista Dual-boot system - How do you hide partitions?

Praetorius

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 6, 2002
Messages
310
I don't want XP to see my Vista partition, and I don't want Vista to see my XP partition.

How do I hide them from each other?

Also, after I hide them will they both become C: drive by default? or will I have to manually change the drive letters from D: to C: ?
 
Also, after I hide them will they both become C: drive by default? or will I have to manually change the drive letters from D: to C: ?

Assuming you even can hide the partitions, they won't both be the C drive. They will retain their letters. If you try to manually change the system volume's letter, you won't be booting anymore.

You might want to consider Virtual PC 2007 for this situation. Load Vista and run XP in a VM.
 
If i'm not mistaken the drive letters flip, so what shows as say D in XP is C in Vista, and the C in XP is D in Vista
 
If i'm not mistaken the drive letters flip, so what shows as say D in XP is C in Vista, and the C in XP is D in Vista


yup thats true, in each OS the drive the OS is installed on will be marked C. Unless when installing XP (first) you install to the second partition and the first partition is active, then XP will show its drive as D.
 
(IIRC) In the System Management portion of the Administrative Tools

There is a disk volume manager that lets you partition, format, and assign or hide drive letters for disks. This should be exactly what you need without getting into 3rdpartyland. Just hide the Vista partition in XP, and hide the XP partition in Vista.
 
start-->run-->gpedit.msc---->user configuration > Administrative Templates > windows components > windows explorer > hide these specified drives in My Computer
 
Unfortunately, XP sees right through that policy change (or a similar change made with TweakUI), so it doesn't work to solve the problem. Disabling the System Restore and Shadow Copy services in XP also have no effect.

So far, the only software fixes are: 1) Use Vista's Bitlocker to encrypt the drive; 2) Use a 3rd party boot manager able to hide partitions, such as BootItNg.

Further info:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

Oh, and there's another way to trash the restore point information:
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/ar...rd-party-tools-can-affect-restore-points.aspx
 
Unfortunately, XP sees right through that policy change (or a similar change made with TweakUI), so it doesn't work to solve the problem. Disabling the System Restore and Shadow Copy services in XP also have no effect.

So far, the only software fixes are: 1) Use Vista's Bitlocker to encrypt the drive; 2) Use a 3rd party boot manager able to hide partitions, such as BootItNg.

Further info:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

Oh, and there's another way to trash the restore point information:
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/ar...rd-party-tools-can-affect-restore-points.aspx

You should keep in mind that drive encryption is a quick way to a world of hurt unless you know what you're doing.
 
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