OSS changing MBR on every boot

Is there anyway for OSS not to keep changing the MBR everytime I have a different OS boot. It will keep setting the last booted partition as the Active partition. Is there anyway to stop this from happening?

Example: You have P1 & P2. When booting to P1, you have it set to be active and P2 to be hidden. When booting to P2, you have it set to be Active and P1 to be hidden. You boot to P1 than you boot to P2. If you go into DD bootable CD, you will see P2 as being active and P1 as hidden.

I want P1 to stay as the active partition and P2 to be hidden.

 

If you're booting Windows and the booting partition is Primary, it needs to be Active. What you describe it the correct behavior.

The MBR is updated because the partition table is in the MBR. This is where the partitions are set Active.

Is there a specific reason you want (or require) P1 to remain Active and P2 hidden? Also, if you boot P2, how can it be hidden and still work?

Your partitions will remain in the state of the last boot. OSS does not "revert" them to any default settings when an OS shuts down or when you reboot.

 

Oh ok, thanks.

I would like OSS to revert back to default settings from my last thread about Vista not booting from my 2nd HDD. I found that I can boot to Vista through the BIOS boot menu by pressing the Esc key. But because I boot to other partitions, the Vista OS on the 2nd HDD becomes hidden. I than have to use DD to make it unhidden.

 

In that case, you could try unassigning a drive letter to the partition(s) you want hidden using Windows Disk management and leave them unhidden in OSS. This should work okay now because both Windows have been booted and they know their drive letters.

Setup OSS so that XP's entry does not hide the Vista partition. Then boot into XP. Use Disk Management to remove the drive letter for the Vista partition so it doesn't show up in My Computer. The Vista partition should now remain in the unhidden state and boot properly when you select it in the BIOS.

I would still recommend you have a backup of each OS partition before you try it (just in case something goes wrong).

 

Thanks, I'll try this.

If it doesn't work than I will continue with my other post and post some more screenshots.