Partition will not stay hidden

I have had some success. I was able to create 4 new partitions and DD moved my win98 files around with out losing anything, amazing.

the 1st partition is primary 1.8G where I am trying to put win3.11
the 2ed partition is primary 30G where win98 is working and booting from OSS
the 3ed and 4th partitions are logical like 15 and 30 G empty for future data

I am trying to figure out a proceedure to install win3.11. I have read the Acronis User Guide about 50 times and the general instructions are of no use to me. I know once things are working correctly win98 and win311 must be hidden from each other. So, as a first step I tried to use DD to hide the 1st 1.8G the menu works and a little "hid" shows up on that line but when I >committ, says it must reboot and it stays visable to win98. Tho, the drive letter change, before DD shows D C E F but after supossedly hiding D and booting to win98 it sees C D E F where the last F is now the 1.8G that is supposed to be hidden. Interestingly, when I go back to DD the "hid" is gone and drives still read D C E F.

BTW, the first thing I did was resize C to put 1.8G in front, then made the E and F logicals on the end of C. I must be why it says DCEF.

Anyway, the user guide 8.2.2 "installing another windows" says I should set the 1st 1.8G partition active >commit and go for it, but I have read too many sob stories about OSS then failing to recognize anything. I would be more will to take the risk if the 1st 1.8G stayed hidden from win98 as a initial condition.

I have thought about renameing the 1.8G to C: and at the same time hiding it from the running C: 30G, but that seems risky.

I imagine this has been an FAQ years ago, can anyone cut and paste me in a step by step proceedure for dual booting win311 from an installed win98. Or, any 2 windows I guess would use a similiar proceedure.

go man go
mangoman

 

Never mind.... I just figgured it out.

You must hide the partition from the OSS menu >Properties >Partitions then reboot (tho you are not prompted to).

Trying to hide partitions from the DD menus does not work (in this case (I guess maybe it works sometimes)) otherwise why would it be there?

I am not too bitter about this, I only wasted about a half hour and nothing was trashed. A relatively short period and mild result by Acronis standards.

 

If you aren't using OS Selector then the "hide" and "unhide" functions in Disk Director work just like you would expect them to.

However, you have OS Selector enabled. I believe that OS selector uses its own algorithm to hide and unhide partitions and probably overrides some of the settings you just made from DD10.

I think a lot of confusion comes from thinking of the DiskDirector package as one big integrated program. It isn't. I tend to think of DD10 as being a partitioning tool with advanced features (like the ability to view and edit files in the partitions or to directly use a sector editor). The OS Selector is an entirely separate program bundled into the package.

OS Selector has too many quirks for me. It has its own way of doing things automatically and allows very little manual control over the process. For that reason I don't use it, preferring GRUB as a bootloader. With GRUB you have complete control over the boot process. But it comes with a steep learning curve which tends to discourage people.

If I were doing what you are doing I would turn off OS Selector and then, using DD10, hide all of the primary partitions containing Microsoft operating systems except for the one that you want to install to. Also hide any logical partitions that you don't want to be visible to that particular OS. Leave unhidden any partitions that you DO want to be seen by the OS. Then install each OS, one at a time. Repeat for each OS until you have them all set up the way you want. Each of them will have installed independent of each other and they will all think that they are installed to the "C" drive.

Then you could try enabling OS Selector or your favorite boot manager to switch between them.

 

Thanks KOlo, I will try that. (still working on this!)

 

mangoman,

Mark's method of installing everything first by using DD to setup/hide partitions as necessary so each install is isolated workes fine for the installations. However, there is a potential problem (bug?) with this approach that I and some other posters have had. This can happen with multiple XP's, but I don't know if it can happen with Win98 and Win3.11.

If OSS is installed after the first OS, then it ususally would detect the new editions okay.

If OSS was installed after all the OS's were installed then it would "cross-link" them (this is very wierd and hard to explain). Also some of the settings would be unaccessible for one or more of the menu items. The solution is to manually edit the bootwiz file and fix it. Another solution is to make sure that none of the Windows OS partitions are set as active by creating a small dummy (or data) primary partition and set it to active before installing OSS. I used a primary ext3 partition, but any format would probably have worked.

Another thing to keep in mind is that OSS (like GRUB) keeps its files on one of your partitions. If you're going to use TI for backups, you may want to consider installing OSS on a partition separate from any of the OS partitions. That way if you restore an OS partition you don't have to reinstall or fix your OSS installation. This partition can be on the same drive as the OS's or on any other internal hard drive.

 

Good points about successfully using OS Selector. I also have found that it really helps if you have a better understanding of how the boot process works on a PC. I would highly recommend some of the articles by Dan Goodell:

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/index.htm

And the ones by McTavish:

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html

 

Thanks for the links Mark.
I am busy getting (back) up to speed on the basics and have reviewed some of the chapters in my copy of Scott Mueller's "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" 13th.(no Vista)-- an amazingly informative and helpful book.