Can't Unhide partition in OSS

I decided on a dual-boot setup, using Vista 64 and XP. These are the steps I took:

01 ) Booted with DD disc.
02 ) Deleted existing partitions.
03 ) Created Partition 1, set to Primary & Active.
04 ) Rebooted and installed XP from disc on Partition 1.
05 ) Rebooted after installation to check it was booting ok.
06 ) Rebooted with DD disc.
07 ) Created Partion 2, set to Primary & Active, Hidden Partition 1.
08 ) Rebooted and restored Vista from a backup disc to Partition 2.
09 ) Rebooted after installation to check it was booting ok.
10 ) Rebooted with DD disc.
11 ) Created Partition 3, FAT32, set to Primary & Active.
12 ) Installed OSS, selected custom install and installed into Partition 3.
13 ) Rebooted, OSS started and found both OS installs.

This is where my problem comes in. If I select the properties of XP in the OSS menu, both the Active and Hidden boxes are ticked and greyed out. If I select the properties of Vista, both those boxes are available for use.

I rebooted with the DD disc, selected the XP partition and in the Advanced option set it to Unhide. Rebooting back to the OSS menu, the Active and Hidden boxes of XP are still both checked and greyed out.

Grrr.....

 

This is the "greyed-out checkbox" bug in OSS. If a partition is hidden when the OS is detected, OSS leaves it hidden. In the case of the partition being an OS (Active) partition, this causes problems because Windows doesn't work from a hidden partition and OSS won't let you change it.

This can be avoided if the OS and OSS installations are done a certain way. It can also easily be corrected by editing the BOOTWIZ.OSS file. Instructions can be found in this thread (post #2) or you can post the file (instructions here) and I'll make the change.

 

Before I reboot to unhide the OSS partition to get to the bootwiz file, would the problem be solved by uninstalling the OSS, setting both partitions visible and then reinstalling the OSS?

 

That problem will, but you may then run into the "cross-linking OS" bug, which would also require editing the BOOTWIZ.OSS file to fix it.

 

I don't need anymore bugs .....

However, it seemed like I was caught in a catch 22 situation. I couldn't unhide the OSS partition with OSS being active, and of course if I deactivated OSS and unhide it's partition, there are no OSS files. I did notice that there was a BOOTWIZ folder in my second hard drive (Data drive), with only a content.oss file. No idea where that came from.

In the end I reformatted the OSS partition, made sure both the XP and Vista partitions were unhidden, reinstalled OSS and managed to hide/unhide the various installations as neccessary in OSS.

Now I can boot into both, and there are no signs of the other partitions when booting into either XP or Vista The mysterious BOOTWIZ folder on the data drive has disappeared too.

I hate to think what I'm gonna do when Windows 7 is finally released and I want to try that .......