Hiding non booted OS's

Brian,
Sorry I do not follow your querry regarding 238drac. I am not he/her.

As requested I have wiped the drive...again.
I made 3 partitons.
Restored an OS from the TI bu.
Boot disk is ready.

[boot loader]
;timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
timeout=0
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\winnt="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

 

selkov, my mistake.

Make sure OSS is not installed or is inactive.

We are close now. Do not boot into Windows again until we have completely finished our setup.

Using your TI CD, restore your OS image to the second and the third partitions.

We are now ready to edit the boot.ini files.

Boot to your floppy disc and at the A:\ prompt type editbini and press Enter.
Select Hard Drive 0 and press Enter
You will now see your partition table.
Select MBR Entry 1 (should be your second OS) and press Enter
Now you see the boot.ini for that OS. It should be

[boot loader]
;timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
timeout=0
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\winnt="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Make the edits if it doesn't show (2)
Press F10. Press Y to Save, Enter.

You are now at the A:\ prompt again.

Type editbini and press Enter.
Select Hard Drive 0 and press Enter
You will now see your partition table.
Select MBR Entry 2 (should be your third OS) and press Enter
Now you see the boot.ini for that OS. It should be

[boot loader]
;timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINNT
timeout=0
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\winnt="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Make the edits if it doesn't show (3)
Press F10. Press Y to Save, Enter.

You are now at the A:\ prompt again.

Type editbini and press Enter.
Select Hard Drive 0 and press Enter
You will now see your partition table.
Select MBR Entry 0 (should be your first OS) and press Enter
Now you see the boot.ini for that OS. It should be

[boot loader]
;timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
timeout=0
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\winnt="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Press F10. Enter.

The three boot.ini files are now fixed.

As you don't have pqboot32.exe we will use Acronis DDS to select which OS to boot. It's a bit clunky but it works temporarily. Don't install OSS until you are sure everything is working properly.

Boot to the DDS CD. Select Manual Mode.

Under Flags, your first OS partition should say Pri, Act (Primary, Active)
Under Flags, your second OS partition should say Pri, Hid (Primary, Hidden)
Under Flags, your third OS partition should say Pri, Hid (Primary, Hidden)

Let me know if this is different. You must have two hidden partitions.

Right click the second OS partition (we want to boot this partition), click Advanced, click Unhide, click OK on the warning. Click Advanced again and click Set Active, OK.
Now you will see the second partition as Pri, Act and the first partition is Pri.

Right click the first partition, click Advanced, click Hide. Now the first partition is Pri, Hid.

Click Commit, Proceed. Exit from DDS and boot to Windows.

I don't use Win 2000. Does it have Disk Management where you can check which OS is the System Partition? Your second partition should be System and it should be C: drive.

Shutdown, boot to DDS and prepare the third OS for booting using the above method. Remember there can only be one Pri, Act and the other two OS must be Pri, Hid. Exit DDS and boot to the third OS.

Everything progressing OK?

 

Ok, brian i did it oyur way. FYI: As I said before I already did all this bu booting thru a Second hardrive. But anyway. I now have three OS installed, each oss's Boot.ini is pointing to the proper Partition and only that partition.

I booted to OS thru the Rescue cd as instructed and under the flags made the adjustments that you said.

Now I boot and I get INVALID OS>


I think that Acronis has really Fcked up this program. It should not be so difficult to install. They need to go back and staigten out this software.

I am giving up on it.

 

Brian,

I just wanted to add a few notes to your procedure. TI and DD do a few things that you're not taking into account. I also don't have Win2K so I'm going by how they work with XP (both use boot.ini files, so I'm assuming they work the same way).

Since TI automatically changes the partition table to place the restored image into the SAME position from which it was originally backed up, after restoring the second and third partitions (assuming you restore the second partition first and then the third) your partition table will be in this order:

Partition #3 --- boot.ini --- partition(1)
Partition #2 --- boot.ini --- partition(2)
Partition #1 --- boot.ini --- partition(3)

TI has probably already modified the boot.ini files as noted above.

Editing the boot.ini files should be okay as you show, assuming you go by the MBR entry numbers (order) as you state in the instructions.

Due to TI restoring the third partition image last, the third partition is probably the one marked Active. It also may be the only one that will boot properly.

Because Win2K can SEE standard hidden partitions, flagging the other partitions as hidden will not hide them. Win2K will still see them. When you use OSS you have to use the Force hiding... option to hide them from Win2K (I think OSS scrambles or otherwise "corrupts" the entry so Win2K sees it as invalid).

I have tried this with XP and XP doesn't care about seeing the other partitions. As long as the Windows drive remains the C: drive, it boots okay. Win2K may work this way or not. It does detect partitions differently, so perhaps not.

This visual test is really only helpful if you have partitions of different sizes and know which they are. Disk Management shows the partitions in the physical order they appear on the drive, not the order the are listed in the partition table. For example, if you have a 10GB, 20GB and a 30GB partition in that order, then you can use Disk Management to see if it shows the correct partition is the booting (drive C, system partition. If you are booting to the 30GB partition, then Disk Management should show the 30GB partition as the System drive and also as C:.

 

Sorry, to hear that. I was hoping you'd have success.

If you decide to try again, we're still here.

 

MudCrab,

Thanks for the comments. I haven't used Win 2000 but I expected it to behave much the same as WinXP. Dan Goodell's guide doesn't mention anything special about hiding Win 2000 or Win 98 for that matter.

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

I have multi-booted with 15 installations of WinXP. Three in primary partitions and twelve in logical volumes. I used True Image 9 to restore a single image into the 15 partitions. I used the technique described above which is Dan's technique, apart from the use of DDS. Previously I had multi-booted with eight WinXPs. I had no problems with the partition table or the boot.ini files. From memory, TI didn't change the boot.ini for any partition. I did it manually with EditBini.

I didn't use DDS as the boot manager (I used a third party boot manager) but I have used Partition Magic in the past to boot manage a three primary partition multi-boot.

So my experience is different from yours and certainly different from selkov's. I don't blame him for giving up. I have no idea why it didn't work for him.

Any ideas why our experiences differ?

 

selkov,

I can't find anything in the Microsoft Knowledge Base on Invalid OS.

Want to try something? We know your first partition OS has booted. From DDS make it Pri Act (and the others Pri Hid) and see if it boots. What is the full error message? If it doesn't boot, use EditBini to make boot.ini (2). If it doesn't boot, use EditBini to make boot.ini (3). Same error message for all?

 

Brian,

I ran my tests with TI 10, build 4,942. You said you used TI 9. Perhaps version 10 changes how it handles the partition table.

In my tests, I had an orginal XP image from a single partition (boot.ini set to partition(1)).

I then setup three partitions, 10GB, 20GB and 40GB (to tell them apart). Restoring the image to the first partition does not change anything in the partition table (restoring back to the "orginal" location).

When I restored to the 3rd partition, TI reorders the partition table so that physical partition #3 is now first in the partition table list. XP boots with partition(1).

If I then restore to partition #2, TI moves the second physical partition entry to the first position. This XP now boots with partition(1) and the boot.ini in physical partition #3 has been modified by TI to point its new position in the partition table.

This can continue around and around as you restore to different partitions. The last restored partition will always be in the #1 position since the image was backed up from the #1 position. TI then modifies the boot.ini files in the other partitions to adjust for the changes.

I have not tried this with TI 9 so I don't know if it works the same way. I have also not tried it with OSS already installed to see if TI will also update the files for OSS so the everything will boot correctly.

I do know (from other posters) that this does cause problems with other bootloaders because they don't expect the partition table order to change.

I was planning on running some further tests and then posting this info in the TI forum. Do you have an opinion?

 

MudCrab,

That's interesting and I'm interested in seeing the results of your pending tests. Maybe ver 9 is different from ver 10. I haven't tried ver 10.

I'm unlikely to conduct tests on multi-booting in the near future. Other things are more pressing, especially landscaping our backyard.