Various minor OS Selector "how to" questions

Well, from my previous 3 issues everything is up and running just great now! I've got Vista and XP both installed to their own partitions and OSS is working great to dual boot between them, and each OS"s system drive appears as C: to itself.

Now I just have a few questions about OSS itself. Not issues, just "how to" type questions.

1. Is it possible to rearrange the order of the OS's listed on the OS Selector menu? I had Vista and Boot from floppy already on the menu and OSS detected XP and added it after the floppy. To fix it for now I just deleted the floppy boot then readded it. But I plan to add a few more boot partions and I prefer not to have to do this every time.

2. I have a 2nd hard drive that will have a few different partitions for data only that will also go with each OS boot (like a speparate APPS drive for each OS) that I will hide or show along with the appropriate OS system partition. I notice that in OSS when I'm designating the partitions, I still have the option on the 2nd drive to designate a partition as Active even though it's not a boot partition. On that 2nd drive, since they're not boot partitions, does it matter which partition is designated as active? Should I just always leave the first partition Active even if it's hidden for the other OS boot? Or should I designate the first unhidden partition as Active? Will it matter since it's not a boot drive?

3. I noticed on these other data partitions on the 2nd drive that I'm showing or hiding with a particular OS boot, they also now have a BOOTWIZ directory with a context.oss file in them. Can you explain why OSS needs this? I'm not really worried about it and I won't delete it but curious why OSS needs to do this. (Partition Magic never did other than it's directory on the partition you installed the boot mangager on.)

4. Once OSS is installed, is it possible to change the partition that the main BOOTWIZ directory is stored on? I installed OSS initially (as it is now) with the BOOTWIZ directory on the Vista partion. I will also have a data partition that will be common and visible by all OS boots. I'm thinking maybe I should put the main BOOTWIZ directory on one of these shared partitions. Part of the reason for this is that I periodically use Norton Ghost (it's what we have at work and it's what I'm used to so I got it for home a long time ago) to image my OS partition so that if something serious were to happen to the OS I can restore back quickly. (I back up data differently.) So I'm thinking if I make a change to the OSS config and then restore that Vista partition it will restore the old OSS config. If I have OSS on a common partion that I never reimage then it's always safe from being overwritten with an old config. Or if I just remember to back up my bootwiz.oss file independently and put the newest one back after I reimage the Vista partition, will I be okay?


Thanks much!

 

This can be done by editing the BOOTWIZ.OSS file and change the order of the OS entries. There is no way to specify the order using OSS directly.

It doesn't matter. Normally, if a drive contains at least one Primary partition, a Primary partition will be set as Active. It won't affect booting your OS.

This is normal for OSS. If you delete it, OSS will recreate it. You can hide the folder if you don't want to see it. OSS uses this as a "marker" to keep track of your partitions. I assume this is to allow it to know which partition is which even if you resize or make other changes. It can then update its information as required.

As far as I know, it's not. However, I have never tried to move the main BOOTWIZ folder. You could uninstall OSS and then reinstall it to the partition of your choice if moving the folder doesn't work. I would also recommend you create a backup image of your drive before you do this just in case something goes wrong. I prefer to have OSS installed to a non-OS partition so that restoring any OS does not restore any OSS files/settings and possibly cause problems.

If you decide to uninstall OSS and then reinstall it, make sure to boot to DD and make sure that all of your OS partitions are visible (not hidden) before you install OSS. If you don't, you'll run into one of the main OSS bugs (it's fixable, but it's easier to avoid it).

This is the best way to go.

I don't think this would work because there are many other folders and files OSS keeps track of. These can change when you restore partitions. If OSS detects changes it can't reconcile, it will basically delete everything and refresh. The results may or may not be what you expect.

 

Thanks for the info. Once I'm sure everything is working okay I'll take an image of both the Vista and XP partitions and then try uninstalling and reinstalling OSS.