After I installed NeoGrub my partitions are gone!

I have disk 0 - my Vista drive, and disk 1 - XP drive and wanted a dual boot.

So I installed NeoGrub.

First strange thing was that even though I changed it in menu.lst to Windows XP, the menu entry was called NeoGrub (or sth similar, I mean the default name).

Never mind, I hit ENTER and nicely booted into XP. WOW! :smile:

I rebooted back to Vista and... all my partition from drive 0 were gone! Except Vista partition. All remaining space is marked as UNALLOCATED, Acronis DD could not find any deleted partitions.

Should I give up???? Please help! Thanks!
 
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Hello and welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

It's not gone, it's just hidden. You can unhide it by using
Code:
unhide hd(x,y)
in menu.lst, substiting x and y with the numbers from the `hide` command you used earlier.
 
No, it's not this. 1st of all I wanted to hide just 1 partition not all (I mean 3 partitions are not visible for me now).
Also hidden partitions are shown in software like Acronis, while in my case it shows unallocated space (even if I use Acronis Boot CD).
What's more editing menu.lst did not seem to have much effect - as explained above but of course I tried what you said and no luck
 
Hmmm.

NeoGrub doesn't actually modify the partition table or the MBR, so I don't see how this could have been caused by it :/

Which version of EasyBCD are you using? 1.7?
 
Ok, problem solved:
1. Indeed I needed to manually unhide previously hidden partition - I made a spelling mistake first time and it didn't work, once corrected it worked ok. I just paniced :wink:
2. I still don't understand why Acronis did not show them as hidden, though
3. What I learned is that if I hide an extended partition all of partitions within this extended one will be hidden as well - this answers my question why I lost all 3 partitions at once
4. It is not clearly stated in the documentation that you will need to unhide your hidden partitions manually - otherwise they will stay hidden even after reboot. The way I see it is to boot back to Vista using NeoGrub as well, not Vista bootloader, at least once after booting to XP, and specify to unhide Vista partition in Vista section of menu.lst. Then any consequent boot can be done using the standard Vista bootloader... untill you boot to XP again :smile:
5. Acronis, sorry for referring to it so often, can hide/unhide on the fly for a particular boot only. NeoGrub needs manual action to unhide a partition. It could be a good idea to stress it in the docs.

However there is one big issue that bothers me and I'm relactant to use NeoGrub at the moment:
Let me explain the screens I get at boot:
Vista bootloader
1. Vista
2. NeoGrub
I choose #2 and get a list of entries in my boot.ini, i.e.:

1. Windows XP
2. Linux
3. XP Recovery console

If I hide my Vista partition and by a mistake not include an entry to unhide it (or misspel again so it won't work), or forget to change timeout to sth else than 0, how do I get access to my menu.lst file to correct it, keeping in mind I will not have access to hidden Vista partition/EasyBCD at all? (I don't need to mention menu.lst is on Vista partition, do I?). Thanks for feedback!

Regards,

Gitarzysta
 
Yes, there a lot of problems with the current method. It's a hack at best, and we know that :smile:

We're working on a more flexible, safer, and far easier solution that involves a one-click program to take care of everything. But we're still working on it and it isn't ready for release.
 
One more question: NeoGrub is on disk/partition 0,0. This is Vista partition. If I hide it from XP will it still work? I mean will it work from a hidden partition? I want to avoid a situation where I'll hide a Vista partition and then won't be able to unhide it because NeoGrub will not start as it will be on a hidden partition. I know this may be a stupid question but I took Guru's advice: don't risk but ask :wink:
 
To be honest: I'm not sure.... Most people hiding Vista from XP have XP as the boot drive, so it's not a problem.

I don't think you'll have a problem, and if you do end up hiding it and unable to use NeoGrub, we have a bootable GRUB CD you can use to unhide Vista, so it's not a real problem.

AT any rate, we're working on a MUCH more advanced solution in the form of a one-click program intended to hide Vista from XP... It's due to be released soon, so you might want to wait for that instead.
 
If anyone is interested - after hiding, using hide hd(x,y) command, a partition where EasyBCD is installed it still works :wink:

So I was able to hide my Vista partition, the same one that holds EasyBCD, from XP.

Conclusion: I am now able to boot XP and keep my Vista system recovery points.

Problems: having XP on hd(1,0) I could not boot it using NeoGrub - it would restart my PC instead of booting it.

Solution: I copied ntldr and boot.ini to my Vista partition hd (0,0) and now it works, I can see it displays some error notice but it is displayed for a fraction of a second (I can't read it) and then XP boots smoothly. Strange but works somehow.

Of course I need to remember to manually unhide hd (0,0) before booting Vista again.

My question related to it:
How can I boot Vista using NeoGrub?
Example: to boot XP I need to have entries similar to:

Code:
title Boot XP - Hide Vista
hide (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd1,0)/ntldr
boot

But there is no ntldr for Vista so how should these lines look like (the chainloader line) to boot Vista?

I think of sth like this:

Code:
title Boot Vista
unhide (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,0) - WHAT DO I INPUT HERE?
boot

Thanks!
 
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