[Download] Vista Hide 'n Seek BETA

A copy of Super GRUB Disk should do the trick.

Run unhide (hdx,y) for all your drives. Then try to repair it with the Vista DVD.
 
OK - BIG SIGH - I'm now back in Vista.
But I think you'd better withdraw this build CG. As a fix for the SATA/IDE problems, it's going to cause a lot of brown trousers out there.
It's considerably more dangerous than the earlier builds, as it can leave the system quite unusable, whereas the older ones just caused the need to boot again and remove them.
The way I finally got back in here, was by attempting to use my trusty ME emergency recovery floppy, with a copy of Paragon Partition Manager on it.
I intended to change a few flags, but once it was running, I could see that my IDE disk was listed as invalidly formatted, but my SATA disk was sitting there proudly sporting my Vista and XP.
I disconnected the IDE drive, and booted the Vista DVD and lo and behold, there was Vista, which repaired after the second attempt, and is now currently hosting me.

For some reason I had to logon to the forum though !
 
*phew*

OK, now about that IDE disk...

What was on it? What's it's present condition? Did you lose any data?
 
I haven't reconnected it yet. I'm still trying to sort out HnS.
I ran the UI and unistalled 45 which said it was successful, then tried to run the earlier build, which could still see HnS on the system but wouldn't remove it.
I'm trying to get past the refusal to allow me to delete the remnants.

Addendum:

It's reconnected and everything is there, no problems.
My bootable paragon also said that one of my logical disks on the SATA was an invalid file organization too, but now the bootloader's repaired, everything is as before (except HnS is a bit messy obviously, but I'm working on that)
 
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This is a real shame, because the build is working for me better than any other before (running it in my VM w/ 3 different hardware controllers: IDE, LSI Logic SCSI, and BusLogic SCSI).

I have a feeling build 45 would work fine without that IDE drive connected.

Addendum:

Can you post the menu.lst and .log files?
 
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Does the error message I quoted give you any clues ?
The IDE disk is my old main drive from the previous XP PC (120 Gb), which is now running on its cloned copy on what was its second (60Gb) HDD.
I formatted the 120Gb and put it on the new system where it holds my daily backups and the pagefile for Vista and XP
 
It's possible that the cloning ended up with an MBR-misconfiguration; at least, that's what the error message would indicate.
 
I did look at the menu.lst before booting, just in case anything looked wrong (partition wise), but apart from the new format of the hide commands etc. everything looked good. Stupidly, I didn't make a copy before removing the build, but I still have the log of course

NeoSmart intelliLogger 1.0
Logging started on 21/05/2008 at 15:48 using log level Debug
15:48 Vista Hide 'n Seek 0.5.0.44
15:48 Boot drive: D:\
15:48 Listing drives involved in the procedure.
15:48 Beginning Uninstall process.
15:48 Reverting BOOTMGR on C:\
15:48 Reverting BOOTMGR on D:\
15:48 Access to the path 'D:\BOOTMGR' is denied.
15:48 Cannot create a file when that file already exists.
15:48 Reverting BOOTMGR on E:\
15:48 Reverting BOOTMGR on F:\
15:48 Reverting BOOTMGR on H:\
15:48 Removing menu.lst from D:\
15:48 Attempting to revert boot.ini.hns, XP.ID.HnS, & Vista.ID.HnS on C:\
15:48 Attempting to revert boot.ini.hns, XP.ID.HnS, & Vista.ID.HnS on D:\
15:48 Attempting to revert boot.ini.hns, XP.ID.HnS, & Vista.ID.HnS on E:\
15:48 Attempting to revert boot.ini.hns, XP.ID.HnS, & Vista.ID.HnS on F:\
15:48 Attempting to revert boot.ini.hns, XP.ID.HnS, & Vista.ID.HnS on H:\
15:48 Deleting NTLDR and NTDETECT from C:\
15:48 Access to the path 'C:\NTLDR' is denied.
15:48 Access to the path 'C:\NTDETECT.COM' is denied.
15:48 Deleting NTLDR and NTDETECT from D:\
15:48 Access to the path 'D:\NTLDR' is denied.
15:48 Access to the path 'D:\NTDETECT.COM' is denied.
15:48 Deleting NTLDR and NTDETECT from E:\
15:48 Access to the path 'E:\NTLDR' is denied.
15:48 Access to the path 'E:\NTDETECT.COM' is denied.
15:48 Deleting NTLDR and NTDETECT from F:\
15:48 Access to the path 'F:\NTLDR' is denied.
15:48 Access to the path 'F:\NTDETECT.COM' is denied.
15:48 Deleting NTLDR and NTDETECT from H:\
15:48 Access to the path 'H:\NTLDR' is denied.
15:48 Access to the path 'H:\NTDETECT.COM' is denied.
15:48 Re-creating NTLDR and NTDETECT on D:\
 
That's the uninstallation log.


Guess I should make it append to the log file instead of overwrite it on an uninstall.
 
Sorry, what cloning do you mean ? The cloned XP is on my backup PC (cloned from its primary to its secondary) The primary was then reformatted and installed on here as a clean blank disk.

Addendum:

When I've recovered from the trauma, now I know I can get it back ultimately, I'll give it another try, and save everything.
But not just at the moment.
 
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I just re-read your other post (about cloning) and get it....

Take your time with the whole testing thing - my heart stopped when I read your "warning" so I can imagine what it must have been like for you :wink:
 
Since sending build 45 to a couple of friends and getting great feedback, I've decided to make it available once more (I had pulled it when you had your problems, Terry).
 
Hi

HnS takes a good 5min to load either my Vista or XP, is this normal?

I have my XP on a different physical drive, so that may be the reason since it has to do the map step.
 
I have at last taken the plunge and tried out build 45. Wonders! The procedure worked smoothly, and now I don't have the start up 'unrecognised partition table' warning messages, relating to the new Vista style partitions on the first drive, that were previously a minor irritation.

I do now have what appears to be a quick screen confirming the HnS actions on hiding and un-hiding partitions (will try and hit break at the right moment to catch - but it is all over rather too quickly for my fingers...) which is probably very useful should anything lock up on me. I assume that this is intentional in this release?

I wasn't sure what to expect in this update, but congratulations, CG, at least for me it the installation was slick and the boot options work wonderfully!
 
Hey that's awesome news! :grinning:

Again, any output presently on the screen is purely for debug purposes (is it really that bad?). It'll be gone in the final releases which should hopefully, given the success of this build, be soon! :grinning:

EDIT
No need to get the confirmation text, I coded it in :wink:
 
Having the screen debug output seems very sensible - I managed to hold it long enough to read on booting into WindowsXP. No problems there!

I guess everyone will be looking for the pretty boot screen now.....

Hope all goes well for the final release.
 
Need Help!

I tried running this to assist me dual booting Vista / XP on 2 seperate drives as it wouldn't boot into XP after using EasyBCD.

(Append - it does actually boot, it just takes minutes with the below screen? Scared myself though... why so long - and the Vista boot takes me to the boot manager windows anyhow and I choose Vista again?)

Now both drives are hidden and I can not boot into either!
I get the option for both still (screen now looks a little different.
When I try and boot to either C:\ Vista or E:\ XP I get:
(hd0,0)
(hd0,0) Unhidden

(Maybe I should of waited for the final release) :smile:

Pleased help :frowning:

bfo
 
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Hi boyfromoz, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

We're looking into the long delay issue - probably a small oversight somewhere.

As for the second boot menu: once HnS is working, you should change the timeout of the Vista bootloader to zero with something like EasyBCD.
 
When initially seeing a few problems getting the HnS tool to work here and couldn't load Vista while XP would boot up I ran EasyBCD there to remove the early set of entries. Vista then proceeded to load up normally where I could start over until the first working results were seen.

I tried the link for 45 you had posted earlier to see an invalid page error. ut oh! I've been experiencing a few dropoffs with the current router lately until the 768k dsl finally sees 3mb service with the new one. But I know the current build works well with dual boots on the same or separate drives where two satas or a sata/ide mix once configured correctly. I can easily give 45 a good run once you have a good second look to test with the two sata dual here.
 
What error page did you get accessing Build 45?

Be sure to download it from the first post in this thread, not my earlier reply with a link to it; the link has changed since.
 
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