Need help with hiding vista partition

Hi Terry. Thanks for the lengthy reply. I understood everything you explained except for a few things. If Hns creates it's own menu.lst , then why bring EasyBCD into the mix? When I went through the hns process and got to the end where I was given an option to add additional entries, that confused me. Especially when I selected that option and EasyBCD appears and only shows me my Vista entry. Why would I want to modify the old Vista menu? And then towards your third paragraph when you get into the timeout (0) , you lost me completely. Sorry. :shame:

I just want to be able to boot Vista or XP (with Vista as the default), have maybe 10 seconds to decide before it goes to default and retain my restore points in Vista and have my third partition (e) serving as a common data drive shared by both (this is where I keep all my downloads and such, no programs). I don't have Ubuntu or Linux or multiple physical hard drives and 20 something partitions like some of the other fellows.

As for the registry hack and bit blocker, I know that they are 2 different things. I was referring to the two options given in the article. Neither one interest me. Besides, according to the article the registry hack works if you've got Xp installed on C and Vista on D. I'm the opposite.

I want to give HnS another go. Perhaps I just need a little guidance.

I've had UAC turned off ever since I installed Vista 64. It game me such headaches and I haven't had a problem since. I hope that it's not the cause of the problems I'm having with HnS.
 
The drives don't haft to be C: or D: they can be anything as they are in regard to how XP sees them. BitLocker is simply another solution, but this is not suitable for mutl-boot enviornemts and is a lot more difficult to setup.

Example:

In XP, your Vista drive is drive F: and XP's drive is C:. So in XP, you would follow the directions but adjust the value name "\DosDevices\D:" to be "\DosDevices\F:" since Vista's drive is seen as F: by XP.
 
Justin's right, the C: and D: mentioned in the hack are for example. Just substitute your own letters.

EasyBCD is a GUI to edit the BCD.
The reason why you still need to edit the BCD when you're using HnS because HnS chains to the Vista bootloader when you ask for Vista. You need to edit it so that it becomes invisible i.e it runs without giving you a visible menu, otherwise you'll get two boot menus. The simplest way to make any bootloader not give you a menu is to set a 0 timeout. This forces it to take the default without asking you to choose.
Take a look at the diagram in this post and you'll see how HnS works.
HnS is designed to be the ultimate in simplicity, and for all of us that use it, has lived up to that intention. The fact that it ran without effect for you, I can only put down to the failure to switch names and UAC is the only reason I can suggest.
Wait around till Guru confirms or denies before doing anything else.
If it were me, I'd run the UI again and, without rebooting, check whether everything had been correctly done or whether the old bootmgr (the bigger one) was still sitting there unaltered.
But since you seem to be confused by my attempts to explain things, perhaps it's best you don't play around with anything till Guru's been able to say if turning UAC off is stopping the installation.
 
Ok I think I understand now. The reason why Hns brings up EasyBCD is so you can give it a timeout of 0 so it won't bring up it's own menu.

Another question. About the file GRLDR. Is it a HnS created file? If UI.exe fails to complete properly like before, can I safely delete GRLDR?

In you last post Terry, you reference to a certain diagram in a post explaining how HnS works. Was it meant to be a link? I'd like to see that diagram if you can give me the link.

I'll try it again without rebooting and post my results.
 
Sorry about that, you're right, there was supposed to be a link. HnS creates dummy files on the Vista and XP partitions (e.g. Vista.C.HnS) which are used to find and identify the correct partitions to hide/unhide, puts copies of the XP boot files on the XP drives, puts itself (GRLDR) on the active partition, creates the menu.lst which it uses when it executes, and finally substitutes itself by renaming bootmgr to bootmgr.HnS and itself to bootmgr.
If you have a bootmgr.HnS and a grldr, then it seems to have failed at the very last step, leaving you with neither bootloader named bootmgr (the name the MBR is looking for).
All that's needed to complete the successful take over, is to rename grldr to bootmgr, which is not something that's ever failed for me.
(I've been a guinea pig for every build since about 4 or 5 I think. It's been failures on my system (not to complete, but to work as intended) that have largely driven the evolving design to its current state, as we discovered by trial and error the idiosyncratic differences between Vista and the BIOS when it comes to identifying drives, especially when IDE is mixed with SATA)
If you find yourself in that state, try a manual rename of grldr to bootmgr. If it works you should be up and running with HnS. A manual rename of bootmgr.HnS to bootmgr will take you back to Vista's BCD, but HnS will have left your boot.ini renamed to an HnS version and created new one(s) on the XP drive(s) where the BCD will not be looking for it.
That would be why your XP boot failed after you originally had the HnS failure and repaired your Vista boot. Renaming bootmgr.HnS and boot.ini.hns to their original names would restore the Vanilla dual boot.
 
Back
Top