Hello, I have a Hard Drive which has one large partition with Windows XP Pro SP2 and a small 32MB FreeDOS partition. I set it up to dual boot using the XP boot loader. The FreeDOS has the ability to run ghost and connect to network shares and pull or push images. What I would like to do is hide that partition within XP. Ideally I would like it to be as locked as Dell has their 32MB recovery partition (you can't view it, there is no drive letter, you can't delete it from windows (even in disk manager)). I can use tweakUI and hide the drive letter in My Computer, but I would really like to hide and lock the partition as much as possible, but still allow the dual boot. I also tried using a Hidden FAT16 partition type (type 0x14 or 0x16 I think), however DOS does not install on "nonDOS" partition types. Any advice out there Administrators? Thanks a ton! HippieJoe

What I would like to do is hide that partition within XP. Ideally I would like it to be as locked as Dell has their 32MB recovery partition (you can't view it, there is no drive letter, you can't delete it from windows (even in disk manager)). First of all, the 32MB recovery partition uses EISA which is why it does not need drive letter. The EISA does show up in the disk manager, however. Second, the reason why DOS does not install on "nonDOS" partition types is because your file system appears to be NTFS, and that you cannot run DOS on an XP machine. i_XpUser

You would have to use Partition magic to hide the partition. Consequences are you will end up with a nonbooting xp system. Reason is xp is on d:. No c: [hidden] means xp is on c: which makes registry/boot.ini entries invalid. It would require a repair reinstall. Golly gee wilerkers everyone. Learn to Internet Search

Actually, XP is on c:\. The FreeDOS partition is on the very end of the drive. I set it up this way with these processes: 1.) Pulled a ghost image of a disk with only FreeDOS on it. 2.) Partitioned and installed XP on the c:\ leaving a 32MB chunk at the end of the drive. 3.) Layed the ghost image of the entire disk to the 32MB partition. 4.) Booted Knoppix and pulled only a single 512k block with DD (the mbr with the boot info for FreeDOS) and saved it to a file.bin. 5.) Placed that file in XP's c:\ and edited boot.ini to add under the operating systems section - c:\file.bin="FreeDOS" This loads FreeDOS fine and eliminates the c:\ limitation. Obviously I can't see the NTFS partition when in FreeDOS (similar to a 98 boot disk), however that is fine because ghost can. All I am looking for is a way to limit as much as possible users of the XP installation. If the best I can do is hide the partition in My Computer, that is fine. However I was curious if there was a way to lock it or hide it completly once XP boots...ex. a Registry tweak that is specific to XP maybe in the Current_Config or Current_USER hives that wouldn't mess up the dual boot. Also, as far as I know Partition Majic just changes the hex type of the partition when it hides it. I did the same thing initially with fdisk in Linux but the result was a FreeDOS that begins to load but cannot complete because it has no idea where the partition is with the neccessary files. XpUser, I am not sure what the EISA is you are talking about (type of expansion slot? avaliable IRQ wires?) however I will look into it and see if I can mimic something. Anyother advice is much appreciated. Thanks again! HippieJoe

Definition of EISA (according to M$): Acronym for Extended Industry Standard Architecture, a bus standard introduced in 1988 by a consortium made up of AST Research, Compaq, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Olivetti, Tandy, Wyse, and Zenith. All major system builders uses this technology to create the hidden partition that stores files required for recovery operation. i_XpUser

I should have used the term EISA Configuration instead of the singular EISA. i_XpUser

You can't get to where you want to go with that config. If you had made a small partition which housed the boot files for both you could then alter/hide drive letters. So you would have c: d:xp e:dos But since xp is on c: you can't do it because you also hide the boot files. Golly gee wilerkers everyone. Learn to Internet Search