Vista - delete drive letter of startvolume?

Hello
on the first disk is XP installed, on second vista.
That means vistas directory boot is on the xp drive
Now I do not want to see the XP disk in vista therefore I try to delete the
driveletter d: in Diskmanager
But it fails with error message:

Teh driveletter of the volume could not be deleted. Because the volume is a
start or system volume.
(translated from german:-)
Why does vista need the startvolume? it only contains the bootloader I
thought.
How can I make the disk invisible?
THanks for any help
Michael

Hi Michael,

You can't, at least not the way you're trying to do it. The system has that
volume marked as the boot volume. In order for any OS to load, that volume
*has* to be accessible. Right now, the system's bios loads the mbr on that
disk, which then points to the boot files on that disk. Then the boot files
point to the actual location of the Vista installation on the other drive.
If you remove it from the equation, not only will you lose the redirect, but
your pc will also lose its designated boot device. Nothing would boot from
any hard drive. By the way, deleting that drive in diskmanager would not
make XP invisible, it would remove that partition and everything on it
(rendering your XP installation unbootable).

You would need to use a third party boot manager, and then do a startup
repair on Vista to move the boot files. The boot manager must be capable of
allowing each OS to boot from its own system volume, and of hiding other
partitions/volumes from it. This is a fairly complicated task, not something
for the novice. There are several available that can do it, my preference
being BootIT NG from terabyteunlimited, but it's not the only one.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"MIchael" <Heirichsen@web.de> wrote in message
news:OVJEegpcHHA.284@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Hello
> on the first disk is XP installed, on second vista.
> That means vistas directory boot is on the xp drive
> Now I do not want to see the XP disk in vista therefore I try to delete
> the driveletter d: in Diskmanager
> But it fails with error message:
>
> Teh driveletter of the volume could not be deleted. Because the volume is
> a start or system volume.
> (translated from german:-)
> Why does vista need the startvolume? it only contains the bootloader I
> thought.
> How can I make the disk invisible?
> THanks for any help
> Michael
>
>

It does me sorrow that I can not understand your very good English.
Perhaps you could explain your problem in German is this group:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsof...a.installation

"MIchael" <Heirichsen@web.de> wrote in message news:OVJEegpcHHA.284@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Hello
> on the first disk is XP installed, on second vista.
> That means vistas directory boot is on the xp drive
> Now I do not want to see the XP disk in vista therefore I try to delete the
> driveletter d: in Diskmanager
> But it fails with error message:
>
> Teh driveletter of the volume could not be deleted. Because the volume is a
> start or system volume.
> (translated from german:-)
> Why does vista need the startvolume? it only contains the bootloader I
> thought.
> How can I make the disk invisible?
> THanks for any help
> Michael
>
>

You should be able to go into your BIOS and change the Vista drive to the
first hard drive in boot priority. With the Vista install DVD as first in
boot priority, run the startup repair

"MIchael" <Heirichsen@web.de> wrote in message
news:OVJEegpcHHA.284@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Hello
> on the first disk is XP installed, on second vista.
> That means vistas directory boot is on the xp drive
> Now I do not want to see the XP disk in vista therefore I try to delete
> the driveletter d: in Diskmanager
> But it fails with error message:
>
> Teh driveletter of the volume could not be deleted. Because the volume is
> a start or system volume.
> (translated from german:-)
> Why does vista need the startvolume? it only contains the bootloader I
> thought.
> How can I make the disk invisible?
> THanks for any help
> Michael
>
>

Why are you suggesting that a person posting in English post to another
group in German? We understand him perfectly.

--

----
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_________________________________________________________________________________


"Michael Jennings" <metarhyme@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:eO4c6mrcHHA.588@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> It does me sorrow that I can not understand your very good English.
> Perhaps you could explain your problem in German is this group:
> news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsof...a.installation
>

He may not understand *us* perfectly. Your criticism of my response does
not notice the fact that his computer speaks German as does he, presumably.
What is he trying to do? Well, it's either to get rid of XP altogether, or it's to
hide the Vista volume from XP using Windows - it could be either one or the
other. Rather than ask him to clarify, I posted a newsgroup which may be
useful to the OP. My German is infinitely inferior to his English.

If I had seen Rick Rogers' and John Barnes' responses I wouldn't have
responded to MIchael's post, because they nail down one possibility.
I wanted him to clearly communicate his difficulty and receive a response
he could understand and act upon. There it sat. I knew both answers.
How to respond? Give the kid a break with a link to install auf Deutsch.

"David B." <brooks.dj@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:71EA3D98-E293-4BBC-9449-5A84FD1EDEE5@microsoft.com...
> Why are you suggesting that a person posting in English post to another
> group in German? We understand him perfectly.
>
> "Michael Jennings" <metarhyme@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:eO4c6mrcHHA.588@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> It does me sorrow that I can not understand your very good English.
>> Perhaps you could explain your problem in German is this group:
>> news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsof...a.installation
>>
>

Having a bad day are we? It was a simple question, how is that criticizing?
He seems to have a good handle on English, his post was actually more
understandable than some I've seen where English is there native language.

--

----
Crosspost, do not multipost http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
How to ask a question http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
How to Post http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.db-pc.com
_________________________________________________________________________________


"Michael Jennings" <metarhyme@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:u7HcKfvcHHA.3976@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> He may not understand *us* perfectly. Your criticism of my response does
> not notice the fact that his computer speaks German as does he,
> presumably.
> What is he trying to do? Well, it's either to get rid of XP altogether, or
> it's to
> hide the Vista volume from XP using Windows - it could be either one or
> the
> other. Rather than ask him to clarify, I posted a newsgroup which may be
> useful to the OP. My German is infinitely inferior to his English.
>
> If I had seen Rick Rogers' and John Barnes' responses I wouldn't have
> responded to MIchael's post, because they nail down one possibility.
> I wanted him to clearly communicate his difficulty and receive a response
> he could understand and act upon. There it sat. I knew both answers.
> How to respond? Give the kid a break with a link to install auf Deutsch.
>

Yes, I am transitioning from WTF to FTS. Their it is, "there native language."

"David B." <brooks.dj@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:55276F47-BBAB-4CA4-8F7F-6FF8EE506BC4@microsoft.com...
> Having a bad day are we? It was a simple question, how is that criticizing?
> He seems to have a good handle on English, his post was actually more
> understandable than some I've seen where English is there native language.

And I bet you've never made a grammar mistake in your life, I could find all
kinds of problems with your OP "It does me sorrow that I can not understand
your very good English. Perhaps you could explain your problem in German is
this group:" but I have better things to do, go find someone else to whine
to.

--

----
Crosspost, do not multipost http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
How to ask a question http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
How to Post http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.db-pc.com
_________________________________________________________________________________


"Michael Jennings" <metarhyme@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:u7XlzFwcHHA.2316@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Yes, I am transitioning from WTF to FTS. Their it is, "there native
> language."
>
> "David B." <brooks.dj@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:55276F47-BBAB-4CA4-8F7F-6FF8EE506BC4@microsoft.com...
>> Having a bad day are we? It was a simple question, how is that
>> criticizing?
>> He seems to have a good handle on English, his post was actually more
>> understandable than some I've seen where English is there native
>> language.
>
>

Yup, there's a typo. You asked me to explain my post. I explained my post.
I don't think you examined the original post or my reply to you carefully. I
expressed my exasperation. You then accused me of complaining, which you
do a lot of. You may be unaware of that. You could check to see if this is so:
http://groups.google.com/groups/prof...G1szzZ9g&hl=en

I think you put your finger on something - the shift from problem solving
to complaining in this group. Thanks for encouraging me to leave.

"David B." <brooks.dj@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:eoQxqKwcHHA.1312@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> And I bet you've never made a grammar mistake in your life, I could find all
> kinds of problems with your OP "It does me sorrow that I can not understand
> your very good English. Perhaps you could explain your problem in German is
> this group:" but I have better things to do, go find someone else to whine
> to.
>
> "Michael Jennings" <metarhyme@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:u7XlzFwcHHA.2316@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>> Yes, I am transitioning from WTF to FTS. Their it is, "there native
>> language."
>>
>> "David B." <brooks.dj@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:55276F47-BBAB-4CA4-8F7F-6FF8EE506BC4@microsoft.com...
>>> Having a bad day are we? It was a simple question, how is that
>>> criticizing?
>>> He seems to have a good handle on English, his post was actually more
>>> understandable than some I've seen where English is there native
>>> language.
>>
>>
>