Jump to content

Hidden partition becoming "visible" and assigned drive letter


luke123

Recommended Posts

Hi

I've a Dell pc with a small, hidden diagnostic FAT16 EISA partition, before the Windows partition, on the system drive.

Starting a few days ago, this formerly hidden partition appears to have become visible to Windows XP which automatically assigns it a drive letter.

I used the command "mountvol /d" to remove such newly created drive letter, but it reappears everytime Windows boots or restarts, even in Safe Mode.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Is it possible that a certain registry setting relating to the (formerly) hidden partition has somehow been altered? If so, how can this be reversed so that no drive letter is assigned automatically to the (formerly) hidden partition?

An interesting observation is that, in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices, there is no \DosDevices\{x} (where {x} is the drive letter) which corresponds to the drive letter now assigned to the (formerly) hidden partition.

I cannot use the Disk Management MMC Snap-in to remove the drive letter assignment, since selecting the partition and right-clicking only brings up a single "Help" line in the context menu, without any of the usual options (like "Change Drive Letter and Paths...").

By way of background, my current system drive was made by cloning the original system drive over a year ago. The latter is now used as an internal second drive. After the cloning exercise, the Dell hidden FAT16 diagnostic partition on the second drive (the previous system drive) was set to type 16 using PTEDIT32, whilst that for the current system drive remains as DE. Until recently, both these FAT16 partitions have stayed hidden to Windows XP and, for example, do not appear as drives/partitions when the disk defragmentator is used (although they can be viewed in "Disk Management", without any assigned drive letter).

Checking with PTEDIT32 shows the DE and 16 type settings for the two partitions remain unchanged.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and feedback!

Luke

Edited by luke123
Link to comment
Share on other sites


Starting a few days ago, this formerly hidden partition appears to have become visible to Windows XP which automatically assigns it a drive letter.

A DE partition is NOT mounted by "default" Windows XP.

You must have downloaded/installed something that changes the behaviour.

It could be any program that runs automatically something similar to showdrive.exe:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10169

typically it could be some kind of Virtual Drive software, check with dosdev if a "volatile" definition is established (won't appear in \DosDevices)

jaclaz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for your feedback, jaclaz.

I recently installed Eraser 6.07 and suspected this might be the cause, but its developer said otherwise.

I'm not familiar with dosdev but am reading about it now.

The challenge: how do I reverse whatever was done so that the previous "hidden" state can be reverted to?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The challenge: how do I reverse whatever was done so that the previous "hidden" state can be reverted to?

That's another question. :whistle:

Most probably the only way is to make a complete bootlog with Process Monitor :unsure::

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

You can also try using Autoruns or a similar utility to disable anything that runs at startup and see if the behaviour changed.

jaclaz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This partition is likely the same type as these. Unfortunately you won't find any sort of tools to hide the partition again and be able to gaurantee that it will function. You CAN change the volume ID with some programs such as DiskPart but no promise that you'll be able to boot into it if needed.

There is no real way to make this partition appear and get a drive letter unless you had changed the drive ID or installed a program that can read Non-Standard/Windows volumes. For example, have you gotten any program lately that lets your PC read Linux or Mac drives?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This partition is likely the same type as these. Unfortunately you won't find any sort of tools to hide the partition again and be able to gaurantee that it will function. You CAN change the volume ID with some programs such as DiskPart but no promise that you'll be able to boot into it if needed.

There is no real way to make this partition appear and get a drive letter unless you had changed the drive ID or installed a program that can read Non-Standard/Windows volumes. For example, have you gotten any program lately that lets your PC read Linux or Mac drives?

Yes, I did install EXT2 IFS for Windows about two weeks ago, but the "loss" of the two partitions' hiddenness only happened a few days ago.

http://www.fs-driver.org/

Strange...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks, MSFN SuperB and Tripredacus, for your pointers!

Well, if I am "MSFN SuperB", for basic equal opportunities reasons Tripredacus must be referred as "K-Mart-ian Legend" ;).

jaclaz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks, MSFN SuperB and Tripredacus, for your pointers!

Well, if I am "MSFN SuperB", for basic equal opportunities reasons Tripredacus must be referred as "K-Mart-ian Legend" ;).

jaclaz

Sorry, jaclaz. I was so relieved that I mistyped your handle...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...