Unhide hidden partition on laptop?

[Exodia]

Hello all.

I have an IBM Thinkpad and i'd like to unhide the partition that holds the recovery image, i'd like to use the extra space. Also i was wondering if there is any way to retrieve any of the drivers and software from that partition. Its no big deal, i can download them all, i was just curious to know if i could.

Today i used the recovery image and found it to be out of date. Im thinking of making an unattended cd for this laptop and have it up to date with drivers and hotfixes, every time i reinstall.

[XtremeMaC]

try partition magic.

[Exodia]

That simple eh? Thanks!

[gamehead200]

There's a partition manager in Windows XP in Computer Management. That should be enough to find the hidden partition.

[XtremeMaC]

hmm that's actually right

but its been a long while since i don't use integrated windows utils

and i think there is a unhide partition in there as well ....

if not partition magic will work for sure.

[strekship]

How do you get to computer management?

[XtremeMaC]

several ways 1st right click on my comp and select manage

then go to disk management

2nd type diskmgmt.msc in run

[Exodia]

Cant find my partition magic 7 so i decided to try with windows management.. no luck though. Are you sure theres an unhide feature in there cause i couldnt find it. If there is, how do i do this?

[FthrJACK]

you can do it in the registry, i have to go to work though now and havent had enough coffee for my brain to function.

I will post how when i get back (and have had chance to look it up in my notes!)

[XtremeMaC]

what unhiding partition is a registry hack?

wow never knew about that.

[Exodia]

what unhiding partition is a registry hack?

wow never knew about that.

Me neither!

*eagerly waiting for jacks return*

[FthrJACK]

Argh... my notes on this are all at work, its something i havent messed with in a long time. Tell you what, i will email them to Aaron from work tomorrow and hopefully he can post it on my behalf, as i will be at work till late i expect - systems cabinet getting rebuilt, and i need to get my normal work done too.

Far as i remember though, you can only hide or unhide the drive if you know its letter. Then again this can always be guessed, you can hide and lock drives too ( i think) so if you have some drive you want to protect from being accessed or edited its handy.

i had a bit of a crazy day today and forgot to bring my ring binder home, sorry guys.

[Exodia]

No problem, i can wait.. thanks!

[LiquidSage]

use acronis partition expert. you will be able to unhide and assign a drive letter to a recovery partition in one step within windows. i do this a lot when i run into HP's. They have a rec. part. that has all drivers, winpe to install, and all programs that came with the comp. It is simple and safe for the most part.....

[FthrJACK]

Ok, here we go.

Dont confuse this as unhiding a drive thats hidden in the MBR, this is in windows only. So you will still need to use something such as PM8 or another disk manager to unhide that as its nothing to do with the OS.

Log in as the user you want to limit access with. go:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create a Dword value called NoDrives - its value will corespond to which drive(s) need to be hidden.

A: 1, B: 2, C: 4, D: 8, E: 16, F: 32, G: 64, H: 128, I: 256, J: 512, K: 1024, L: 2048, M: 4096, N: 8192, O: 16384, P: 32768, Q: 65536, R: 131072, S: 262144, T: 524288, U: 1048576, V: 2097152, W: 4194304, X: 8388608, Y: 16777216, Z: 33554432

With these same decimal values you can also do a different tweak, you can leave the drive letter visible, but make it so the user cant view the content of the drive and also stop them using - Run, Map Network Drive, or DIR.

Create a new Dword value called NoViewOnDrive and use the appropriate decimal value from above.

Ill add this to the reg tweaks thread to keep it building up full of tweaks.