Install from hidden partition

[Thanatos]

My laptop came with a hidden partition, which contains a ghost image of the OS with factory settings. Problem is, it's installed with all of Dell's bloatware. This got me thinking, would there be any way for me to create an unattended CD, then put it on partition and hide it, only to have it bootable from a menu?

[jaclaz]

Well NO, you know, you cannot have an "Unattended CD" on a partition, but you can do three things, in order of difficulty:

1) make a bootable hidden partition with DOS files that restore a pre-recorded hard disk image (just like the Dell does with GHOST)

2) make a bootable hidden partition with DOS files and a copy of the (Unattended) setup files, starting them using WINNT.EXE

3) make a bootable hidden partition that boots directly (SETUPLDR.BIN) to a copy of the (Unattended) setup files

Read these:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=26185

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=37939

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=14723

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=61384

(seemingly unrelated, but not much)

I don't know how your Dell hides/unhides partitions, does it have a "hot" key or you need to use a special floppy or something else to hide/unhide it?

jaclaz

[Thanatos]

It's actually something I'm very reluctant to explore. The last time I used their 'MediaDirect' software, which they put on the same partition, it deleted my entire second partition and I lost 70Gb of data.