hiding a windows 7 dual boot completely?

I've searched extensively and can't find a solution for this; I can do it with a dual boot of two different XP installs, but Win7 and XP is eluding me.



It's easier if I just tell you the end result of what I want things to look like; then maybe someone will know how to accomplish it.

I have a laptop that currently has Windows XP (installed first) and Windows 7 (installed second) as a dual boot configuration.

What I want is to completely (temporarily) eliminate the boot menu. I don't want to just "limit it to 0 seconds" or anything like that -- I literally want to eliminate the boot menu. I want it so that when you boot the laptop, it boots Windows XP every time.

However, there should be "some method" to restore the boot menu - preferably by running a batch file in Windows XP. After you boot to XP, you can run this batch file, then reboot the computer, you'd get the boot menu and have the option of choosing Windows 7.

Once in Windows 7, you should be able to run a similar batch file to remove the boot menu again - so that when you restart the computer, it once again reverts to just booting to XP and doesn't display any menu, until you run the XP batch file again.

In XP I would have been able to do this with a batch file that rewrites boot.ini but since Win7 doesn't use boot.ini I don't know how to accomplish this from the Win7 side.

Also, let me clarify that I don't much care if the OS's can "see" each other -- I don't need to hide the drives -- I just don't want the boot menu to appear, basically making it "appear" that the system only has a single OS unless you are "in the know."


Thanks,
Jay

msconfig / boot tab / copy the windows 7 entry to a text file for safe keeping... Remove the windows 7 entry from the boot.ini then check the disable gui boot.

That sounds like it would work

OK, so if I do that then it will allow me to just boot straight to XP -- but once I am in XP, how do I get Win7 back? I can't modify the Win7 boot info from XP. Unless I'm misunderstanding you?

yes, both xp and 7 have msconifig and the "boot.ini" file ready to modify... I had you keep the windows 7 entry so you could literally paste it back into the .ini file for future use.

The check mark for "non gui boot" was random... Shouldn't need to check it.

In Computer>Properties>Advanced Settings>Startup, Set Preferred OS in dropdown menu, then uncheck the box next to Time to Display OS menu.

- or to remove either OS's bootability:

Mark Xp partition Active, boot the Win7 DVD or Repair CD, press Shift + F10 at first screen or go to Repair console Command prompt, type:
Diskpart
lis vol
( get the XP drive letter - it might be different from WinRe)
exit
Then type :
bootsect /nt52 <whatever the XP drive letter is>:
press enter
Restart to XP, Win7 is now hidden and not bootable.

To return the System MBR to boot Win7, do as above but subsititute
bootsect /nt60 <Win7 drive letter>:

Thanks but that's not quite what I am after. The point is so that a user of the machine will be completely unaware that there is a dual OS installed "at first glance." I am not so concerned about a person poking around the drives once the machine is booted and discovering the other files - it's not a security thing so much as a cosmetic one - just that if someone casually boots up the machine there won't be anything *in the boot process* that indicates another OS is present somewhere.

I will try the other above solutions! thanks everyone.