Hello,
I installed Windows 7 64 bit and formatted both partitions (install partition and boot partition) during setup. After setup, I noticed that three drives appear in Windows Explorer:
C: Local Disk
D: (BOOT partition)
E: DVDRW drive
I wanted to hide (not delete) the boot partition, then reassign the drives so that only two appear in Windows Explorer:
C: Local Disk
D: DVDRW drive
I have used disk management to hide the partition and re-assign the drive letters, but when another user logs into the machine, the Boot partition reappears as before.
I decided to reinstall Windows 7. This time, I made sure that the mandatory boot partition WAS NOT formatted. Format the install partition only. I believe this is the only solution to keep the boot partition permanently hidden. :huh:
Downside: You cannot ghost an unformatted partition. This solution would work o.k. if not making an image of the hard drive. *sigh*
After thinking about this for a while, I have decided that I
don't care if Windows 7 creates a 100-150 mb partition during install. Would I miss that reserved space on a 500 Gb hard drive? Nope. I know that partition would never get used, but if Windows looks for it during a system repair/recovery, then it might be best just to leave it alone.
Yes, I understand it is easy to remove/reassign drive letters using disk administrator, but that solution works only for the user currently logged in. It would be ideal if there were a way to run this task once so that
all current and new users of the machine would have the same setting. Is there a "run once" script that could achieve this task? Perhaps an ADM template to apply through group policy?:drool: