Windows 7 Dual Booting questions

[hamiksu]

Hi all, I was wondering something and is hoping someone can give me a lending hand.

Ok, here is what I've been thinking..
lets say
I made my system dual boot, Boot A as Windows 7, Boot B as maybe , lets say windows XP.

after making this work, in windows 7, I go to Advanced tab in system properties
and made windows 7 as the primary booting OS and turn off the "time to display list of OS"
so as to make it that the system will autoboot into windows 7 without letting the user know there is a windows XP partition in the system as well..

Then using group policy, I hide the partition containing Windows XP.

ok, here comes my questions.

1) Lets say the user while using windows 7, contracted a virus that infects all available EXE in the system, with the hidden partition with my Windows XP be infected as well?

2) lets say the aforementioned windows 7 is corrupted beyond rescue, is there any way to make the system boot up the Windows XP in that hidden partition (assuming that with my question 1, the windows XP is safe from the virus)

Any help will be appreciated.. Thank you..

 

[Pauli]

Some questions. Mainly viruses and malware attack the active OS, meaning that the functional partition = like C is attacked. The secondary partition with another OS = C #2 is not affected. The situation is dependent on "different disks", and partitions are treated that way. Thus, with 50 partitions, you have 50 different and separate places, all protected separately.

... in case that is the rule...

I would recommend proper security programs, instead of rumbling with fancy thoughts and holocaust ideas about what might or might not be.

And despite the electrical age we live in, physical​ factors do matter. A physical disk is quite something else than a partition. You can always plug off a physical disk, that way it's totally out of reach, whereas a partition is always in contact.

 

[patcooke]

Although infection tends to focus on the system drive, malware can access any resource to which the op sys has physical access regardless of being hidden, write only or whatever so nothing is invulnerable. If you lost access to booting from the Win 7 partition you could use anyone of a number of bootable cd based partition management packages to make one of the other partitions visible and bootable.

 

[hamiksu]

Thanks for the replies..

Patcooke, you mentioned bootable CD based Partition Management packages,
can you give me some heads up so I can go look for them..

thanks..

 

[Adamsappleone]

You might try here for starters; Link Removed

If, in the event your system is infected so, as you can not boot to the OS, you may want to try this; Link Removed, Link Removed

Hope this helps
Don

 

[patcooke]

Easeus, free from here is very good:

Free Partition Magic alternative. Best Free Partition Manager Freeware for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8 32 bit & 64 bit - EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition.

 

[hamiksu]

thanks for all the wonder replies, guess I'll be busy checking out the two partition programs you guys mentioned..
thanks, you guys are the man..

LOL..

I was wondering something else though,
I noted that when booting with a windows 7 installer CD,
it have options to do stuff with partitions and stuff..

couldn't i use those to handle my aforementioned questions?

p.s :- @patcooke, to your easeus program, I haven't downloaded it yet, need to get home to do that, but does this program need to be run in windows or it is like a bootable thing to a DOS like environment?

 

[patcooke]

p.s :- @patcooke, to your easeus program, I haven't downloaded it yet, need to get home to do that, but does this program need to be run in windows or it is like a bootable thing to a DOS like environment?

Easeus run under normal Windows. To make changes involving the system partition it reboots of course but handles all that itself. The burning of a bootable cd is an option under easeus to enable you to boot into a gui environment when the hard drive is unbootable.

I was wondering something else though,
I noted that when booting with a windows 7 installer CD,
it have options to do stuff with partitions and stuff..

The partitioning options, both those in the installation preamble and from within Windows itself are very limited and you will find third party apps like easeus much more powerful.

 

[hamiksu]

sounds good... thanks for the heads up, patcooke..