After my first article on the hidden partition I realized that the solution that I brought was rather difficult for the newbies, I thus sought and tried out various solutions and programs until I find this terrible little software, I named PARTEDIT32.

This small freeware software will allow you to make visible your partition in some clicks of mouse and on the fly under Windows XP.

Just unzip and launch Partedit32 the user interface opens, simple but effective if you have more than one hard disk, choose the hard disk where your hidden partition is in the Hard Disk menu, then look in your partitions table at the column TYPE, Partedit32 has a list of the various types of partition, you can reach it by clicking the button SET TYPE.

In this example with a Acer laptop the name of the partition is pqservice and its type is 12, changes it by type 07, and save.

Now you just have to restart your computer, enter into "my computer" you have done it, now you can see the hidden partition pqservice. If you do not see the hidden partition repeat the operation but disable before the D2D recovery software into the bios menu. To open the bios hit the F2 key during the boot (note this is for Phoenix Bios check your user manual for other bios). Go to the main menu set the D2D recovery to disable, save the change restart and you have done it.

The PARTEDIT32 software is available for download at laptop support after a free registration.

After that you just have to reverse the operation to hide the pqservice partition. Note that if you want to secure documents or software you can create a partition, save your goods into and hide this partition by using partedit32.

Victor Pradel.