You're welcome.
The figures are closer to tens of thousands, though, not hundreds of
thousands. MS has known from the beginning about the technology enthusiasts
who like to multiboot and values them as a group because their influence
among other users is far out of proportion to their numbers. They have
known from the beginning of the deveopment of the program to enhance the
usefullness of VSS to users that technology enthusiasts would be the ones
whose ox is getting gored here.
But this kind of rewrite to XP VSS would not be like preparing a hotfix or
changing a feature. It would necessitate a beta program and extensive work
with partners and enterprises. That is not in the cards when the partners
and enterprises would not themselves be affected users and the OS is being
superceded.
If I fault MS in this it is for not taking a longer look at how the boot
technologies might be modified to implement hiding of Vista volumes from
other operating systems. As it stands that will come through a third party
solution. NeoWin has an alpha out now for testing.
In some cases, the multiboot solution is indeed to use W2k instead of XP
because W2k does not have VSS and therefore cannot cause the same effect.
Of course, the usefulness of that solution depends on the user's software
and devices and his reasons for maintaining an alternate OS in the first
place. In your case it works out.
As to what is affected, it goes well beyond system restore points. Those
are simply the most familiar to folks so they notice their loss right away.
But file recovery or reversion using Vista's new Previous Versions tab on
the file properties page is wiped out as well. So are the full and
incremental backups using the Backup and Restore Center and Window Live
OneCare. Unless CompletePC Backup (Business and Ultimate only) images are
offline at the time XP is booted they are lost too. Further some third
party backup solutions leverage VSS to take the snapshots for their software
so they would affected as well.
These things are unacceptible to anyone who makes his living with his
computer and that is why recommending multibooting without first determining
how another person is using his computer is such a bad thing to do. That's
why my first response to a poster is not to do it. It is the safest
response.
"Noel" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Thank you Colin for the explanations and info, truly, much appreciated.
> Since I only try to get updated
>
> I would never see this as a bug, but rather I would argue that perhaps
> in a better designed effort, one might have been able to predict there
> might be a cadre of users who would like to use both OS' in the same
> box, especially in light of the fact it can take a period of time before
> drivers and software updates mature and catch up to the requirements of
> the next OS version. A cadre of users may not seem like a very high
> prevalence of dual booters, but certainly 0.1% let's say of 200,000,000
> copies of XP (a number picked out of thin air) is still 200,000 users,
> and this isn't a bad audience to consider when developing a product
> line. I know, it's all about profitability and viability. This is
> pretty much a given though: people will want to keep the old for a
> while, unless of course the next OS version is so robust it can handle
> ANY prior driver or software, and of course, that isn't very practical
> for obvious reasons. Anyway, it's a moot point since as you say, this
> is the reality and is ain't gonna change. If I were MS, I wouldn't
> bother changing at this point, for sure. I don't know much about OS
> development, so if this idea that perhaps more intelligent designing in
> the first place might have obviated the current scenario with dual
> booting XP n Vista then I'm just out of touch with those realities.
>
> Now, this is where I may still be ok. Plz humor me and see the issues
> from the perspective of my historical and predicted future use patterns.
>
>
> What exactly disappears in the way of files in this situation? Can I
> live without restore points, I have so far? I use Win2K currently. To
> deal with problems in the way of data loss, I just make backups
> periodically of important data to a separate drive, and also to DVDs.
> In fact, I keep copies of only those items in every installation of
> software that are critical like registry key codes, .ini files, and even
> ALL of my digital audio and photos, on an isolated drive, and again,
> make the occasional DVD should I have to reinstall the OS.
>
> So, again, can I live without restore points? Is it worse than just
> this, as in an OS will become unbootable, even using the various boot
> tools. Just how ugly is the issue in real terms? As you can see, I'm
> ignorant on this . . . but this is how I learn. I could read endless
> posts on these issues and spend days, but you can't beat targeted high
> quality info! So, thanks for your responses Colin, and everyone else.
>
> I think if the vss issue is so problematic that I won't go there, then
> I think I'll just hold off on Vista 64 until perhaps someone figures out
> some sort of friendly workaround, or until there is no reason to run XP
> any longer. This would greatly decrease all issues I have brought up,
> in which case I'll raid 0 the two 7200.11 drives I have for XP and call
> it good, then wholesale switch to Vista when it is a better fit. Giga
> still runs fine for me in XP, so we're good to go, and from what I read
> so far, DX10 is really nothing to make a wholesale OS switch for. I use
> quite a few older products that will not run in Vista without upgrading
> them so again, I can wait if it's such a bad deal now.
>
>
> --
> Noel
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