Re: System Restore in Vista in multiboot situations with XP

It is not a severe limitation in Vista. Vista is just fine on this point.
It is an XP issue. It is incompatibility between XP's Volume Shadowcopy
Services and Vistas's. The fix involves an expensive rewrite to XP that MS
states cannot be justified considering the tiny fraction of the Windows user
base that multi-boots. MS has made the decision not to do the rewrite of
XP. MS has been looking at the issue for at least two years. We discussed
it in TechBeta for the last year and a half. The incompatibility results
from improvements to VSS in Vista and new VSS features, such as Previous
Versions.

As Michael says, the solution is to hide Vista from XP. A third party boot
manager is the only general solution (covering all editions of Vista) at the
moment.

My favorite solution is not to multi-boot with XP and Vista on a production
or primary home computer. If you are having hardware driver issues such
that you sometimes need to boot into a legacy system to use a device, then
at least make that legacy system Win2K if you can. Win2K does not have VSS.
If it involves software incompatibilities with Vista, then perhaps running
XP in a virtual machine with VPC 2007 beta on Vista will solve this for you.

The folks who do VistaBoot Pro may be able to add a drive-hiding feature in
a future release. At least they were receptive to the suggestion since it
would solve some other issues as well. It would be helpful if you and
others concerned with this issue go to thier forum and add your comments to
the thread already started there.
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about86248.html

The only mode you can boot into with XP and not harm files created with the
Vista VSS driver is Safe Mode. The XP VSS driver does not run in Safe Mode.

"Edwin" <edwin@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C9AEA983-C6C4-4F52-92B7-428A71FCFD0C@microsoft.com...
> In the pre-release versions of Vista, System Restore has a severe
> limitation
> in a multiboot situation with XP. When one boots into XP and then
> subsequently boots into Vista, all previous Vista restore points are no
> longer there.
>
> Has a remedy for this been found and implemented in the release versions
> of
> Vista? If not, is there any hope of a remedy by means of a future Windows
> Update?

There will not be a huge increase in dual-booters. 95% of Windows are sold
preinstalled on new computers. The current user base cares nothing about
such things as dual booting and will either stick with XP for awhile or buy
Vista in software/hardware package deals.

In any case, most of the dual-booters will probably be folks who frequent
newsgroups like this one. Outside of us geeks hardly anybody knows they can
even do it (and cares less).

The upgraders may not be able to dual boot without a second license of XP if
the Vista Upgrade Editions overwrite the XP partition and tie the license to
Vista as I think it does. It may be just the way the Upgrade Editions work.
Those who buy a full Vista edition will have no problem.

If you can see the volume (drive letter) you installed Vista on in My
Computer while running XP, that drive is not hidden.

"Edwin" <edwin@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A56C415E-D385-48A6-BB70-761F5088CAAD@microsoft.com...
> Thanks for the detailed reply. Here are a few comments and a few more
> questions:
>
> 1) Windows users who multiboot may be a "tiny fraction" at present but I
> predict that there will be a sharp increase due to the huge amount of
> legacy
> hardware out there (scanners, printers, fax machines etc.) that will never
> be
> updated by their manufacturers with Vista-compatible drivers. I think
> there
> will be many Vista users who will want to boot into XP to use some of
> their
> devices. If an easy solution is not found, these legions will probably
> stay
> with XP for several more years before giving up their legacy devices. This
> happened with Me and 98 users during the first 2-3 years of XP and it
> could
> happen again with Vista.
>
> 2) I do not understand (because of my tech limitations) what is meant by
> hiding Vista from XP with a boot manager (I do use VistaBoot Pro). Please
> explain how Vista is "hidden" but still "shows" in the boot menu so that
> multiboot is possible.
>
> 3) I will take your suggestion and enter the VistaBoot Pro forum. If they
> provide a work-around in their software, that would be the best solution
> for
> me because I have my own reasons for wanting to maintain a Vista-XP
> multiboot
> on my computer.
>
> Thanks again! -Edwin
>
>
>
> "Colin Barnhorst" wrote:
>
>> It is not a severe limitation in Vista. Vista is just fine on this
>> point.
>> It is an XP issue. It is incompatibility between XP's Volume Shadowcopy
>> Services and Vistas's. The fix involves an expensive rewrite to XP that
>> MS
>> states cannot be justified considering the tiny fraction of the Windows
>> user
>> base that multi-boots. MS has made the decision not to do the rewrite of
>> XP. MS has been looking at the issue for at least two years. We
>> discussed
>> it in TechBeta for the last year and a half. The incompatibility results
>> from improvements to VSS in Vista and new VSS features, such as Previous
>> Versions.
>>
>> As Michael says, the solution is to hide Vista from XP. A third party
>> boot
>> manager is the only general solution (covering all editions of Vista) at
>> the
>> moment.
>>
>> My favorite solution is not to multi-boot with XP and Vista on a
>> production
>> or primary home computer. If you are having hardware driver issues such
>> that you sometimes need to boot into a legacy system to use a device,
>> then
>> at least make that legacy system Win2K if you can. Win2K does not have
>> VSS.
>> If it involves software incompatibilities with Vista, then perhaps
>> running
>> XP in a virtual machine with VPC 2007 beta on Vista will solve this for
>> you.
>>
>> The folks who do VistaBoot Pro may be able to add a drive-hiding feature
>> in
>> a future release. At least they were receptive to the suggestion since
>> it
>> would solve some other issues as well. It would be helpful if you and
>> others concerned with this issue go to thier forum and add your comments
>> to
>> the thread already started there.
>> http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about86248.html
>>
>> The only mode you can boot into with XP and not harm files created with
>> the
>> Vista VSS driver is Safe Mode. The XP VSS driver does not run in Safe
>> Mode.
>>
>> "Edwin" <edwin@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:C9AEA983-C6C4-4F52-92B7-428A71FCFD0C@microsoft.com...
>> > In the pre-release versions of Vista, System Restore has a severe
>> > limitation
>> > in a multiboot situation with XP. When one boots into XP and then
>> > subsequently boots into Vista, all previous Vista restore points are no
>> > longer there.
>> >
>> > Has a remedy for this been found and implemented in the release
>> > versions
>> > of
>> > Vista? If not, is there any hope of a remedy by means of a future
>> > Windows
>> > Update?
>>
>>