Dual Booting and Creating System Restore Points

[I.P. Nichols]

For certain reasons I have chosen to dual boot XP and Vista and not to hide
the Vista drive so as to prevent XP from removing Vista's system restore
points. Until recently I would manually create a restore point each time I
returned from XP to Vista. Lately I have been using a script that creates a
daily restore point on starting Vista as discussed in this article. While
the article was written for XP, I find it works equally well in Vista.

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/checkpoints.htm

Even if you aren't interested in using the technique, the article has an
good description of when automatic restore checkpoints are created.

 

[John Barnett MVP]

I've actually tried hiding the Vista partition but found that it didn't
work, which was quite disappointing. In the end I reverted to using the
bitlocker encryption method. Although i still use the dual boot i have now
installed VMware Workstation 6 beta onto Vista and installed a copy of XP
onto the Virtual PC.
While i do like VMware workstation i am not so keen on the length of time it
takes to load its drivers as it does add 15 to 20 seconds to boot up and,
until the drivers are actually loaded and the internet activity icon has
fully initialised it is difficult to get access to the internet. But VMware
Workstation 6 is still in beta so hopefully this delay may be resolved.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
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[Jeff]

John,

Do you like VMware or VPC '07?

cuz with VPC '07 I don't see those perf hits,
but no usb support either-like VMware has.

Jeff

 

[John Barnett MVP]

Jeff,

I'm actually leaning more and more towards VMware. VPC '07 is, as you say,
not able to handle usb support, but also there are sound problems. My
machine has onboard sound and with VPC 07 no matter what i tired i can never
get any sound at all. VMware workstation 6.0 beta picks up sound
automatically. I know sound isn't particularly important but, i always have
the opinion that, if the option is there and your pc supports it, then it
should work. It's amazing, really, because, during the early beta tests the
only virtual machine that i could get Vista to work on was VMware server (i
never had much luck with VPC server or VPC), and yet even VMware server
never picked up the sound on my machine. And, in actual fact, i can't
remember any performance issues with VMware server either.

Of course VMware have been in the vitual machine market for quite a while.
VPC, on the other hand, is not a native Microsoft product. If i think
correctly Microsoft bought VPC from Connexant, so Microsoft really haven't
had the ecperience in virtual machines as VMware has.


--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..