Thanks again Rick,
Extremely helpful information! I've found Restore Points essential, so want
to be sure I preserve them.
After 2 time consuming catastrophic crashes in the last year due to
defective HDDs (and Norton Ghost), and my frustrating and time consuming
experiences with Vista (in which I experienced flashbacks to the whole arc of
Windows gridlocks from the beginning) -- now I don't do anything without
first researching the issue.
You information leads have opened up new vistas (no pun intended). Lot more
reading to do before I proceed with the dual boot.
A few last questions:
1) In reading about the restore points issue, your helpful link led me to
the following in a post on Computer Haven in the restore issue thread:
"The problem is with XP. Windows XP automounts every disk it detects,
including external or removable hard disks. As part of the automounting
process, NTFS writes to the disk, and these writes are detected by the
volsnap.sys driver in Windows XP. Because this version of volsnap.sys does
not recognize the persistent shadow copies (also known as restore points)
made by the volsnap.sys driver in Windows Vista, Windows XP cannot maintain
the integrity of the shadow copy storage area and deletes the shadow copies
to avoid corrupting them . . .
When booting into Vista, restore points in XP are not affected."
My question -- I have 2 external USB HDDs, one for all documents, and 1 for
backups (use both Vista and Acronis). Plus I make a second backup on a
partition of my C (Vista) drive. Do I risk issues with accessing these
external HDDs after an appropriate dual boot configuration?
Also, I have a partition in C drive, where I do some program installs. Also
have some docs there. I assume this could be problematic also...?
2) Upon reading about Terabyte's BootItNG -- if I use that, do I also need
BootPro?
3) Re: alternative option to use Virtual PC (MS Tech told me it works with
Home Premium) -- I've read that it requires a re-install of Vista?
a) Before I go there, do you know if this true? Any opinion about Virtual PC?
b) I assume that a Vista re-install wipes out all programs, as with other
Windows versions? Am I correct?
Thanks again,
Aaron