System Restore

[katy]

Hi All, does dual booting XP and Vista still have problems with both OS's
system restores being wiped out? I would be so much better off if I could
dual boot XP and Vista vs using Vista on VM2007 but I don't want my system
restore points to be wiped out (that's what I've heard happens).

Could someone confirm this or assure me that this doesn't happen anymore?
Any thoughts would be SO helpful!!

Katy

 

[Peter]

Yes it happens. You can get around it by using (so I'm told) BootitNg which
can hide partitions from each other. or you can use bitlocker to encrypt
Vista to make it invisible to XP.
M$ say they may (only may) include a fix for this in XP SP3.

 

[Peter]

Microsoft told me that it may be XP SP3 that solves it but it would involve
some very costloy rewriting of code and may never be solved.. All my
restore points remain in XP and all but the last one in Vista. Vista should
not be affecting your XP restore points at all, it's the other way round, XP
doesn't like Vista's.
In other words I can do a "last known good configuration" boot in Vista but
not a proper system restore.

 

[Jill Zoeller [MSFT]]

See the System Restore team's blog at
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2006/07/14/441829.aspx for the
definitive answer.

 

[Peter]

If anyone thinks I'm dismantling my tower every time I boot back and forth,
which is many times daily...well you know what I mean. In other words boo
to M$ for screwing up in the first place.
I've tried using Vista's Bitlocker to no avail - keeps telling me "not
enough room on disk" which is total baloney.
But tell me this, how come I did a successful "last known good config" on
Vista a while back?
I don't want to hide partitions from each other because I quite often look
in one from the other etc. M$ should really think about this seriously.

--
Peter
Toronto, Canada
XP Pro SP2 x 2 + Vista Ultimate
P4 HT @ 3.00ghz, 4.0gb RAM, 700gb HDD

 

[Michael A. Bishop \(MSFT]

It's a screw-up for Vista to have a technology advance over XP? XP doesn't
support the new stuff, and can't interact with it without corrupting it.
XP's design decision, correct or not, was to delete what was unavoidably
corrupted -- better to remove the shadow copies than leave corrupted ones
waiting for you to restore a file from it.

There might be possible software workarounds (turn off XP VSS for disks that
have Vista shadow copies, perhaps?), but even those have the potential to
break things under XP and can't be lightly deployed to everyone in a service
pack. I'm not entirely sure that would work in the first place. Believe
me, Microsoft *does* think about this seriously -- it's not a simple thing
to do "the right thing" for every situation in one update to XP. The right
thing for one situation probably breaks two or three others.

If you need to, have three partitions: XP system, Vista system, and data.
Hide the Vista system from XP so your System Restore shadow copies are
intact, then don't rely on persistent shadow copies of your data partition.
Then all your data is accessible from both sides.

If anyone thinks I'm dismantling my tower every time I boot back and
forth, which is many times daily...well you know what I mean. In other
words boo to M$ for screwing up in the first place.
I've tried using Vista's Bitlocker to no avail - keeps telling me "not
enough room on disk" which is total baloney.
But tell me this, how come I did a successful "last known good config" on
Vista a while back?
I don't want to hide partitions from each other because I quite often look
in one from the other etc. M$ should really think about this seriously.

--
Peter
Toronto, Canada
XP Pro SP2 x 2 + Vista Ultimate
P4 HT @ 3.00ghz, 4.0gb RAM, 700gb HDD

 

[Peter]

Michael,
I'm sorry I wasn't trying to belittle Microsoft here. Yes I know they treat
this seriously.
I know I could, for instance, use Bootit NG to hide Vista from XP but that
would mess up my bootloader that I currently use and like, plus have the
added disadvantage of my not being able to access Vista from XP and v.v.
The last message I got from Microsoft said it was being looked at but may
never be solved.
I'll just grin and bear it, and should Vista screw up, I'll just
format/reinstall.
I'm still mystified how Vista found a "last known good configuration".
Thanks for the input.


--
Peter
Toronto, Canada
XP Pro SP2 x 2 + Vista Ultimate fully updated
P4 D865GBFL HT @ 3.0ghz 4.0gb DDR 700gb HD
Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro Graphics
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 4 Audio

It's a screw-up for Vista to have a technology advance over XP? XP
doesn't support the new stuff, and can't interact with it without
corrupting it. XP's design decision, correct or not, was to delete what
was unavoidably corrupted -- better to remove the shadow copies than leave
corrupted ones waiting for you to restore a file from it.

There might be possible software workarounds (turn off XP VSS for disks
that have Vista shadow copies, perhaps?), but even those have the
potential to break things under XP and can't be lightly deployed to
everyone in a service pack. I'm not entirely sure that would work in the
first place. Believe me, Microsoft *does* think about this seriously --
it's not a simple thing to do "the right thing" for every situation in one
update to XP. The right thing for one situation probably breaks two or
three others.

If you need to, have three partitions: XP system, Vista system, and data.
Hide the Vista system from XP so your System Restore shadow copies are
intact, then don't rely on persistent shadow copies of your data
partition. Then all your data is accessible from both sides.

 

[Milhouse Van Houten]

For those following along, this article shows the two known ways of working
around the issue:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/preven...ng_lost_when_dual_booting_with_windows_xp.htm

(The first is using BitLocker, and the second is hiding the partition--using
TweakUI or gpedit.msc--that Michael mentioned below.)

Further reference: http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

Three questions:
1) Does hiding the Vista partition from XP definitely work? I've seen a
couple "doesn't work for me" type comments, so I'm wondering.
2) If you don't do #1, why wouldn't disabling the Volume Shadow Copy service
in XP work? I really don't know of any side-effects of doing this beyond
backup, so with the service disabled how could it still be affecting Vista
or anything else?
3) Re the Advisory link below, WHAT bootable third-party tools cause the
problem? Literally ALL that don't use PE/Vista to boot or just certain
ones? I'm assuming one exception for sure would be low-level tools, like
those from your disk vendor or Spinrite.

Advisory:
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/ar...rd-party-tools-can-affect-restore-points.aspx

It's a screw-up for Vista to have a technology advance over XP? XP
doesn't support the new stuff, and can't interact with it without
corrupting it. XP's design decision, correct or not, was to delete what
was unavoidably corrupted -- better to remove the shadow copies than leave
corrupted ones waiting for you to restore a file from it.

There might be possible software workarounds (turn off XP VSS for disks
that have Vista shadow copies, perhaps?), but even those have the
potential to break things under XP and can't be lightly deployed to
everyone in a service pack. I'm not entirely sure that would work in the
first place. Believe me, Microsoft *does* think about this seriously --
it's not a simple thing to do "the right thing" for every situation in one
update to XP. The right thing for one situation probably breaks two or
three others.

If you need to, have three partitions: XP system, Vista system, and data.
Hide the Vista system from XP so your System Restore shadow copies are
intact, then don't rely on persistent shadow copies of your data
partition. Then all your data is accessible from both sides.