With duel boot -- what is best place to put Vista

[Rock]

Do you think MS will consider this a bug and issue a patch for it?

This was discussed extensively in the TechBeta. They don't consider it a
bug, since Vista wasn't around when XP was created. Also they don't regard
dual boot as a very common scenario for the majority of users, hence to them
it's not much of an issue.

I don't know all the why's and wherefor's such that the System Restore
process in Vista is so similar that this would happen. I am guessing it
would have involved too massive a change in the the OS kernel. They were
every insistent that to patch XP so that it doesn't delete the Vista data
would take a significant rewrite of many aspects of the XP OS, and they were
not going to do that.

More recently one poster in the Vista newsgroups claimed MS recently made a
comment they were considering making such a change in XP. I could not get
any specifics on that assertion, and I haven't read anything to confirm it
from anyone else.

If I had to guess, I don't think it's going to be changed. If it were, I
would expect that to come out with SP3 for XP, but I doubt it. Of course my
prediction and $2.50 might get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks....lol.

 

[Rock]

This implies that the running OS does either (or both) of the
following:
1) It inspects ALL other partitions for restore points,
2) It finds ALL other Windows OSes in the system and looks
for their restore points.

In other words, the OS (via volsnap.sys) doesn't just look at its
own restore points in its own partition. Why would an OS do that?

*TimDaniels*

Since system restore can be set for any partition, it makes sense it would
sniff all of them. Of course it's a good idea to turn it off in XP for any
data only partitions, but even when turning off monitoring of the Vista
partition from within XP, XP's Volsnap.sys still sniffs it. Why it does
that, I don't know. Hiding the partition with TweakUI doesn't seem to work
either, since all that does is remove a drive letter from Explorer, but the
partition is still available. The only way around it is to hide the Vista
partition using something like BootIt NG.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

This was discussed extensively in the TechBeta. They don't consider
it a bug, since Vista wasn't around when XP was created. Also they
don't regard dual boot as a very common scenario for the majority
of users, hence to them it's not much of an issue.

I don't know all the why's and wherefor's such that the System Restore
process in Vista is so similar that this would happen. I am guessing it
would have involved too massive a change in the the OS kernel. They
were every insistent that to patch XP so that it doesn't delete the Vista
data would take a significant rewrite of many aspects of the XP OS,
and they were not going to do that.

More recently one poster in the Vista newsgroups claimed MS recently
made a comment they were considering making such a change in XP.
I could not get any specifics on that assertion, and I haven't read anything
to confirm it from anyone else.

If I had to guess, I don't think it's going to be changed. If it were, I
would expect that to come out with SP3 for XP, but I doubt it. Of
course my prediction and $2.50 might get you a cup of coffee at
Starbucks....lol.

Thanks for the background, Rock. I guess MS didn't anticipate
that so many users would tiptoe into Vista waters with dual-booting
(or even want to go back to WinXP).

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Since system restore can be set for any partition, it makes sense it would
sniff all of them. Of course it's a good idea to turn it off in XP for any
data only partitions, but even when turning off monitoring of the Vista
partition from within XP, XP's Volsnap.sys still sniffs it. Why it does
that, I don't know. Hiding the partition with TweakUI doesn't seem to
work either, since all that does is remove a drive letter from Explorer,
but the partition is still available. The only way around it is to hide the
Vista partition using something like BootIt NG.

There's another way - "mobile racks", aka "drive caddies".
Just put each HD on a separate removable tray, and select
the OS by selecting which tray to slide into the rack.
Such racks are available for both PATA and SATA IDE
hard drives, and they're not expensive. The only catch is
that you need to have a spare 5 1/2" drive bay available.
I use a removable tray for my backup clone HD, and it's
very convenient. My personal preference is for those
made by Kingwin: http://www.kingwin.com/mobileracks.asp .
I have the one with the 80 mm fan in the bottom of the tray,
and it works very well to keep the HD cool. Unfortunately,
Kingwin offers these tray bottom fans only in its PATA trays.
You can usually find the rack/tray pair for around $25, and
spare trays for $15-$20 on the Web. Just do a search using
"Kingwin" and the model no.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Rock]

There's another way - "mobile racks", aka "drive caddies".
Just put each HD on a separate removable tray, and select
the OS by selecting which tray to slide into the rack.
Such racks are available for both PATA and SATA IDE
hard drives, and they're not expensive. The only catch is
that you need to have a spare 5 1/2" drive bay available.
I use a removable tray for my backup clone HD, and it's
very convenient. My personal preference is for those
made by Kingwin: http://www.kingwin.com/mobileracks.asp .
I have the one with the 80 mm fan in the bottom of the tray,
and it works very well to keep the HD cool. Unfortunately,
Kingwin offers these tray bottom fans only in its PATA trays.
You can usually find the rack/tray pair for around $25, and
spare trays for $15-$20 on the Web. Just do a search using
"Kingwin" and the model no.

Yes that is another solution.with some advantages. I forgot about those.

 

[Rock]

Thanks for the background, Rock. I guess MS didn't anticipate
that so many users would tiptoe into Vista waters with dual-booting
(or even want to go back to WinXP).

I don't know the numbers, but the % of users dual booting with Vista and XP
is still small. Maybe it went up a bit with Visa, I don't know, but it's
still not a significant number at least as MS sees it. That has to be
weighed against the cost of changing one or the other OS. Unless they
discover some easy way to do it, I just don't see them putting the resources
into it.