vista beta2

[acdc6275]

hello all!

My pc is vista compatible, I have xp home sp2 and xp pro sp2 partitioned, using partitionmagic and boot magic to jump back and forth.

I know first hand that u cant use partitionmagic with vista, my question is what partition manager can I use with vitsa beta2 and my xp home sp2 if any?

[vinodh]

You don't have to. Just Install Vista. It will automatically find the OS on the other partition and add to the vista bootloader. The thing is, if something goes wrong, and it has with me with Vista 5231, it's quite problem to boot to either OS. That's why I use a seperate hard drive for Vista. When i'm done messing around with it, I just plug in my XP drive and everythings back to normal.

[Eck]

I also found out the hard way on my initial Vista install that PM8 mucked things up. But I still found a way to use it effectively that won't give Vista command of my other partitions.

I used the PM8 boot floppy to set up 3 primary partitions for 98SE, XP, and Vista. FAT32 was for 98SE, NTFS for the other 2. The nice thing about PM is it will hide non-active primary partitions by default. XP and Vista Disk Management program will see these as non-active unknown boot loader partitions. But it means that no OS will muck up things on another partition. It keeps it all seperate.

I install PM8 to both the 98SE and XP partitions, but do not install BootMagic as it won't boot to the Vista partition. I use PQBoot for Windows to boot to either the 98SE, XP, or Vista partitions. On the Vista partition I copied the contents of the Windows folder of the PQBoot folder on the PM8 cd to a PQBOOT folder on my Vista drive. I then created a shortcut to it for the StartMenu for easy access.

When running PQBoot, I run it as an administrator. Vista pops up a message saying it's not compatible, but it's okay as long as I don't install PM8 itself. It opens a command prompt with the same choices as PQBoot for Windows. I just need to type in 1, 2, or 3 instead of mouse clicking.

Nice. It changes the active partition, makes the the other primary's hidden, and reboots the computer into the partition I selected.

I lose the ability for SystemRestore in Vista to successfully restore the system. But if you did things the other way, XP would simply delete any Vista Restore Points every time it booted up anyway. So, from what I can see so far, Vista's System Restore just doesn't work on a system with XP's System Restore active.

I also noticed that when on, System Restore in Vista now also saves changed file versions and includes this in right click menus of files. This was a nice idea that Roxio's GoBack had. It gave an early death to one of my hard drives due to its endless thrashing whenever files were changed or moved. Chugga, chugga, chugga slowing the system down too. I stopped using GoBack because of that stuff. Try to edit Video with that thing on!

But I've read this will only be a "feature" on Vista Ultimate editions. I've turned off System Restore on Vista for now, since on my multi-boot with XP included it wouldn't restore anything anyway. Goodbye Chugga Chugga.

I hope they solve this XP SystemRestore deleting Vista restore points issue. It's a great feature, and quite unobtrusive without that file versions feature.

Edited July 10, 2006 by Eck

[Grope For Luna]

But if you did things the other way, XP would simply delete any Vista Restore Points every time it booted up anyway. So, from what I can see so far, Vista's System Restore just doesn't work on a system with XP's System Restore active.

Turn off XP restore on the Vista partition. I only use system restore on my system partition.

[Eck]

That would work with a single system partition, but I have 3. When one is active the other 2 get hidden by PQBOOT. The operating system on the active partition only sees an unknown OS boot loader on the other partitions. It doesn't see any file systems there. Using System Restore on one partition doesn't have any effect on the other 2, and it can't even monitor the other 2. There's only a C Drive as far as it knows.

So I've got scanreg keeping backups in 98SE, System Restore in XP, but nothing for Vista except Last Known Good Configuration as its System Restore can't restore in this type of configuration.