Dual Boot & Vistboot Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Much has been discussed in this ng about using Vistaboot
Pro to hide Vista from Xp in a dual boot scenario.

However, for the not so well educated PC users, no-one
has actually written, word for word, how to do it.

I understand that it has to be done from the Xp side
of it, hiding Vista from Xp to preserve the Vista restore
points, but is there anything in writing on how to do this ?

Just thought it would be good advise from those that know
how to do it, to those that don't know !

Not long now to go and most people will install their Vista, so I
wish all a successful migration.

regards to all
 
LoneWolf, While i haven't used VistaBoot Pro for hiding the vista partition
from XP I have used tweakUI (from Xp) and, quite frankly, it has never
worked. I've worked with Vista and had around 6 days worth of restore points
mounted up, then i've booted to XP. When i then boot back to Vista all the 6
restore points have diappeared. I can only imagine that VistaBoot pro hides
the partitons in the same way as tweakUI or even the windows registry.

The only option i had to solve the problem was to use the bitlocker
encryption, but then bitlocker is only available on the Ultimate and
Enterprise editions.

--
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..
 
John:
I'm using BitLocker, at this time there is one other alternative.
Which is using a third party boot manager to hide the operating systems.
Have a great day.
 
John

I personally use Enterprise & that, as you said has
bitlocker.
I only thought that those who have the knowledge,
pass it onto users that aren't in the know.
I believe Colin Barnhorst is quite well versed in the
VistaBoot Pro arena; perhaps he may pass on his
expertise for others to read and print for reference.

Thanks for your input though, and you Dennis as well.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
 
LoneWolf said:
Much has been discussed in this ng about using Vistaboot
Pro to hide Vista from Xp in a dual boot scenario.
Click to expand...


From XP...
you could probably just use disk management and *unassign* the drive letter
of the Vista partition
 
Vistaboot Pro doesn't have this ability. It is a way to easily edit the
Vista boot manager. You need to use a different boot manager that can hide a
partition or drive or use bitlocker. With some BIOS' this can be done in the
BIOS but Windows may still find and use drives that have been disabled in
the BIOS. It depends on the BIOS.
 
Unassigning drive letters does NOT work, nor does not having XP's
System Restore not monitoring the Vista drives.
You need Bitlocker or a third party boot manager like Boot It NG,
System Commander, etc.
VistaBoot Pro does NOT (as yet) have this capability.


|
| | > Much has been discussed in this ng about using Vistaboot
| > Pro to hide Vista from Xp in a dual boot scenario.
| >
|
|
| From XP...
| you could probably just use disk management and *unassign* the drive letter
| of the Vista partition
|
|
 
I agree LoneWolf. I haven't written about it because the options i had,
other than bitlocker, didn't work to my satisfaction and, as i've said,
bitlocker isn't available to every Vista user. I'll have to have a closer
look at my copy of VistaBootPro to see if that does the trick.

--
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..
 
Has anyone tried Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 "OS Selector" as a
3rd party dual boot program?



Unassigning drive letters does NOT work, nor does not having XP's
System Restore not monitoring the Vista drives.
You need Bitlocker or a third party boot manager like Boot It NG,
System Commander, etc.
VistaBoot Pro does NOT (as yet) have this capability.


|
| | > Much has been discussed in this ng about using Vistaboot
| > Pro to hide Vista from Xp in a dual boot scenario.
| >
|
|
| From XP...
| you could probably just use disk management and *unassign* the drive
letter
| of the Vista partition
|
|
 
dirty old man said:
Unassigning drive letters does NOT work, nor does not having XP's
System Restore not monitoring the Vista drives.
You need Bitlocker or a third party boot manager like Boot It NG,
System Commander, etc.
VistaBoot Pro does NOT (as yet) have this capability.
Click to expand...


I certainly believe you but I'm just curious as to why
one could not ...from XP...unassign a drive letter of a logical drive that
has Vista on it.

My assumption was that XP would have been first installed on an active
primary partition
 
I've worked with Vista and had around 6 days worth of restore points
mounted up, then I've booted to XP. When I then boot back to Vista all the 6
restore points have disappeared.

John:

But did you need those restore points?
IMO, sometimes the focus on losing Vista restore points due to dual booting
into XP is misguided in that the value of a restore point should be
considered as time limited due to the nature of a restore point. A restore
point is not a replacement for a full backup.

I realize that the dual boot issue involves more than restore points, but
http://support.teloep.org/vistaver.htm suggests that the two Vista Home
products do not have "Shadow Copy", so there may be less dual boot issues
with them. And how many end users will be using a Home version?

In my Vista-XP dual boot setup, I do not boot into XP if I am having
problems, and I would be very hesitant to use an old restore point period.
As my main install of Vista has been quite stable, I generally do not even
think of restore points, and I rarely boot into XP.
 
Much has been discussed in this ng about using Vistaboot
Pro to hide Vista from Xp in a dual boot scenario.

However, for the not so well educated PC users, no-one
has actually written, word for word, how to do it.

I understand that it has to be done from the Xp side
of it, hiding Vista from Xp to preserve the Vista restore
points, but is there anything in writing on how to do this ?

Just thought it would be good advise from those that know
how to do it, to those that don't know !

Not long now to go and most people will install their Vista, so I
wish all a successful migration.
Click to expand...

You can't do this with VistaBootPro. Colin has mentioned talking to ProNet
about having them incorporate that ability in VistaBootPro, but for now it
doesn't have that capability.
 
LoneWolf, While i haven't used VistaBoot Pro for hiding the vista
partition from XP I have used tweakUI (from Xp) and, quite frankly, it has
never worked. I've worked with Vista and had around 6 days worth of
restore points mounted up, then i've booted to XP. When i then boot back
to Vista all the 6 restore points have diappeared. I can only imagine that
VistaBoot pro hides the partitons in the same way as tweakUI or even the
windows registry.

The only option i had to solve the problem was to use the bitlocker
encryption, but then bitlocker is only available on the Ultimate and
Enterprise editions.
Click to expand...

John, VistaBoot Pro doesn't have this ability yet. Colin has mentioned
asking ProNet to add this but it doesn't have the capability at this time.
Using TweakUI didn't work for me either.
 
Thanks to everyone that replied.

We at least did learn a couple of things.
VistaBoot Pro doesn't have this ability YET,
and there are others that do.
We are on the right path for users that do
Dual Boot, by suggesting an alternative; was it
Boot It NG & System Commander for examples.

I'm sure in good time, some-one will
come forward with the 'ultimate' solution.

regards to all
& Happy Vista-ing

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
 
Thanks to everyone that replied.

We at least did learn a couple of things.
VistaBoot Pro doesn't have this ability YET,
and there are others that do.
We are on the right path for users that do
Dual Boot, by suggesting an alternative; was it
Boot It NG & System Commander for examples.

I'm sure in good time, some-one will
come forward with the 'ultimate' solution.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by "Ultimate" solution. There are simply
solutions to the issue. One is to use bitlocker, another is to hide the
Vista partition from XP using a partition manager. If VistaBoot Pro comes
out with the ability to hide the Vista partition that will be another
solution. Either way you have to choose one, but I don't see where any
particular solution would be the "Ultimate" one. Maybe this would be if the
XP code were rewritten so it doesn't delete the Vista restore points and
shadow copies, but MS has said they will not do this. The change is quite
extensive.
 
Rock

You are right ! 'Ultimate' was the incorrect word to use.
In fact I now believe that I should not have included that
sentence 'at all'.

As you aptly pointed out, we do have solutions now.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
 
Yes, there has been a report or two that it did not provide the desired
protection from XP's volsnap.sys.
 
No, an "ultimate solution" IS the right term. There are two ultimate
solutions.

One ultimate solution is for MS to change their minds and do the extensive
rewrite to XP that would resolve all of this. Unfortunately, that is not
going to happen. The problem is that the size of the Windows user base that
dual boots is only a tiny fraction of one percent. It just isn't
economically feasible.

The other is not to dual boot XP and Vista.

My own solutions are to run XP in a virtual machine on my Vista x64 desktop
using VPC 2007 and keep an XP only machine around for occasional use.
 
No, an "ultimate solution" IS the right term. There are two ultimate
solutions.

One ultimate solution is for MS to change their minds and do the extensive
rewrite to XP that would resolve all of this. Unfortunately, that is not
going to happen. The problem is that the size of the Windows user base
that dual boots is only a tiny fraction of one percent. It just isn't
economically feasible.

The other is not to dual boot XP and Vista.

My own solutions are to run XP in a virtual machine on my Vista x64
desktop using VPC 2007 and keep an XP only machine around for occasional
use.
Click to expand...

I said in my reply to Lonewolf that if something could be called an
"Ultimate" solution it would be the rewrite of XP. Didn't you see that?

I disagree that your second mention is a solution at all. It's a way not to
deal with the issue, but it's not a solution.
 
No, an "ultimate solution" IS the right term. There are two ultimate
solutions.

One ultimate solution is for MS to change their minds and do the extensive
rewrite to XP that would resolve all of this. Unfortunately, that is not
going to happen. The problem is that the size of the Windows user base that
dual boots is only a tiny fraction of one percent. It just isn't
economically feasible.

The other is not to dual boot XP and Vista.

My own solutions are to run XP in a virtual machine on my Vista x64 desktop
using VPC 2007 and keep an XP only machine around for occasional use.
Click to expand...

Better yet disable System Restore on both OSes and learn to do your own
backups just like a grownup!
 
Back
Top