Dualboot Vista and XP causes NTFS-problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter expertx
  • Start date Start date
E

expertx

Hi,

i did set up a dualboot on my laptop, with XP and Vista in two
seperate partitions, and two additional logical partitions (D +E) for
data (like i did it many times before with XP and W2k). The two data
partitions are accessable from both systems.
So far it works fine.

But when i e.g. create some new files in WinXP on D: or E:, then
shutdown and boot vista, vista says the filesystem must be checked and
does checkdisk on D: and E:. It always find some problems and repairs
it. If vista was hybernated its even possible the files i just created
don't show up under vista, after a checkdisk they do. Same happens the
other way around: when i change something under vista, xp starts
chkdisk.
In both cases chkdsk finds invalid index entries or changes the
security descriptions.

I already tried to reformat the drives, in vista as well as in XP, but
that doesent change anything. I did some extended offline tests on the
HDD (a new one, btw) with offline-tools, they completed without any
error. So i dont think its a hardware problem.

Any ideas how to solve this?

Thanks alot + best regards from Berlin,
robert
 
Hi,

Were D: and E: created with Vista's disk manager?

There are some subtle changes with Vista and NTFS, and I suspect that you
created the partitions with Vista, and XP is corrupting them when it writes
to them. Vista's disk read ability is backwards compatible (whereas XP
couldn't possibly be forwards compatible), so deleting the partitions, then
creating and formatting them from XP's disk manager may solve the problem.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Rick said:
Hi,

Were D: and E: created with Vista's disk manager?

There are some subtle changes with Vista and NTFS, and I suspect that
you created the partitions with Vista, and XP is corrupting them when it
writes to them. Vista's disk read ability is backwards compatible
(whereas XP couldn't possibly be forwards compatible), so deleting the
partitions, then creating and formatting them from XP's disk manager may
solve the problem.
Click to expand...

No, i tried it both ways already. At first the system was just xp, so the
partitions were created from xp. Then i installed vista in a new primary partition.
After the problems raised i deleted and recreated the two logical partitions with vista.

Apart from that, if like you said vista is backwards compatible and not the other way around
(which makes sense to me), should it not the only way to create (backwards compatible)
partitions with vista and not (like you suggested) create them with xp?

thanks, rob
 
The below was Posted 1/28/07 - by "jimmuh" possibly the information learned
from experiences might guide your decision making process regarding dual
booting. The paragraphs are a bit lengthy but well worthy of a good read.


As I said, I am sorry to throw cold water, but I think dual booting Vista
with WinXP is a real PIA. If you have a definite reason for needing both
operating systems, and you need both of them to boot from the same system,
then dual booting MIGHT be worth the hassle. I would imagine that most people
would be dual booting Vista with WinXP so that they could continue to use
WinXP as their main OS while
examining Vista to see how it behaves. But if you're not careful about
protecting the Vista partiton from WinXP's overzealous System Restore
behavior, then you won't be seeing Vista in its normal state. You'll be
seeing a crippled Vista without its Previous Version features, and so on.

That's why I suggested separate systems. (I meant totally separate
computers, not separate hard drives, which would do nothing at all to protect
Vista from WinXP.) Another possibility would be using either Vista or WinXP
as the host operating system, installing a virtual machine environment
(VMWare, VPC, etc.) and installing the other OS on a virtual machine. I'm
thinking that, with these operating systems, 1 gigabyte is a little slim on
memory. I do some VPC and Virtual Server stuff with a fast notebook with two
60 gigabyte hard drives and 2 gigs of memory, and I wouldn't want to be using
anything slower. If you try this put the test OS on the virtual machine. It's
going to be the slow one. Also be prepared for a bit of a learning curve with
respect to dealing with virtual machines, if you haven't done that before. If
you're just looking at a test OS in isolation, then there's not much to do
besides install it and use it on the VM. If you're trying to do anything like
networking, then there can be a little more to it.

There are a lot of sites out there with information on dual booting. Unless
you're looking at a site that has been updated intelligently to cover the
hassles between WinXP and Vista then you're getting just enough information
to get you into trouble. As I said, Vista is pretty well-behaved with respect
to being nice to other operating systems when it gets installed. But WinXP
does the nasty to Vista's restore points and shadow copy data. I found this
out the hard way in the early days. And there still seem to be quite a few
folks who are unaware of this. For better or for worse, the System Restore
functionality in Vista has been extended to include the ability to keep
previous versions of data files available for a while -- kind of like an
extended Recycle Bin. It's an important feature of Vista and should be seen
working properly rather than crippled when you're testing the OS.

Lots of subtle and not-so-subtle differences in the OS that require, I
think, an adjustment in thinking if one is to make the best -- and safest --
use of them.
 
Hi Robert,

The problem is that if you create and format them with Vista, XP is out of
whack. Create and format with XP, and Vista can use them without issue. I
would be curious as to the physical arrangement of these drives as well. Is
it a mix of IDE/SATA drives? There are some issues there as well.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
<<The problem is that if you create and format them with Vista, XP is out of
whack. Create and format with XP, and Vista can use them without issue

My XP partition was created wtih XP. My Vista partition was created with
Vista.

You think that might have been the problem with me?
 
In the case where you have two "jealous" operating systems sharing the same
hardware, and where they are aware each of the other's file systems and
actively perform monitoring of the contents of said systems, it is EXTREMELY
ill-advised to hibernate one OS and boot into the other. Always do a clean
reboot between
operating system changes. That said, I don't think you can have too much
isolation between XP and Vista. My best advice is to learn how to make them
unaware of each other, or to keep them on separate computers.

Each of those operating systems is trying to keep system restore points on
that hard drive. In Vista's case those system restore points include a LOT
more of the file system contents (like data files) than it does in XP's case.
Every time you boot XP it looks around and finds files that Vista wrote that
XP thinks are corrupted restore points, whereupon it promptly deletes them.
This is not a recipe for success. With respect to using hibernate, the mind
just boggles.
 
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