What does the first item on the Backup section of the Releasenote

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The first item under the Backup section of the release notes has this:

"If you boot a Windows Vista computer into a different operating system
(including Windows XP) while a disk containing backups is connected, the
backups will be lost. To avoid this, ensure that no backup disks are
connected before you boot into a different operating system."

Can someone please clarify. I would like to try to install Vista on my
computer but would like to be able to access XP also. I have a few drives and
I am just worried that it will erase them. Thanks.
 
rich said:
The first item under the Backup section of the release notes has this:

"If you boot a Windows Vista computer into a different operating system
(including Windows XP) while a disk containing backups is connected, the
backups will be lost. To avoid this, ensure that no backup disks are
connected before you boot into a different operating system."

Can someone please clarify. I would like to try to install Vista on my
computer but would like to be able to access XP also. I have a few drives and
I am just worried that it will erase them. Thanks.
Click to expand...

That does seem a bit alarming.. it basically says that if you dual boot
vista then when you boot back it wipes any hard drives that it sees.

Either the wording is particularly poor or this should have been in red
letters in a 30 point font on the download screen.

Since the forum hasn't been flooded with people who've had their systems
nuked by vista, I'm guessing it's the former, although what the hell MS
are trying to say here I've no idea.

Tony
 
Volume Shadowcopy Services in XP and Vista are not compatible. If you boot
a Vista computer into XP the XP VSS driver, volsnap.sys will incorrectly
determine that System Restore points and backups made by the Vista
volsnap.sys driver are corrupted and delete them. Booting into Vista does
not harm XP restore points and backups made with the XP VSS driver because
Vista is aware of XP. Third party backup programs that do not rely on VSS
are not affected at all.

It is booting from Vista into XP that is the issue. Booting from XP into
Vista is not a problem. The solution for protecting Vista snapshots on a
multi-boot system is to hide the Vista volume from XP or to use BitLocker on
the Vista volume.
 
Thanks. That makes more sense. So, if I have the system restore off on Vista.
This does not make any difference or would not matter? So the backup it is
pointing to is the System Restore backups?
 
That "bitlocker tip" for SR that you and Mark V. first brought to my
attention is a good find, and very useful, and if as I suspect the MVPs have
a pretty direct hotline to MSFT through their groups or an email alias, and
they probably listen better to MVPs than others (no reason why they
shouldn't) you should ping Eduardo Laureano, PM for System Restore and get
them to include that in future release notes, KB articles, and "Vista Help"
as it gets built out. There ought to be a way to attach a quick link or
note into the System Restore interface as well.

CH
 
Will do.

Chad Harris said:
That "bitlocker tip" for SR that you and Mark V. first brought to my
attention is a good find, and very useful, and if as I suspect the MVPs
have a pretty direct hotline to MSFT through their groups or an email
alias, and they probably listen better to MVPs than others (no reason why
they shouldn't) you should ping Eduardo Laureano, PM for System Restore
and get them to include that in future release notes, KB articles, and
"Vista Help" as it gets built out. There ought to be a way to attach a
quick link or note into the System Restore interface as well.

CH
Click to expand...
 
What you need to understand is that System Restore does not take the
snapshots it uses for new restore points. It calls on volsnap.sys for that
service. That is why the issue is present regardless of whether or not XP
SR is monitoring a volume. If Vista created an SR point, XP will delete it.

Also, although SR can be selectively used volume by volume, VSS is system
wide and will affect any volume it can see. It is when you boot up that
volsnap.sys does its check and deletions.

Notice that VSS does not run in Safe Mode. So you can boot into XP Safe
Mode without affecting any Vista snapshots. That is also why you cannot set
a new SR in Safe Mode but you can restore to an existing SR point in Safe
Mode.

Except for Safe Mode, you cannot turn off XP VSS like you can XP SR.

The message you are seeing has nothing to do with traditional backup disks
that you make with ntbackup in XP or with a program like BackupMyPC. It is
specifically VSS assisted backups, like CompletePC Backup in Vista.

MS has decided not to fix the problem because it would require extensive
rewrites to XP to backport the Vista version of VSS.

I think it will always be the case that you will not want to multiboot XP
and Vista on a production machine without using a third party boot manager
that can hide the Vista volume(s) from XP.

But this should not be a very widespread issue since almost no computers in
enterprises are multiboot (IT departments don't like such arrangements) and
only power users multiboot consumer machines. In terms of numbers, it
really is a pretty isolated problem. It looks more widespread in this ng,
but the concentration of power users here is vastly greater than in the
general population where, for the most part, it simply won't come up.
 
I am not sure, is it possible to turn off system restore on Vista? If this is
not active, then there is nothing the volsnap.sys on XP will ever delete. Is
that correct? So if I don't care about system restore that warning will not
affect me at all.

Thanks guys. I am learning a lot here.
 
You still don't have it right.

System Restore monitors by volume. The default for Vista is monitoring on
the Vista System volume and off for all other volumes. You can enable and
disable for each volume.

However, as I stated earlier, this issue is not a System Restore issue.
System Restore points happen to be affected, but it is a far larger issue.
Volsnap.sys checks all snapshots related to VSS. SR is only one service.
CompletePC Backup is another service based on VSS. You may have noticed the
Previous Versions tab on the properties page for data files. That is
another VSS service.
 
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