I Hate To Be The Bearer Of Good News

Ex_Brit

Ex_Brit

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I hate to burst anyone's balloon, but there's been a fix for the "XP Eats Its Young" syndrome, i.e. XP destroying Vista's restore points, for quite a while, late January in fact, according to the Microsoft link below.
This negates the need for additional software or the use of Bitlocker (available in Vista Ultimate only), which I use.
This is a quote courtesy of "Markcynt" at Forums.PcPitstop.Com....
I've been using this fix for months. This assumes that XP sees Vista as drive D (just alter accordingly).
To keep Windows XP from deleting restore points of the volume in Windows Vista, add the following registry entry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices\Offline registry subkey in Windows XP:
Value name: \DosDevices\D:
Type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1
Note If the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices\Offline registry subkey does not exist, you must manually create this registry subkey. Create this registry entry when you have installed Windows Vista on the "D" partition in Windows XP.

Effects of this workaround

After you restart Windows XP, you cannot access the volume that is created in Windows Vista from Windows XP. However, you can still access the volume that is created in Windows XP from Windows Vista. You must use Windows XP drive or an additional drive such as a USB thumb drive for data exchange.

Taken From Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185/en-us
Mark
Click to expand...

I just noticed this today and wondered why it hasn't been more widely publicised.
 
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Sorry Peter,
Tried that last year - It's been around for ages, but doesn't always work.
I've still got the hacked keys in my registry, but they didn't help on my system.
It seems to be specific to some hardware configurations only (OSs on different physical drives perhaps)
 
I was about to turn off Bitlocker and try it. My XPs are all on drive 0 and my Vistas on drive 1, what do you think, worth the trouble?

Bitlocker, if I had a TPM equipped m/board would be ideal, but as it stands now, I have to manually input the 48 digit key myself each time I boot into Vista as my rig wont even read a USB key at boot.

This Mark person's post is on it's own, with no further comments since late April so not sure if anyone else there has found out what you did or not.

All this just to preserve Vista's restore points...LOL
 
I've seen it in a forum somewhere, with loads of people saying "thanks", but from what I remember the MS site is hedged about with ifs and buts, and along with the other suggestions (turn off XP sys rest service, turn off sys rest on Vista drives, etc) when I tried them, the Vista points still kept being reset.
By all means try it, but be prepared for your Vista points to be "disappeared". If you've any significant recent updates for which previous restore points still exist, I'd wait till you're pretty sure the system is stable and the only restore points you'll possibly lose are just daily checkpoints, which you can replace with a manual point after booting Vista.
 
I think I'll leave well alone for now. The registry in XP has confused me for a start. I have both "mounteddevice1" and "mounteddevices"....I have this I'll screw up if I try it.
 
Perhaps changing the location on the drive where Vista stores its restore points/shadow copies should be implemented in Vista... it is the least MS can do if they refuse to modify XP's code to fix the issue. Or give the user the option as to wether or not to change the default location to a more convient one.

Ex_Brit said:
Effects of this workaround

After you restart Windows XP, you cannot access the volume that is created in Windows Vista from Windows XP. However, you can still access the volume that is created in Windows XP from Windows Vista. You must use Windows XP drive or an additional drive such as a USB thumb drive for data exchange.
Click to expand...

That's what creating seperate data partitions are for.

I haven't had a need to use the Vista restore points on my laptop, so I think i'll give the hack a try. Worst case secnario I just remove the entry to set everything as it was.
 
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If only they'd said "Different format - let's use a different name", there'd never have been a problem.
If you try the hack Justin, it'll either work for you or not. You don't need to remove it afterwards. Mine's still there. It didn't solve the problem for me, but it didn't cause any problems, having it there doing nothing either.
Anyway HnS is working a treat now except for the one user with XP on a logical disk.
Bitlocker's not an option for us mere "Home" users Peter.
 
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I would use BitLocker myself as I have Vista Ultimate going and like the idea of an encrypted system drive, but I lack a TPM on my motherboard and I am missing the option in Group Policy to set it up without one :frowning:
 
I don't have a TPM and my system (Intel D865GBF) wont boot from a USB Flash drive either so when setting up Bitlocker, just uncheck the choice at the very last where it tells you to run Bitlocker System Check and the Encrypt button will magically activate.
Then it will encrypt the volume. Make sure you've printed out the password and backed it up in a few places just in case.

I was querying this ages ago and then discovered that there's no way like trying it yourself to see if it works and it did!!

http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1468&highlight=bitlocker

Once the encryption is done, which takes ages, and you reboot, you will then reach a screen at where it tells you to Enter a bitlocker key or click Esc to reboot. Click Enter and you can manually enter the key. It may seem a laborious way of doing things, but I've been using it throughout these guys testing Vista Hide 'n' Seek.

Plus it definitely works, whereas this patch I posted may not.
 
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Don't remember off the top of my head, but I've tried to setup BitLocker in the past. According to MS articles on the installation proccess for BitLocker, there was some option you had to change in the computer's security policies before running the setup for BitLocker if you didn't have a TPM or wanted to use an external device for the purpose. It was not finding that setting that turned me away from BitLocker when I produced nothing more from setup but errors. I've re-installed Vista on the system, so the option might be available now.

Having to enter a 48-digit password manually is not worth it. I can however boot from a USB drive, so I'll see if it works. As far as I can recall, you can choose to set it up where you only manually enter a password without the need to store to a external device.

How would dual-booting work with the encrypted drive though. Is Vista's BCD store and bootmgr relocated to the unencrypted volume or is it ran after BitLocker decrypt's the system drive?
 
Well a clean installation apparently is the best solution. I now have access to the BitLocker polices...

Good for my desktop I suppose, but I'll try the XP hack anyway as I do have Vista Ultimate, but am not running it on my laptop.
 
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The hack worked. Amazing what one little key in the registry can do!! :smile:

Perhaps it didn't work for some because they restarted immediately into Vista?? My advice: Add the key, restart into XP, restart into Vista, create a restore point, restart back into XP, and then go back to Vista to truly see if it is working.
 
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