Need system restore program for Vista

[mike12]

I have Vista on one hard drive and XP Pro on another hard drive. When I open up XP, somehow it removes any system restore points I have made in Vista. This is a bug that I read about on a Microsoft site. There are two workarounds listed, but neither sound easy. I also see that you can not set up the maximum space for the restore program to use like you could in XP. So, I am looking for suggestions for a program that would ACT something like the old System Restore program, free if possible, but if not, what are your suggestions for a simple program without too many bells and whistles. Thanks, Mike

[not important]

You can reduce the size of System restore in Vista (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/)

[mike12]

not important -- Thanks for that info. I printed the link for later use. Hopefully SP1 will address the issue of loosing restore points when switching between XP and Vista.

[GaryRouth]

Hi Mike


Though not exactly like System Restore, a program like Acronis' True Image can create full disk-images and incremental backups - and the latest version now has the System-Restore-like "Try & Decide" features - at a reasonable cost --- http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Norton "Ghost" is similiar to True Image, and Norton's "GoBack" works fairly similiarly to System Restore. But I can't say I'd recommend any Norton software - other than their firewall.

You can fix the System Restore bug without too much fuss using EasyBCD and NeoGrub (now included in a tab in the recent versions of EasyBCD). --- http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/hide-vista-partition-from-xp/

Like yourself, I'm rather hoping SP1 fixes things -- but I don't think it's on the menu. There was an extensive post from a Microsoft team blogger that mentions how any fix would have to be (quite expensively) back-ported to XP's Shadow-Copy services subsystem ... and that there are several third-party programs dependent on the current setup of that subsystem = which could break in a re-write.

Best of luck!
. . . Gary

[& Hi to PC Mechanic techs... my two-year term as PTA Treasurer ends in a few months, so maybe I'll actually have a few minutes to visit more often by then!]

[mike12]

GaryRouth--- Thanks for the info. will give it a try !!

[mike12]

Found a solution to stop XP deleting the restore points in Vista--Start XP, and go to Device Manager. Then click on the drives, and disable the drive that Vista is on. I have booted back and forth several times now between XP and Vista, and the restore points in Vista remain.
Now, I have XP on one hard drive and Vista on another hard drive. I do not know it the above procedure would work if you had both OS on the same partitioned hard drive. :)