Restore Points gone!

[bertie11]

Having installed 7 Home Premium I have been adding programs and configuring them accordingly. I noticed that about 7 or 8 restore points had been created when I installed new video and sound drivers, amongst other events such as removing other programs.

I was about to create an Acronis True Image image and I decided to check the restore points, but the system told me that there were no restore points and none had been created. I had my Win 7 partition set at 5% (5.3gb) and I know there were a load of restore points there. I also had restore point problems with the Evaluation version of Win 7.
I am dual-booting with XP Pro
That is just daft! Where the heck have they gone and why.
I hope someone can throw some light on this as we are constantly being advised to create restore points and when we (I) do, they disappear!
Thanks

 

[torrentg]

Dual booting with XP caused it.
No restore points are available when you use Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008-based operating systems in a dual-boot configuration together with an earlier Windows operating system

and

System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete - Vista Forums

 

[bertie11]

Dual booting with XP caused it.
No restore points are available when you use Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008-based operating systems in a dual-boot configuration together with an earlier Windows operating system

Well thank you for the link. I am amazed that this can happen, isn't it a major flaw in new Win 7? Shouldn't there be protection enabled as default so that this can't happen and if anyone wants it to it can be disabled again?


I'm looking to get as many programs off XP Pro and then ditch it for good, but that is all extra work!
Are Microsoft likely to be doing anything about this, maybe in an update?

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[torrentg]

No update. It is all by design and intended, by Microsoft.

Otherwise, System Restore would not work at all for either OS.

You're welcome.

 

[Tews]

Why would you even think about using restore points from XP on Windows 7??? It doesnt make any sence to me....

 

[bertie11]

No update. It is all by design and intended, by Microsoft.

Otherwise, System Restore would not work at all for either OS.

You're welcome.

This from the link you gave me earlier:

WARNING This needs to be done in XP, not Vista. This download assumes that Vista is installed on the D: drive as the second OS. If this is not true for you, or you need to add another drive to be hidden from XP, then do OPTION TWO below to do this manually with the drive letter that your Vista is installed on instead. unquote

My current setup is that when I boot into Win 7 that is C:\ and XP Pro is then D:\ (the reverse to the above scenario), so I am not sure how to proceed with my setup, should I decide to keep XP.

I still don't understand why it is intended by Microsoft as what I am finding seems to say that it is a problem. I reckon it will cause a lot of wailing and gnashing ot teeth!
But thanks.

 

[logicearth]

I still don't understand why it is intended by Microsoft as what I am finding seems to say that it is a problem. I reckon it will cause a lot of wailing and gnashing ot teeth!
But thanks.

It is not intended but there is nothing Microsoft can do. Windows XP does not understand the new version of NTFS and the new format Shadow Copies are stored on Windows Vista or Windows 7, so it deletes them. The flaw is in Windows XP, not Vista or 7.

This problem occurs because the volume snapshot driver that is included with Windows Vista and with Windows Server 2008 uses disk structures that are incompatible with earlier versions of Windows. Therefore, the earlier operating system deletes Windows Vista shadow copies or Windows Server 2008 shadow copies together with the associated restore points. This behavior occurs because the earlier Windows operating systems do not recognize the new disk structures.

 

[bertie11]

OK but would it not have been possible to apply the 'fix' so that when Win 7 is installed access to XP would be prevented, rather than the other way round?

Then anyone who wanted to access XP from Win 7 would have to apply the mod. Its just that I wasted time not understanding what was happening and then finding I need to do something drastic to sort it out! Which I still need to do.

I had been dual booting XP Pro and the Evaluation version of 7 since last May and I don't recall having this trouble before, so maybe it was changed in the final release?

 

[bertie11]

Why would you even think about using restore points from XP on Windows 7??? It doesnt make any sence to me....

But I was not trying to use XP restore points. I wanted to use restore points created in Win 7. When I opened System Restore they had all disappeared. Nothing to do with trying to restore Win 7 with an XP point!

Now I know why it is happening I think where I lost them was when I downloaded an nVidia video driver for Win 7 and got an email from them telling me there was an XP version as well.

OK I thought, while I'm at it I will download the XP one and when I did I accessed my download folder in my XP partition and pasted the file in there.

What was wrong with that I thought? Now I know, it kills ALL Restore points.
If that is what happened to cause it.

 

[torrentg]

I had been dual booting XP Pro and the Evaluation version of 7 since last May and I don't recall having this trouble before, so maybe it was changed in the final release?

No, since XP is still XP and always will be XP - going by what Logic posted.

 

[bertie11]

I had been dual booting XP Pro and the Evaluation version of 7 since last May and I don't recall having this trouble before, so maybe it was changed in the final release?

No, since XP is still XP and always will be XP - going by what Logic posted.

As an ordinary user I had hoped that Microsoft, assuming they were aware of this, just might have minimised the impact on 'ordinary users'!

Ah well, silly me. I guess I will carry on getting rid of XP, it will simplify things no end.
Thanks guys.

 

[logicearth]

"Ordinary users" don't dual boot.

 

[bertie11]

May be I'm too modest!

 

[fermat]

Hi Bertie11,
I had the same problem as you, and followed the link to ms kbid 926185 posted by torrentg at 12:38 yesterday.

The registry hack worked fine for me. I tested it with .....
created a restore point in win7
booted xp
booted win7. restore point still there. created another.
booted xp
booted win7 both restore points still there

After you do the registry hack in xp, you can check it by
reboot into xp
start > my computer
double click on the icon for your win7 partition.
if you get an empty window, your hack was good
if you can see files on that partition, your hack was bad

 

[bertie11]

Hi Fermat. Glad you got your system sorted. I knew others would come up against this!

quote WARNING This needs to be done in XP, not Vista. This download assumes that Vista is installed on the D: drive as the second OS. If this is not true for you, or you need to add another drive to be hidden from XP, then do OPTION TWO below to do this manually with the drive letter that your Vista is installed on instead. unquote

In my case, I wrote this earlier in the thread:
My current setup is that when I boot into Win 7 that is C:\ and XP Pro is then D:\ (the reverse to the above scenario), so I am not sure how to proceed with my setup, should I decide to keep XP.

So I am very unsure what _I_ need to do. Is the above saying that when I boot into XP that will be C:\ with my Win 7 D:\? If so, that presumably is normal and the fix should work. I haven't got used to the drive letters changing to whatever O/S is booting up.
I suppose a True Inage before I do anything would be good.
Thanks Fermat.

 

[fermat]

Hi Bertie11,
That stuff about drive letters changing confused me. I don't see it on my machine.

I have xp on C:, and installed win7 on H: (I was already using D & E partitions; F,G are CD/DVD)

Running xp shows C: as the sys drive. Running win7 shows H: as the sys drive, C is shown as just another disk.

So in xp I did the ms registry hack but replaced D: in their instructions with H:

It's xp that's trashing win7 restore points, so it's only the xp registry that needs to be changed.

And it's always a good idea to take a restore point (in xp ) before registry updates.

does that help?

regards

 

[bertie11]

Hi Fermat. I had been running XP Pro on C:\ and about 6 monthas ago I created a new partition H:\ and installed the 7 Evaluation version. So at that point we are the same I think.
The other day I formatted H:\ to get rid of the eval version and did a clean instal of the purchased 7 Home Premium. It was then that I noticed that booting into 7 showed 7 on C:\ and D:\ became XP. H:\ is now my DVD drive. I don't know why it went onto C:\ and not H:\ Are you using the evaluation Win 7?

Rereading the blurb about this fix, I think as I have C:\ Win 7 booting into 7 and D:\as XP and booting into into XP shows C:\XP and D:\Win7 as I now read it, the fix should be OK as it is without any other changes.

Am I getting there?

Thanks.

 

[fermat]

Hi again Bertie11,
No, I'm running the release version of 7. Did a clean install onto my clean H partition.

Anyway, from what you describe, you can use the ms registry hack exactly as it is. Think about it in this way.

XP 'knows' that it is running off the C disk, and there is another disk called D. It has found something on D that looks like a windows restore file and deletes it.

After the hack in xp and reboot into xp, the only thing thing that has changed is that xp still knows that the D disk is there but because it is flagged as offline in the xp registry, xp can't 'see' into it.

Anything you do in the xp registry doesn't affect your 7 system.

To be on the safe side (especially if you don't often go into the registry), take a restore point in XP before the hack. Then it's only a couple of minutes to undo it if something goes wrong. It shouldn't, because you will only be adding a sub-key. But I always take a restore point, just in case.

OK?

 

[fermat]

Hi again Bertie11,
I've just found this on 7forums' sister forum for vista.

System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete - Vista Forums

It describes exactly what to do, with screenshots. (or a downloadable hack)
regards

 

[bertie11]

Hi again Bertie11,
I've just found this on 7forums' sister forum for vista.

System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete - Vista Forums

It describes exactly what to do, with screenshots. (or a downloadable hack)
regards

Hello again fermat, yes, I have that page but this is the bit that still puzzles me
"This needs to be done in XP, not Vista. This download assumes that Vista is installed on the D: drive as the second OS. If this is not true for you, or you need to add another drive to be hidden from XP, then do OPTION TWO below to do this manually with the drive letter that your Vista is installed on instead".
In my last post I said I had C:\XP and D:\Win 7 booting to XP. In fact, Win 7 is H:\ so I need to do what you did, but I'm not sure how you changed H:\ to D:\. Did you do that in Disk Management or what? Unless clicking on the hack produces a screen where I can make a choice?
I thought it would just stick a patch into the registry with no involvement from me. Just want to clarify before i do the deed!