srr2
join:2001-12-20
Bethlehem, PA
 ·RCN CABLE
| Q -- Dual booting XP and Vista
This is more annoyance and curiosity than anything else. I have XPPro on partition 1 and Vista on partition 2. When booting to XP, the Vista partition can be left unmounted and essentially invisible to XP. When booting to Vista, the XP partition gets a drive letter (D, which I'd prefer to use for something else) that Vista will not let me remove. I can't think of any reason why it would do this except for its access to the boot manager that Vista installed in XP's root directory. Anyone know if this is true, and if so, is there a way around it so that partition could be unmounted? If that's not possible, I'd be satisfied giving it a drive letter at the end of the alphabet.
Any suggestions appreciated. |
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bcastner
Premium,VIP,MVM
join:2002-09-25
Chevy Chase, MD
clubs: 
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| Not natively.
Members of the NT family boot from the SYSTEM partition, and run from the BOOT partition. You cannot use Disk Management to modify the drive letter assignments of either.
You can use third-party Boot Managers to effectively hide the partitions from each OS instance. However, if you wish access to the XP partition inside of Vista, this is obviously not desirable.
So,you are stuck.
Please be sure that the XP instance is not deleting the Vista Restore points. It sounds like you have this covered in your description, but I note the issue and the workaround: »support.microsoft.com/kb/926185
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Users Helping Users
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srr2
join:2001-12-20
Bethlehem, PA | Thanks! That's about what I expected, but it never hurts to ask. Thanks for the pointer to the KB article too. Guess I'll put up with unwanted drive letter. |
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kfsutops
Premium
join:2002-08-19
Brandon, FL
clubs:
| reply to srr2
I just went through this same thing this week. I was pissed. I was trying to delete my xp stuff and go with vista only. Vista wouldn't let me.
It's kind of stupid, but I guess there is a point. I just ended up reinstalling vista and starting from scratch. Properly not the best (or easiest) way.
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"There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots" |
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