System Restore on Boot Camp Windows XP

the settings won't allow me to switch off Restore for the Mac drive.

Can you walk us through what happens in a bit more detail, mike? (Include error messages if you're getting any.)

Thanks, mike!

Okay. Maybe we can try a slightly different approach to getting the System Restore turned off on the Mac drive.

*Warning in advance: this procedure will delete all existing System Restore points.*

Head back into System Restore (right-click "My Computer", select "Properties", click the "System Restore" tab). Check *Turn off System Restore on all drives,* and click OK. Restart XP.

After XP has been restarted, head back into the System Restore tab, and try *switching on* System Restore for the Windows drive.

Does that get System Restore enabled just on the Windows drive?

Why (and how) can HFS Extended (ie, "Mac") be a valid partition?

Just curious, are you running a third party app in Windows like Mediafour MacDrive 8 which allows access to various kinds of Mac-formatted drives? If you are it might explain how System Restore is able to "see" your Mac drive.

In Windows 7 my System Restore only sees the Boot Camp partition. I used to run MacDrive 8 but not any more.

This is 2nd thread of OP on same subject... I'm beginning to think that they have OEM DELL/HP version "Restore CD" that aren't for use on other systems; will wipe out existing partition tables.

To me, if you are running a Mac and want to backup and restore XP, then you pretty much need to use WinClone which runs from inside Mac OS and requires backup image to an HFS+ volume.

Or you created an XP backup and you did install XP successfully, but won't work on GPT/EFI partitions present.

Never used XP though, only Vista and 7. And Acronis, Paragon, and probably even Ghost don't work on Macs.

Drat. We could try a few more things with System Restore, but I'd be inclined to go with the hatter's suggestion here of using Winclone rather than System Restore, Mike. (I defer to him on all matters relating to WinClone.)

🙂 No problem. Fingers crossed that it will all work out fine for you.

Try Sun's VirtualBox before or while trying Fusion.

If you have an external drive with MBR and NTFS, you might want to look at native Windows - not sure about XP support tools on Mac though. Windows Easy Transfer does a great file backup, just not imaging.

You talked about using Windows XP System Restore originally. Remember that Winclone and System Restore are very very different applications.

Though System Restore has matured a lot in both Vista and Windows 7, the main purpose of System Restore in Windows XP is to surgically restore your computer to a previous state in about a minute + reboot time.

When turned on it will create a restore point whenever you install new drivers/software. You can also create a restore point manually.

If a driver installation goes bad for some reason the System Restore app allows you to pick a restore point to return to. This will undo registry entries etc. that may have made your system unstable. It is quick, fast and useful but it is not intended to replace creating an image backup of your partition--that is a very different animal.