System Restore not working at all.

Having Googled my problem seems I'm not alone but still I haven't found an answer to the problem.
My computer has two separate hard drives, one is running XP Pro (beautifully) whilst the other runs Windows7. System restore on XP works fine...but it doesn't work at all on W7. If I manually create a restore point it tells me that it has been created successfully but the next time I switch on W7 and go to System Restore it says there are no restore points!
Considering there seems to have been this problem since W7's launch date I would have thought Microsoft would have issued an update by now. Apparently not. Please help as this is driving me nuts

You cannot use restore on both Windows 7 and XP, in a dual boot situation.
The only windows solution, possibly, is to disable the restore in XP. I haven't myself tried it.
Better idea is to use one of the image programs currentl on the web. There are some good free ones (Macrium and Paragon). You can then schedule or select each backup option individually.

More to the point: the restore features in Windows are garbage. They rarely work, will rarely help you recover from a broken OS, and they never store truly important files.

If you want backups, do real backups: Macrium, Paragon, Cobian--ANYTHING with user control. Relying on Windows to do restore points is begging for trouble. At least with a real app you'll have the ability to quickly return to par if your OS goes tits up.

Thanks for your help.

Can only imagine I was tempting providence by saying my XP Pro was working beautifully and that System Restore on it was working fine....it isn't. It does retain the restore points but freezes if you try to go back to a previous time. I only discovered this over the weekend when IE8 started to freeze.

Is this also because of the dual boot?
Can I get round the problem by unplugging the Windows 7 hard drive then running System Restore on XP?

Help much appreciated.

baysie, welcome to the forum!

Thrax pointed out what you need. A real backup program. Although System Restore does sometimes gets one out of a jam, it does not take the place of a full backup.

There are many ones that's entirely free, all that you need is a spare HDD to backup to. As far as dual booting goes, both XP & Win 7 will fit on the same HDD, provided it's 100GB or more. Of course, more is better.

You really need to get into the habit of backing up, keep the oldest one you have, then at least once a month, backup again. As your backup drive fills, you can delete some old ones.

The only times that System Restore really done me any good, was if I updated a driver, and it turned out bad. One time, my DVD wouldn't work, it fixed that. But I was lucky. Most of the times I really needed System Restore, it did no good. Plus it can leave a mess of files behind.

The only sure fire way to restore your system is by backing up the computer.

Cat

Thanks for that, Think I'll consider a mobile rack.

Well, fwiw, Microsoft had this to say when Vista was released to public. It is also supposed to work with Windows 7.
I would go along with Thrax's suggestion though - all problems then solved!

"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. "

Thanks for your help one and all.

i once tried to restore and i was getting the same error without a dual hard disk pattern on my PC
yes, it is true that the restore of window 7 are not that strong as that of XP