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[kd1966 Profile YIM]

I personally wouldn't pay too much attention to how each OS (XP/Vista) letter your drives. Vista 'generally' takes C: for itself (All based on how you installed Vista) and reletters the other drives to suit itself........ BUT REMEMBER THIS:
The "Physical" locations or partitions has not changed, just the way Vista sees them, so don't get too excited when you see some re-lettering, as nothing has really changed

[MadMrMax Profile]

Thanks I do understand the difference there. What I care about is things like:
* Usability -- When I'm using XP windows explorer I know that the second drive icon is my "documents" drive.

* "My documents" -- In XP and Vista I move the "My documents"/"Documents" folder to this "data" drive. Having the same drive letter regardless of install is important to my usability. In addition I backup the whole "data" drive via the d$ admin share -- when I'm running Vista this causes problems because that drive is no longer "D" so the task that I have to backup the data drive fails.

* Games/Programs installed -- All my games are installed on the "Data" drive. These games usually have config files in the same directory as the game. The config files in a majority of games have drive info as well.

Anyway, it just becomes frustrating to make Vista and XP co-exist to the point that I wonder if I really should use Vista.

-mark

[kd1966 Profile YIM]

So can you modify the task(s) to point to the correct drive(s)??

[MadMrMax Profile]

So can you modify the task(s) to point to the correct drive(s)??

The tasks aren't run on the OS but from a different machine and so it needs to work regardless of what OS I'm booted in. Security isn't an issue in this case since the computer is joined to a domain.

-mark

[JabbaPapa Profile]

It will be hard to ensure that your data partition in that partitioning config will have the same letter in both XP and Vista.

To acheive this, your XP should be in Partition 1, Vista in 2, and data in 3, and you must also install both XP and Vista with any other drives unplugged.

The drive letter won't be D: , but this woulkd be the best compromise.

You should also avoid using any third party partitioning software to repartition the drive.

You can either make a temporary Vista setup in C: and then in the Disk Management tools delete the Vista partition, expand the data partition to the end of the drive, then create free space between C: and the data drive, then create a new partition there (if possible)

Otherwise, backup the data to an external location, completely wipe the drive, then reinstall XP creating the XP partition during setup. In disk management create the Vista and data partitions, Primary partitions NTFS, Reinstall Vista as above, then move data back in. If you have created or modified any of your partitions using third party partition management tools, this full rebuild would anyway be the most desirable procedure.

[MadMrMax Profile]

One more idea (just because I want to try all avenues to get this config working)
Just to recall, the current config that didn't work with the Data drive is:
Disk 0:
-- Partition 1 is XP
-- Partition 2 is Data
-- Partition 3 is Vista.

In this config, when booted into XP the drive letters are correct XP (C), Data(D) & Vista (E). When booted into Vista the drive letters are incorrect Vista (C), XP(D) and Data (E) and this is due to the fact that the partitions are assigned drive letters based upon device enumeration.

Because of this "enumeration" is there a hope that the following would work?
Drive 0
-- Partition 1 - Data
-- Partition 2 - XP
-- Partition 3 - Vista

In XP, the drive letters should be: XP(C), Data(D) and Vista (E) and in Vista the drive letters would be Vista (C), Data (D) [since it is first partition] and XP (E).

Any luck with this you think?

[MadMrMax Profile]

(bump)

[JabbaPapa Profile]

OK, there is one other possibility.

It may be possible to unmount the drive letters in both XP and Vista, rebot, and then to allocate the D: letter to your data partition. Then again maybe not ...

[McTavish Profile Website]

When you install by booting from the DVD, Vista will always want to make the system partition D: The only way I can think to do what you want with the Microsoft bootmanager would be to do both installs as you originally did where both are independent with all there own boot files. Set your drive letters as you want in both and then move bootmgr and BCD from Vista into XP and change the XP PBR for a Vista one and add XP to the Vista boot menu. I

[MadMrMax Profile]

Easier if you just leave both installs independent and use a different bootmanager. There are plenty that are compatible with Vista.

Are there any you (or anyone else) recommends?

-mark