Make dual boot partitions read only?

For a dual boot system, is it possible to make the other OS' partition read only (i.e. make Vista partition read only when logged into XP, and vice versa)? I'm noticing that sometimes when I uninstall programs under one OS, the uninstaller deletes the program files on the other OS' partition as well, which is something I'd like to avoid.

 

Which program(s) you had this problem? When you installed them, did you make sure they are installed in the correct OS partition? Cause I'm running dual-boot Vista/XP and I never encounter this problem before.

 

That's an interesting little problem; however, it strikes me that it may have more to do with what happens when you install a program than with what happens when you uninstall because, to my knowledge (which is, I admit, woefully limited in almost every area ), the uninstaller is basically reading from a script that the installer wrote when it did the initial installation. Thus, if you uninstall from the _Vista partition, the uninstaller should only be messing around on the XP partitition if something got included in the script when the program was initially installed. Did you set up the dual boot structure with two clean installs, or did you just reuse an old partition from the single-boot structure to set up your dual-boot configuration? If you did, and you had been using that old partition for apps or data, then some of your old program installations might have ended up with a reference to that partition in their installation logs.

Another thought that occurs: are you using the default MS uninstaller, the program-specific uninstaller that comes with some apps, or a third-party uninstaller? If you're using a third-party uninstaller that aggressively searches for ophaned files when it uninstalls, it may be looking in the other partition for orphans, in which case the solution might be to see if you can tweak the configuration on that third-party uninstaller to prevent it from sticking its nose into the wrong partition.

In terms of restricting each partition to only having read permissions on the other partition, you could run each partition under a separate user account (I know that, since each is a separate installation, each "should" have a separate user structure, but like Reagan used to say, "trust, but verify" and unfortunately MS OSes are too proprietary to be able to verify, thus cannot be trusted). Then, simply set user permissions in each installation so that all users have only read permissions for the other installation's partition. That won't stop everything, since the System user, at least, will still have write/execute permission; however, if you install programs under the user account with the restricted permissions, and run the uninstaller under that same account, that may be enough to keep a wayward third-party uninstaller from wandering into partitions it's not supposed to touch.

 

I've noticed the issue twice so far. The first wasn't on an uninstall per se, but rather an install of Comodo's BOClean. Apparently, upon installation of BOC in XP (after it had been installed on Vista), the installer detected the BOClean.dll in the Vista partition and decided to delete it. The next case was with uninstalling Firefox extensions in XP (E: ) due to a Threatfire conflict. Once I used Vista's (C: ) Firefox, I received a popup message stating that an "extension" folder is missing even though I did not make any changes to it and it was working fine prior the XP extension uninstall.

Vista was installed first cleanly, then XP cleanly. The programs were installed on the correct partitions.

Another oddity I just noticed is that when opening a text file on the other OS partition, Editpad Lite (freeware apps FTW) informs me that the file is read only because it is stored on a read-only medium like a CD-ROM or because it is in use by another application. However, I am able to delete files located on that supposed read-only medium using windows explorer.