Anyone heard from HDS - re Rollback?

While we did have a record heat-wave, it's now cooling down. Hopefully, an earthquake is not on the horizon, but in California that's always a possibility. Btw, we don't get hurricanes on the West coast of the US. The south-east coast often bears that burden. Enough about the weather, onto more RB testing...

Day 7 with the new build of Rollback Rx Pro:

Over the past 7 days, I intentionally accumulated 27 snapshots. The reason for this is because one of the serious events I suffered with a past build was right after I accumulated 24 snapshots and tried to recover lost disk-space by deleting over half of those snapshots. Of my present 27 snapshots I locked just 2 (other than the baseline snapshot), the 2 most recent - all the others were unlocked and I decided to delete those in 4 groups of 6. Before starting, I used ATI to create & verify a fresh disk-image...

Upon deletion of each of the first 3 groups of 6, I rebooted the system. Each of those times RB's sub-console performed a defrag & optimization on bootup and each time the system booted up to Windows without any problems. Feeling pretty confident at this point I thought what if after deleting the last group of 6 snapshots I would abruptly power-down (without doing a shutdown)!

Well, I did just that and then (holding my breath) I rebooted the system, watched the RB sub-console do its thing and as expected, Windows alerted me to disk errors, immediately followed by a chkdsk operation. Allowing it to go to completion, chkdsk found and repaired 16 errors after which Windows booted up successfully! I then tried restoring each of my 2 most recent (locked) snapshots and each one restored perfectly!

This build of RB is looking better and better all the time, but then again tomorrow is another day...

I'm feeling pretty good, but pretty tired, so goodnight all. ~pv

 

Hi, thanks for sharing. Day 2 here, so far OK.

 

Sorry pvsurfer if i hurt you! No offence was intended. After thinking twice, i realize that my previous post was a very bad, inappropriate joke... considering the state and country where you live in.

Can you please grant me a favour if you do not mind? (i know, i am rather cheeky and bold to ask this after my stupid post ):
- could you include using a defrag and compress registry software in your tests? When i used RB, i often got a BSOD with damaged snapshots after the necessary reboot that this kind of defrag programs requires.
- could you try to take a snapshot and a few minutes after defragment your snapshots through the RB console while in windows? When i did so, it took ages to be performed...
Thank you pvsurfer,
Cheers,
Hervé

 

Hervé, no offense taken. ...and fwiw, I love living in So. California!

I was planning to test some of that 'stuff' today. I use the PerfectDisk defragger and I will use it to perform online and offline defrags. I'll see if I have an app to compress my registry (I think TuneUp Utilities can do that). As for your last request, I'm not sure that I understand what you want me to do, so would you clarify it?

~pv

 

Hi pvsurfer ,
What i meant in my second request is the following scenario:
During a normal windows session, please take a snapshot using the icon in the systray, wait for, let's say, 10 minutes and finally open the RB console to defragment manually all your snapshots and update your snapshots index.
When i did this on my system, it took ages to perform the task with at the end, a BSOD.
Thank you for including some of the issues i encountered when using RB, in your tests .
Cheers ,
Hervé

 

I can now confirm that latest build is as buggy as previous one.
Yesterday I had to fo a power reset and after taht to avoid chkdsk I tried to boot into last snapshot from the noot screen of Rollback and I got the Registry Recovery message from woindows- something like this,

Some of the files containing System registry data has to be recovered from a log or alternate copy

Start up appliances were taking an ever long time to load and I have to do another power reset. I tried to boot into m,any previous snapshots one by one and got same behaviour. Somewhere I also got the messages about some files being corrupt and a pop up warning to run chkdsk. All snapshots ( including both auto start snapshots and those taken manually) were partially corrrupted except my first( basic) and second snapshots. However I was able to recover individual files/ folders of corrupted snapshots.

I have to rebuild from a much older snapshot( just second to the basic one).

I was running the trial version of latest build and also on trying to activate, it did not accept my key( same old... old bug). I have mailed them to re-set my key, they have responded and I will activate it aging today. Hopefully it should work.

That,s it. I am still using it but I am not going to trust it any more. Ny next purchase will be FDISR but I will wait for Vista so that i will not have to spend money on upgrade of FDISR next year when Vista comes out.

 

Not surprised by the power cycle problem - that was one of my early problems. I take a snapshots every bootup - and then delete at 35 snapshots.

I have changed all except one of my lics to FD ISR now. Persistent and reliable is better than easy to use.

For me persistent snapshots is a must. Along with reliable imaging. I've had a few problems restoring images with RB on them.

 

Imaging with what? ATI?
And what about imaging with FDISR.

 

Hi Aigle,

Why do you want to avoid chkdsk if your system indicate that you need to run chkdsk for possibly resolved some problem By not doing so, like Peter says, you did not make a fair test with Rollback and you made sure that it will fail...

Best regards,
Atomas31

 

Yesterday (Sunday) I took a break from my RB beta-testing and went to a jazz festival. Reading aigle's report this morning is quite disturbing, even though I have had 7-days of perfect RB-behavior (no matter what was thrown at it). Also, did I understand you correctly that this problem happened while you were running the latest RB build in trial-mode? ...if so why had you not registered/activated RB?

Btw aigle, would you please tell me a) how much RAM is installed on your system and b) approximately how much free space you had on your system drive (at the time of this latest problem).

~pv

 

I don't fully understand this somewhat incoherent sequence of events. To me, avoiding chkdsk after occurrence of a major problem is dangerous to just about any program that resides on one's system disk -- & that would include RB.

I shall continue to follow pvsurfer's tests. To me, they are far more significant than aigle's strange scenario, from the standpoint that ANYTHING can be broken if a person persists in doing a lot of questionable actions.

 

Aloha Bellgamin,
+ 1
... a wise relevant message indeed.
Cheers,
Hervé

 

Hervé & bellgamin~

While I appreciate your votes of confidence in my testing, I should point out that I too attempted to restore RB snapshots without allowing chkdsk to correct errors due to power-failures (re-read post #'s 49 & 61 in this thread). However, unlike aigle's situation my attempts were successful.

Why should I have done this? ...because my RB snapshots were created to capture a facsimile of the disk-sectors as they were at a point-in-time before any dirty-disk situation occurred. While I would agree that it is not normally good practice to 'throw caution to the wind' in this manner, I felt it was a good way to stress-test RB during beta-testing.

So while I don't completely understand the specifics of what aigle did and didn't do, I can understand his attempt to restore RB snapshots taken before a dirty-disk situation, rather than use chkdsk to fix his current snapshot's disk errors.

In any case, I hope to get back to my testing when I return home this eve., so until then 'keep the faith'.

~pv

 

Ok Hervé, this evening I did what you requested (at least I hope that I did)...

After aigle's negative report, I was sure to first create & verify a disk-image, just in case! I then did a 'smart placement' online defrag with PerfectDisk. After it completed I defragged (compressed) the registry using TuneUp Utilities. The latter operation required that I restart my system, which I did. The system booted normally (no BSOD, or problems of any kind). I next requested a PerfectDisk offline degrag of my paging file and rebooted. My system booted, performed the offline defrag, and started Windows without a hitch.

But for aigle's experience with this build, I'd be euphoric at this point. However, something ominous happened with this build on aigle's system, and that sure bothers me!

 

Hi pvsurfer, did you try image your partition with RB installed? After restore the partition image did the RB entry in mbr still there?

 

Actually I mean to say what imaging software he uses with FDISR and what were the results by using both at a time( FDISR+ Imaging).

 

Answer in simple as I think. Correct me if I am wrong. Pvsurfer has answered it himself.

I did exactly same and to me it should be fairly safe( supposed to be) as RollbackRx works at MBR level.

 

As I told earlier, it did not accept my key( it,s well known old problem with Rollback, so i mailed them to fix the key and will activate it now. Every time I reinstalled Rolback in the past( twice), same thing I had to do. BTW, this thing has absolutely no effect on my testing as the trial version is fully functional.

512 MB( 190 MB free at the moment while writing these lines).
C Drive-- approx 19.5 GB, 6 GB used, 13.5 GB free
XP Home SP 2
and see my signatures for my real time appliances, plus SSM

 

Any disk-image will capture the MBR as it is at that point-in-time (e.g., if RB was installed, it captures the MBR as modified by RB)... If you want a standard Windows MBR after restoring the image, you can use Windows' Recovery Console as follows:

After restoring the image, reboot with your Windows CD in your CD-Drive and select the Recovery Console (the very first Repair option you see). At the command prompt type the command: FIXMBR C:

 

aigle~

Just as a precautionary measure, I would first remove KL-Detector before re-installing RB. While I don't know anything about that app, it sort of sounds like it might plant something in the MBR... Imho, that's worth a try.

~pv

 

Thanks pvsurfer for the info.

 

No problem... Regarding the use of ATI with RB, be aware that you must create the backup (image) from within Windows in order to capture your current RB snapshot. If you use the Rescue CD (Linux) to create the backup, you will capture the baseline (original) snapshot.

~pv

 

This statement is incorrect with respect to Image for DOS (IFD) -- see posts HERE. Capturing the MBR requires a separate action when using IDS.

 

Sorry bellgamin... would it 'sit better' with you if I re-phrase my remark thusly:

"If your disk-imaging product is enabled (via configuration or selection) to copy the MBR, it will capture the MBR as it is at that point-in-time".

Cheers, pv