The unofficial Shadow Defender Support Thread.

I think for me it is time to say goodbye to Shadow Defender and to remove it from my system:

The more recent versions (1.3.0.454 etc.) permanently caused the freezing of my computer (I have written about that here: http://shadowdefenderforum.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=bc060790cad8e7542bd49a3b1e97f80c&topic=72.0)

So I returned to version 1.1.0.325 which had worked without remarkable problems in the past. But in the meantime it causes a lot of times blue screens. The driver causing the crash is always diskpt.sys which is part of Shadow Defender.

The strange thing is that the blue screens happen when Shadow Defender is not activated. For example they appeared several times now when sending files on the desktop to a zip-folder.

I hope I will be successful in finding a reliable alternative to Shadow Defender.

 

in version 0.457 i don't get any freezing , but also don't tested so much
in version 0.454 i get freezing problem but after uncheck Encrypt write cache
and put ram as write cache to 0 MB don't get any freezing problem
maybe it work for you

 

I am running the latest version on Windows 7 and it works like a charm. I don't notice anything at all different.

 

I am not familiar with "encrypt write cache". What is "write cache". Is that pagefile?

 

What is FD-ISR? And what is the name of the new software?

 

open SD Window go to administration tab you can find it

 

Peter,

In those situations was DefenderDaemon.exe /Auto enabled in your Startup?

Sorry to see you give up on SD - but it does seem to conflict with something in your system(s). Did you make Tony aware of your problem?

TS

 

caspian,

That refers to SD's hidden cache (diskpt) which, in recent versions, can be assigned to RAM at the time Shadow Mode is enabled for a disk volume. This is intended to result in faster and more secure Shadow Mode operations than the default condition when the Shadow Mode cache is stored on the disk drive. Furthermore, the cache can be encrypted as co22 pointed out.

TS

 

It's a completely different type of program - why not perform a search? (that should enlighten you)...

TS

 

When using version 0.454 I had unchecked the "Encrypt write cache" and (as far as I remember) I had also reduced the "RAM used as Write Cache" to 0 MB. Nevertheless the freezing occurred.
Anyway, interesting that you got also a freezing problem with SD.

No, I never have it in the autostart. That's the strange thing: that SD (via diskpt.sys) causes blue screens although it is not active.

Yes, we corresponded about it quite along time ago (not concerning the blue screens but concerning the freezing which had already happend with older versions of SD on an older computer with another OS [Win XP]!) Tony tried to help but unfortunately he could not find out the reason for the freezing. So I doubt that it would be successful to contact him again.

I think I will either make a new (last) try with the latest version 1.3.0.457 (always living with the fear of a new freezing and/or blue screen, as it occurs always completely unexpected) or I will change to Toolwiz Time Freeze which has very positive reviews here in the Forum.

 

Peter,

You are on Win7, as I am. You are running NIS, as I am. I am running SD 457 without any issues whatsoever (but I do not exclude anything)! Your SD issue smacks of a software conflict - are you running any other security software (besides MSE)?

TS

 

No, nothing else. Of course I use Sandboxie but I think that a conflict with it is more than unlikely.

 

I agree, I don't think SBIE and SD conflict in any way. By the way, when I tried version 1.3.0.457 for the first time in W7 a couple of weeks ago, I did notice a slight freeze when the screen saver came on. That never happened with versions 1.2.0.376 or 1.2.0.346. The freeze occurred after I had installed HMP and was running a scan when the screen saver came on. I decided to uninstall .457 when I noticed an NTFS error or warning after rebooting in Event logs. I haven't reinstalled SD but when I do, I ll reinstall version .376 which works great in my W7 32 bits laptop.

Bo

 

Peter,

I have not experienced any issues running SBIE 4.06 and SD 457, but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the possibility of conflicts with other version combinations!

Btw, what is the specific hardware configuration of the PC where SD is problematic?

TS

 

What do you mean with hardware configuration? Size of hard disk, RAM etc.?

Hard disk: 1 TB, about 850 GB are free
RAM: 4 GB
Motherboard Chipset: nVidia GeForce

That's interesting. In my case (speaking about version 1.3.0.454) the freezing often also happened in connection with a scan: namely when starting (manually) the scan of a downloaded file (with Norton).

 

Since I don't have any scanner of any kind installed on my computers, most of the time when I use SD is for running scans. So, I was just doing different things, testing the latest version for the first time. The screen saver is set to come in after 2 minutes and when that happened, the PC froze for a few seconds. I tried to reproduce the freeze, running another scan with HMP, and could not. After rebooting and seeing the error that I mentioned earlier, I decided to uninstall version .457. I probably will go back to version .376 or try TTM.

Bo

 

.457 has been running like a charm for me.

 

So there is personal data stored even after you restart the computer? I guess I should encrypt it then. Or learn how to how to assign it to RAM. Thanks for the explanation.

 

Although I have tried and failed to restore my 'Shadow Mode Data' after a restart, there probably are some forensic tools that may be able to do just that. If you consider this to be important, you should definitely enable encryption and/or consider RAM-cache (if you have ample RAM). Assigning RAM for SD's write-cache is easily accomplished as shown below:

 

The same in this camp trjam.

I really can't find any complaints with it. In fact i couldn't even create one if i wanted. It "still" does everything as advertised, quietly, quickly, and dependable as ever.

Anything new that gets added is just icing on the cake. A great app with an equally great following and support.

What more could a diehard PC geek asked for?

EASTER

 

ShadowDefender bricked my clean Windows 8.1 Pro install just now. I reformatted, tried again, and it bricked the install. This was after disabling auto-updates, and all of that.

Time to ask for a refund. These are clean, reasonably powerful machines it is bricking the windows install on..

 

Sorry to hear that Doc. Was that with the latest version (.457)? What were the symptoms? Were you attempting to install or run SD when disaster struck?

Wendi

 

.457 was the version.

Fresh Windows 8.1 system, both bricked with ShadowDefender. I have requested a refund on the product, as I cannot keep reformatting my PC's to test this, and cannot risk enough catastrophic failure. Even though my home is setup with a localized, encrypted cloud storage system, it's still a pain in the butt to have this happen.

My conclusion is - use this at your own peril, understanding the brick-windows install. What I found happens is it corrupts the Windows 8.1 installation, then puts it into a perpetural boot, unable to ever boot back into the operating system. Others have noticed this.

 

The website only list compatibility for Windows 8, and earlier. Is SD listed as compatible with Windows 8.1 somewhere? I would like to look into this. I'm still using 1.1.0.325 with Windows 7 X64 Ultimate. Have you tried it on Windows 8, or earlier? If you look at the bottom of the page it only list Windows 8, and earlier as compatible. http://www.shadowdefender.com/download.html