The unofficial Shadow Defender Support Thread.

Yes, I'm with Bo and The Shadow.
Shadow Defender is a great program, I use it every day. I find it very useful for trying new software that doesn't require a reboot or messing about with the configuration of particular software that I am not au fait with knowing that a reboot will have me back in known territory.
I'm still with version Shadow Defender 1.1.0.325 on my XP sp3 and it's not caused any problems. I think that there are some minor glitches but nothing that would disturb me. Occasionally Window reverts to basic desktop when restarting after Shadow Mode....but just occasionally..and a couple of reboots usually sorts it out somehow. I use this version on XP as I regard this as the "classic" version and it suits me fine without the later cache memory add-ons etc (which I didn't see any benefit from because I only use 2 gbs of ram)
I wasn't completely confident on how to set it and others seemed to have much more advanced systems...but when I played with it, it didn't seem to make any difference. Also the new registry update didn't apply to xp users so I went back to my old faithful 1.1.0.325.
Yes, last year was a good year for updates considering the long time prior to that with no communication at all, I think that Shadow Defender is so close to being optimized that I hope we get the updates...Everyone is on tenterhooks waiting for it but as I said in earlier posts I have not heard from Tony in months. Trjam has had an email, so Tony is still about. Last year there was a hard nosed, opportunistic, effort made to subvert the path of Shadow Defender commercially which I think may have led to the current quiet phase.
Hundreds of giveaways might get some interest from software "collectors" but it does not further the long term life of the program or make more sales. There was a surge of interest after the giveway but just of the, "How do I work this thing?" sort of posts. Which soon levelled out to previous, niche, cult, devotee, interest as before.
The Official Shadow defender Forum still has visitors every day and I made a section for Chinese speakers as there seemed to be a lot of interest in Chinese forums. The forum can read Traditional Chinese and another.
Shadow Defender (on the whole) is a very stable program so not many people seem to have problems to be driving daily discussion and at the moment there are not enough active Official Shadow Defender Forum members to really get a good dialogue going to make the forum interesting. A lot of people use this Wilders thread to discuss Shadow Defender within this established security community and the Unofficial thread is really good, I read it every day myself.
Hopefully things will improve (forum wise) as time goes on and we will achieve the daily throughput to make things interesting and nudge The Official Shadow Defender Forum back to life.

 

I stumbled onto some weird info, questionable, but also noteworthy. Something about Tony not actually owning/controlling the SD software for many years now, and further- that other unknown 'people' were the ones updating and releasing SD after like .330 or something close to that.

It was quite vague info but definitely claimed that someone other than the original developer was making changes to SD- and collecting the profits from the website sales!

Can anyone verify/disprove, or explain these claims?

I am not very knowledgeable about the specifics of his country's computer policies, nor how these affect SD, its development and its sales. That being said- why would all the SD fans still be supporting the software if the developer wasn't getting credit, or income from the sales?

Reading this thread, 100s of pages into it- it sort of seems like certain posters are potentially just trying to stir up sales for SD. Which is expected, if it's a good product and the developer is still updating it, etc...

But that would be pretty weird behavior if creator may never get the proceeds and some 'new owners' would. Does that mean certain posters on WS could actually be those new owners? Or is this all a silly misunderstanding of mine?

I am directing this to the regulars, Cutting Edge, Easter, SDmod, Shadow and Trjam. I see some of you have spoken with the developer recently? Do you in fact know who you contacted? Do you have any way to personally verify that identity? I only ask because I've wanted to get a legit copy for a while, but will not send money to someone who may have taken the software from its original creator, etc.

Thanks.

 

Please, let's not spread rumors - especially without any referenced sources!

You are right at least in one regard - SD is very good software! Everything else (in your post) are rumors and speculation.

I have been an SD user for several years and based on email conversations with 'Tony' (which I'm certain is, and always has been, a pseudonym) I strongly believe he is the 'original Tony'. Patrick (sdmod) also believes that to be the case. Other than being an enthusiastic SD user I have no financial stake in SD and I doubt that any others here (e.g. those mentioned above) are financial stake-holders.

TS

 

Yes just to concur, none of us have any financial stake, we just like Shadow Defender and support it's development. Cheer it on Yay!
I think that rocko42 has caught hold of the tail end of an old rumour that was going around a long time ago.

 

hi,
after go to shadow mode in win7 sp1(no update)-32bit
menu Lose transparency except on shortcut on desktop that i tested
so its normal?

 

co22,

Are you allocating RAM for SD's write cache? If so, how much RAM are you allocating and how much do you have in total?

TS

 

hi The Shadow
thank you for replay,no i don't allocating ram for write cache.
i have total 2gb ram.
also now i see screenshots,seems SD menu icon disappear on shortcut.
and if anyone want try that my 7-Zip is Easy 7-Zip
http://www.e7z.org/

 

You lost me at the end there.

 

I am still running SD 1.1.0.325. It runs splendidly. I thought SD had become abandonware. Elated to see that it is still being maintained.

I view any newer version of SD as being "a solution." But -- what's the problem? In other words, should I update? If so, why? (Advice &/or comments will be vastly appreciated.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NOTE: I still am running XP & plan to continue doing for a long time yet to come (if I should live so long, that is).

 

I am also running 1.1.325 on XP sp3, which I regard as a "classic" version, without problems (other than a few minor glitches). Occasionally, on re-boot to Windows I lose some settings and Windows looks different (I think it's called a theme) and it goes back to default view with ugly task bar and start menu. I usually just re-boot and then Windows picks up my settings again. Other than that everything is fine.
In earlier versions of Shadow Defender there were various glitches and bugs and conflicts with certain softwares.
Personally, I see no reason to upgrade, as some of the new changes to Shadow Defender (concerning registry) do not apply to XP, just newer Windows Versions.
The reason that you might want to use a newer version are that Tony has added/is (maybe?) adding, security enhancements and updating Shadow Defender for compatibility with Windows 7 and 8 etc.
The latest version can be used with Windows 8+, as far as I know.
I have not heard from Tony for many months, lots of unanswered emails etc so I don't know what is going on. I heard that people have had support but that was some time ago.
I use Shadow Defender every day and have used 1.1.0.325 version for a long time and find it reliable. I still run the Shadow Defender forum at shadowdefenderforum.com but in between releases it gets slow as there is not an awful lot to discuss. Things usually pick up after a new release with a burst of new found enthusiasm...but the release that people are waiting for has been a long time coming.
Tony (the developer) was absent for a long time previously with much conjecture and debate about his whereabouts, his health, would we see him again? Was it all over? etc and then he re-appeared with no explanation and released updates and was active to user email support last year.
Then we had an opportunisic concerted attack ( an attempted coup), a little marketing frenzy by an individual to try and shape the development of Shadow defender which meant that hundreds of free copies were given away and a Facebook page was set up which was labelled as "official" and attempted to make itself the main focus with lots of fast talking and projected outcomes etc and in the process undermining my own efforts on The Official Shadow Defender Forum. I was lucky and had plenty of support from my members and Wilders members and of course the frenzy fizzled out (as with many shoot from the hip opportunist ventures) and things settled down to more of a natural rate for a one man developer and niche software.
Shadow Defender really doesn't need much further development to reach it's optimum, other than to patch up a few security holes and to stay abreast with latest Operating systems) but this has been slow lately and news does not come freely. Everyone who is interested is on tenterhooks to see if produces a "classic" but I feel that Shadow Defender has been slightly distorted by the frenzied input and interference that I mentioned earlier.
For my own needs at the moment (using XP sp3) I am quite happy with 1.1.0.325 as it suits my purposes nicely.

Patrick (The Official Shadow Defender Forum owner and Admin)

 

Hi bellgamin,

First of all I would say that the version you are using is very stable and has become a favorite of many SD users, especially those still running WinXP. That said I would nevertheless advise you to upgrade to the latest version (which a licensed user may do at no cost).

During Feb. 2013 SD was subjected to a very interesting malware test which can be found on youtube as follows:
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTLuTjufQkU- ....to summarize, SD was tested against 5 potent backdoor trojans and only one of them was able to penetrate SD's Shadow Mode and that was the Sinowal Trojan. It's presence was detected after a system restart, although it was 'benign' (i.e., it did not actually infect the system). When this was brought to Tony's attention, he further strengthened Shadow Mode during development of v1.3, to contain Sinowal and like malware. So I would want to have the most secure version of SD to date and that is v1.3.

TS

Ps. Just my opinion, but I think you may be making a big mistake by staying with WinXP!

 

Thanks MUCHLY, sdmod & *The Shadow*, for your very helpful replies.

Maybe so, but I have taken ample precautions. My router's FW is hardened. I also use a software FW. I clone/image ~every 3 days, & retain each clone LIFO 2 months. I have AppGuard & EXE Radar Pro on guard. I scan all downloads with VirusTotal & MBAM & Avast. I surf behind DropMyRights & MB Anti-exploit. In short, I am paranoid but - despite that - I loooove XP & totally detest 8.

Plus -- I also have a rabbit's foot attached to my computer's main tower.

 

When upgrading to a newer version of SD, can you just install over-the-top, or do you need to do a clean install?

 

I still use version 1.1.0.325. I tried the latest version for a while, but I discovered some bugs with it. I reported the bugs, but Tony never fixed them. One bug was that SD tray icon would not load at boot, and the color of the tray icon would not match the mode SD was operating in.

I've seen some comments in this thread about settings getting messed up after rebooting with version 1.1.0.325. I experienced the same issue years ago, and it turned out that it was caused by exclusions for applications I defined in Shadow Defender. If you make an exclusion in SD for an application, and that application saves data to other areas of the disk which the user fails to make an exclusion for the application settings for that application may become corrupted. Some applications may save data to other areas of the disk which get out of sync with other data the application uses. I had it happen with Firefox, and NOD 32 in the past. NOD 32 could no longer update, and Firefox settings all got wiped out to default settings. I even had to reinstall all my extensions for Firefox. The only exclusion I currently use is for places.sqlite for my Firefox bookmarks. I save all other data to an external disk during Shadow Mode. I don't know if that could have been their problem, but it could be a possibility.

 

...you might even consider adding a Crucifix and/or Star-of-David to really be on the safe-side.

TS

 

Per Tony, over-the-top works (supposedly preserving any personalized settings). As I don't have/use any exclusions and run SD pretty much 'out of the box', I usually do an uninstall-reinstall.

TS

 

Absolutely true. I believe Tony intended exclusions for data files/folders (and more recently for reg entries) but not for apps!

TS

 

I have a problem with Shadow Defender in Windows 8.1 x64. When I reboot from shadow mode, I get logged into a temporary profile. I went to event viewer and it says the user profile is corrupted. Even after couple of restarts it logins only into the temporary profile. I formatted my system, then used shadow defender, again the same problem. Is this a known issue ? Does anyone have a similar problem ?

 

Have you disabled "Fast Startup"?

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/6320-fast-startup-turn-off-windows-8-a.html

Anyone using Win8.x should disable this if you intend to use light virtualization software like SD. Tony should put up a FAQ page on SD homepage...and include details like this.

 

Hey safeguy,

That seems to me to be an important observation and worthwhile precaution. Imho, you should post that on the Official SD Forum.

TS

 

Well, you or anyone there can always do it I won't claim any copyright infringements

 

Hi safeguy,
I don't have fast startup disabled, but fast startup affects only the shut down process, during a restart its the normal boot process(no partial hibernation process). Correct me if I am wrong. Does it make any difference ? I don't want to try it again and mess up my system unless I get an absolute solution. I'm little scared to try this program again, taking up whole day to setup my machine.

 

It makes a huge difference. With Fast Startup enabled, it is not a normal boot process. It is a hybrid boot. The kernel and devide drivers are "hibernated" and thus when you reboot, it resumes from its hibernated state. By definition, any LV software would have problems if this feature is not turned off because LV software depends on a normal shutdown and reboot process to get back to its previous state.

Disable Fast Startup if you intend to use SD again. I cannot promise but from the way you described the issues you faced, this is the most likelihood cause.

 

Thanks. I will keep this in mind if I'm bold enough to use SD again and keep the forum posted.

 

Some image programs vendors have also warned against the use of Fast Startup.