Win 7 problem and question

The implementation of Rollback Rx with Windows XP is probably topnotch. But when it comes to Windows 7, it is somewhat lacking. However, they took ages to come out with v10 and the implementation with Windows 8 is almost non-existent.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

Thats the key, it might be Rx,,,or it might not be. At this point the only way to tell for sure I think would be to start with a clean install, add only RX and then boot and reboot for the next week or so. Not very productive,,,and I do have to make a living which, as my wife correctly pointed out, I have not been doing for the last 3 days since I have been fighting with the PC instead. The PC is supposed to help me make a living, not prevent it or distract from it.

As a side note I find it extremely odd that I, having decided to try a different direction, just spent the last 2 hours working on the PC with PhotoShop and my CAD program with not a hitch. Performed beautifully. Yet, when I try to do a MS Update the thing crashes within 60 seconds. Does that make any sense at all?

 

Believe me I get it, its not nec to hit me in the head yet again , I am a slow learner but I have learnt my lesson well. As has been said, when it works its wonderful, when it does not, well, not so much.

 

I am not sure thats correct as 7 has been out for quite a while and Rx seems to work on it fine for many people. Myself I only have any real history with it on XP so I cannot speak from any but very recent experience with Rx and 7.

I spoke to support at Fujitsu tonight and he pointed out that it has not been proved that the problem is not with the drive or possibly even the ram. He suggested getting the PC to an authorized repair facility so that they can test it. (Personally, given that I was able to work for 2 hours without a glitch, I suspect the problem is OS related but exactly in what way has not been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt.) I then asked him if it turned out to be the drive would it make any sense to image the drive, swap the old drive out, put the new one in and then restore the image. He said no because its likely thats if the drive is faulty that it has managed to corrupt the OS and that to be on the safe side its best to start clean. THis makes a lot of sense to me so,,,,,,

One thing for sure though is that if I get a new drive, I will get the PC fully set up, imaging at least daily in case I run into problems along the way, and then, and only then, would I consider installing RX. At this point I would have a number of clean images and if Rx began to cause problems it would be easy to back out of it.

Once Issos program is released, I would give very serious consideration to dropping Rx once and for all. If not for the bombs it seems to drop on folks out of the blue, then for sure because of the very poor support offered by HDS.

 

Barry,

My experience with RX is limited to a few hours but I read all the threads about RX. I can restore an OS image in 2 to 3 minutes and RX is something that needs hours of time expended to save minutes later on. RX needs lots of maintenance. So I only use images.

 

Barry, you are wrong.
The way to test is to start with a clean install, then use a program to check the status of the drive and to perform a surface test (for excluding bad sectors) with e.g. HDDScan (superb app for testing hdds) or hddguardian (have not tested this one thoroughly).
If the disk comes clean, then the one responsable could be either RBRX or RAM. And RAM is to exclude because as you said the pc worked fine for one week and you should have seen already one or two reboots in that time.
And this test will take only a couple of hours, not days.

Panagiotis

 

Hi Berry,

Good decision, but keep in mind the two experts advice, Brian and Panagiotis. Also, please post the UpperFilters devices before you install the Rollback Rx and after you install the Rollback Rx. You know the registry key, just the devices from UpperFilters and nothing else. Before installation of Rollback Rx and after installation of Rollback Rx.

Good luck to you.

Mohamed

 

So this is what just happened.

Because last night I was able to work for 2 hour+ hours without a problem I decided to boot the PC and go on-line to see what you folks had to say about my comments last night.

I read the 3 posts and began typing my reply to the first and the PC crashed. I rebooted and ran BSV and then copied the logs, transfered them to the old PC via jump drive and now here I am. Please note the image I have attached as well. It shows that the bug check string is a new problem. Its a KMODE EXCEPTION, now I have no idea what that is or means but it bothers me that its new. Are these dump files providing any insight?

At this point I do not care if the problem is with Rx, which is now off the system, or something else. I just need to be able to use the PC so I can get back to work. If I had nothing else to do I would be happy to keep trying, I have learnt things along the way and frankly its added an element of (almost) fun to do so. Also, problem solving is something I like to do. I like to do this and the idea that this problem might be able to be solved without taking the easy way out is of great interest to me but I do not see we have made much progress.

Why can I work for 2 hours using relatively intensive system resource programs (the programs the PC was purchased to deal with) and yet, when I go on-line to reply to a few posts the PC crashes? Its discouraging and frustrating. In the mean time the clock is ticking and work that I could be doing on the old PC is not getting done. If I had a clear sense of progress of some sort I would be more inclined to continue but I feel like we are going around in circles.

I feel bad about even thinking about giving up mostly because you folks have taken time out of your day to try and help. I deeply appreciate this and if you say I am wrong then I will keep going but really, the important thing is to get the damed PC working so I can too. If the Fujitsu tech can do this for me, and if Fujitsu will pay for it, I have to ask myself why am I hitting my head against the wall with this.

I am sorry to be rambling on about this, I just do not want you folks to feel I have taken advantage of your generosity and now I am simply walking away.

Anyway, I am attaching the latest BSV info. Please note the image attached as well. There are 3 lines of the full mini dump file highlighted in the image and I read in the BSV description on the download page that highlighted items are important. I suspect that being able to see the information in BSV itself would be better than seeing it in a text file. If this is the case if one of you could tell me how to get these logs to you that would be great.

Finally I will be away for a good chunk of the day on family business. I have to drive 2 hours from home to meet someone who is also driving 2 hours from their home so I can pick up a family member and bring them back to Toronto. If we can make some progress today I would rethink my decision to turn this over to Fujitsu.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say regarding all this,,,,,,and Mohamed, I fully agree with you, Rx is not all that its cracked up to be. The sooner I can get it off my systems the better, but if you head over to the Windows 7 forum < http://www.sevenforums.com/ > there are lots of folks having all kinds of problems that could not possibly be Rx related as they are certainly not all using Rx. I concede that my problem may well be Rx related but it may well not be and as I said at this point I don't really care if it is or not. My priority is to get a fully functioning system so I can get on with my life.

I hope you guys understand, and again I apologize for wasting your time.

Please take a look at the attached and I will check back in this evening to see what you have to say about all of this. In the mean time I hope you have a good day.

B

 

I will not be able to install RX at least until Monday as I have exceeded my allowable number of activations and HDS support is not available on weekends. I will be happy to do this but could I trouble you to tell me what this info will tell us. Will it lead to a solution to my current problem?

 

I am almost certain that if might solve your current problem. However, your current system is already trashed, but we want to prevent it being trashed in future.

Didn't you read above the test we did on O&O Disk Image and Rollback Rx. The test Panagiotis did on my suggestions. You must be very tired and missed it.

Read carefully above, about O&O Disk Image and Rollback Rx.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

This was probably the best course of action from the beginning. Why not take advantage of the warranty while you still have one?

 

I cannot understand what are you trying to achieve.
A) Are you trying to prove that RBRX is not responsible for the BSODs?
or
B)Are you trying to verify if your hardware is in good condition and if not to send it to be replaced/repaired?

If the answer is B, you should have already performed a factory reset and verified your disk's condition.

Panagiotis

 

I am very tiered but could you explain how reinstalling and uninstalling RX could solve the problem if the OS is already trashed.

I really do not understand what the test was designed to prove. Was it to prove that Rx can indeed cause this sort of problem? If so you and others have already demonstrated that the order that imaging programs are installed on a PC when Rx is involved is critical and that failure in this regard can cause significant issues. I accept that and acknowledge it. How is installing Rx on the system now, and then uninstalling it again, going to fix my issue. Thats the only thing I care about at this point, fixing the PC so I can work with it. The rest can wait for another day.

You say my system is trashed so clearly my only reasonable option is to reinstall the system and then reconfigure and reinstall my programs and data. Why would I continue in a fruitless quest to prove/determine if Rx was responsible. Yes, it is likely that it was, perhaps its cause was something else but why do I care at this point? I simply need to get back to work, everything else is secondary.

 

I certainly am not trying to prove Rx was not the cause.

I also did not think of trying to demonstrate that the hardware was or was not fine. I thought the logical place to start would be the OS, I did not know how to test the hardware other than to stress test the RAM and given the frequency of the reboots I did not think the RAM test would have time to run to competion before the PC would crash again

I was simply hoping that it might be possible to pinpoint what was causing the problem and then possibly fix it. I thought that the mini-dump files might point to a culprit that then could be repaired or removed rendering the system functional without having to do a factory reset. Thats why I asked in the OP if the mfgs solution of new drive and new OS install was reasonable or not. From what has been written in the last few posts it looks like it would have been a reasonable thing to do because if the system is trashed thats exactly what I do need to do. The new drive would simply have been a way for Fujitsu to deliver the new OS. Its odd that they did not simply suggest a factory reset which they could have walked me through over the phone. Perhaps this would not include all the Fujitsu specific configurations, and this is why they did not suggest the factory reset, I just do not know. They said they would replace the drive and OS and told me if that did not fix the problem they would replace other components one by one until it was fixed. Seemed like a dumb approach to me so I asked here for guidance.

 

Actually, the more I think about it the angrier I am getting and maybe this is unfair so I would appreciate it if either Mohamed or pandlouk, preferably both, could explain to me what the purpose of all the tests and all of the posting was for.

If it was to help me try to get my new machine back into running order without me having to reinstall everything then I thank you, but in hindsight it seems to me that this was not the goal.

Given the situation, that it was a new PC and the mfg was going to replace whatever hardware might be nec as well as provide a new, clean install of the OS then the only reason I can see for the last 3 or 4 days was to attempt the fix of the PC without having to get into new hardware and without having to reinstall the OS. If the goal was simply to determine what hardware if any was faulty then its reasonable to expect that this would have been suggested at the outset. The PC was clearly not working properly, I asked if the mfgs fix was reasonable, and you folks said no. Please explain to me why you said this.

Twice Mohamed said my OS was trashed, the first time I asked if he was saying there was no point to continuing and both he and pandlouk said not at all. So what exactly was the point of continuing? I really do not get it.

At one point Mohamed said that he wanted to teach me how not to let this happen again,,,,was it really nec for me to spend 3 days of my life to learn a lesson I had already learnt? I really did get the point,,,that Rx can screw up the PC and that frequent imaging along the way should be done. But I still do not grant that Rx was at fault. Just because it can cause a problem does not mean that it did so. The circumstances of pandlouks O&O & Rx test was not the same circumstance that existed on my PC. The only imaging program on the PC was there when it arrived here. Rx was installed afterword so there should not have been any conflict as to what filters were on top and what were below. This issue was discussed in previous posts in other threads. I understood it. So why Mohamed did you ask pandlouk to run the tests in his VM? This had already been covered, what benefit was I and my PC supposed to get out of it?

Perhaps Mohamed had reason to want to screw with me, after all I had butted heads with him in the past, but I can not figure out pandlouks motive. IT has to be that he was trying to help, but I do not understand how he was helping. Again, maybe I am being unfair and if I am I would appreciate having it explained to me.

 

Barry,

if you reread my posts you'll see that from the beginning I was telling you to restore a clean image or to perform a factory reset, so that we could determine if the problem was hardware related or not (and accordingly proceed).

In fact I could not understand why you would not perform it, and especially why you wanted to reinstall RBRX in an unstable system; so I asked you directly in my previous post what you were trying to achieve...

Panagiotis

 

MY apologies pandlouk, I guess I got caught up in what I was trying to accomplish and missed your point right from the beginning.

I was very focused on the mini-dumps etc which I don't think would have anything to do with the hardware. I thought they would pinpoint the problem area, however caused, and enable me to repair it. I can see that I should have been clearer with my objective which I thought was self evident but clearly it was not. I very much did not want to have to reinstall all my software, find the unlock keys, reconfigure each program, copy all of my files over, and reconfigure the PCs interface. It took me 3 weeks between doing the must do day to day things to get to the point I was at when the trouble started, I really did not want to have to spend another 3 weeks getting back to that point.

Initially Fujitsu was going to simply send me a new drive which I would have had to install myself,,,,I am not at all comfortable with that idea to start with as its foreign territory for me so on Saturday I called an authorized repair centre and they said they would test all of the hardware but that I should probably give up any hope of not having to do all the set up again. They said that if there was a hardware problem the OS was likely corrupt. I guess I was grasping at straws with this thread.

Again, thank you for your efforts to help and I am sorry I misunderstood you.

 

No problem.

1) I would suggest to take on the offer of Fujitsu for sending you a new drive. Usually is very easy to change a drive in laptops (and does not hurt to have a spear drive just in case)...

2) If you have an image even with RBRX on (one taken before the constant reboots started) you can still save you system as you configured it at the time. But first we must exclude that is a hardware problem, especially a problematic disk, otherwise it will reappear after the restore; and the only way to test is from a stable clean system and factory settings are ideal for this.

Panagiotis

 

Dear Barry,

We are all saying the same thing. Please reread what has been written so far. No one is trying to teach you a lesson. What we are saying.

1. Eliminate that it is not hardware. Brian, Pandlock and I suggested that.

2. If it is not hardware, then I believe it is Rollback Rx, conflicting with Fujitsu driver. After reinstall your OS, testing for hardware fault and reinstalling Rollback Rx, if your problem continues, then I believe that I have a solution for you.

3. If Rollback Rx happens to be the culprit, no matter how many times you change the hard drive or reinstalling the OS, then your problem will continue and your system will trash again.

4. You need to use the process of elimination to find the culprit, and then find the solution.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

My apologies Mohamed, I am very tiered and very stressed. I will re-read the thread from the start, I clearly must have missed something along the way. Thank you for trying to help.

 

I have carefully reread the thread and I can see almost from his first post pandlouk was recommending a factory reset in order to determine if the hardware was the cause. As noted above I did not want to have to reinstall everything so I was not paying much attention to this suggestion and was hoping that the problem could possibly be determined to be an OS issue and then repaired.

Mohamed seemed to me to feel that we should first determine through the check disk and mini dump reports if there was an issue with the OS. He felt that Rx had caused the problem and at one point indicated that there was evidence from the files that this was the case. He asked me to reinstall Rx and continue testing. At least this is how I interpreted his postings. Probably I read them this way because that was what I was hoping would solve the problem. Combine general fatigue and a strong wish not to have to reinstall, I no doubt overlooked any suggestion that he made regarding the need to do the OS re-installation.

Given this I can see that my hopes caused me to misunderstand what I was reading and that the error for not doing things in the proper order was mine. I am very sorry to have posted the harsh words about folks who were simply trying to help me deal with my problem.

If I had had an image of the drive from before the problems began I would have restored it but I only created 2 images, the first one just after I had installed my security programs, RollBack Rx, AppGuard, Anti Logger, and ESET AV. The next image I made was just after the reboot problems began. Once they began I stopped installing programs and configuring the system. Because of this I was not anxious to do the restores from either of these images as the first would not be much different from starting from scratch and the 2nd was created at a time that there were already serious problems with the PC.

Its kind of ironic that its likely that Rx was the cause of, or at least contributed to the problem since up until the point I uninstalled it I could have rolled back to a time before the problems began in earnest, which would have put me back a week in terms of the program installations. I expect that this would have been only a temporary fix since the seeds of the problem were probably already sown.

Anyway, I again want to thank all who tried to help me, your efforts are very much appreciated and Mohamed and pandlouk, I especially want to thank you 2 specifically.

I will be bringing the PC down to a service centre in the morning and I expect I will be starting over in the near future. Hopefully the 2nd time will work out better than the first.

Oh yes, if the tech is able to determine absolutely the problem I will post his determination below.

 

For those of you still interested I have found out the cause of the problems I was having with my PC, its the mother board. Rollback Rx had nothing to do with it. In addition the tech working on my PC has said that the first thing I should do in this sort of situation is test the hardware. He said that in a perfect world if I did not have a recent image I should, assuming its possible, image the drive as soon as possible after the problems begin, then return to a factory OS and test the hardware. He said that very often even if you cannot get windows to load you can still do a cold image. Then, if the hardware is OK, and I want to try to trouble shoot the software I could restore from the last image but before doing so to make sure I have created an image of the clean install in case I am not able to resolve the software issues.