The unofficial Shadow Defender Support Thread.

Discussion in 'sandboxing & virtualization' started by Cutting_Edgetech, Feb 14, 2011.

  1. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Strange though, why just Chrome? Does it happen with other browsers?
     
  2. Overkill

    Overkill Registered Member

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    I only use chrome
     
  3. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Okay. So then the ball is in Tony's court.
     
  4. Azure Phoenix

    Azure Phoenix Registered Member

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    If you still have issues with your bookmark, you can try the Xmarks Bookmark extension
     
  5. ichito

    ichito Registered Member

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  6. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I think anything from OA is suspect . It's dead and gone, and gets absolutely no updates. You are wasting your time.
     
  7. ichito

    ichito Registered Member

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    @Peter2150
    OA was the "detector" only and the matter is in showed info about SD.
    I'm outdated...my system is outdated and some apps are outdated too...from time to time I like waste my time ;)
     
  8. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I think that "flag" info was one of the things that OA got from the back end server. It no longer exists. You can't trust anything OA reports to you.
     
  9. NiteRanger

    NiteRanger Registered Member

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  10. Athas

    Athas Registered Member

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    Hi folks,

    I've again got some news about the file corruption phenomenon:

    A friend was about to flatten his Win7 32bit system (completely different from mine hardware-wise) in order to upgrade to Win10, and I convinced him to install Shadow Defender for a test run first.

    Long story short, when running this script, corrupted files appeared on his system, as well. So I can now definitely say that the problem is reproducible on at least 2 physical systems. He also regularly checks his hardware for faults by running memtest and Prime95, so hardware-related problems should not be the cause.

    We've also noticed that the bug is not related to the "commit" function, as the files always end up on the filesystem as the were in the temporary storage; if they were written correctly, they turn out correctly after commiting and rebooting. If they were corrupt, they would stay corrupt (in exactly the same way) after rebooting.

    Also noteworthy is that problems appear only on volumes that a currently shadowed; when we put C:\ in Shadow Mode and ran then script from D:\, everything was fine and vice versa.

    My friend had an interesting remark: This reminded him of a similar issure with data corruption using disk filter drivers (that seems to be what all tools like SD use, they install a driver that then redirects writes from their intended location to a temporary file that then gets discarded after rebooting). After some searching, we found this:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-if-you-run-a-program-that-uses-a-file-system

    Now, the bug supposedly applies only to pre- SP1 Windows 7, but it's nevertheless interesting that the cause of file corruption was a bug in Ntfs.sys.

    There's a possiblity that Shadow Defender uses the APIs of the disk filter driver in a way that unmasks another issue, or the issue could be in SD itself.

    Anyway, I am now very certain that this is a widespread phenomenon for users of Shadow Defender, and that the missing bookmarks cases are just a manifestation of it. After all, may modern browsers write to the bookmarks file very frequently, modifying things like last accessed time, etc.

    As a workaround, I would suggest that users that previously experienced problems save their files to an unshadowed volume (maybe move their browser-profiles and download folders there) and see if the missing bookmarks problem disappears.

    Also, gathering more data would be a good thing, so, if you've got some spare time, run this and report back to this thread.
     
  11. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I think using common sense applies. I make sure as little as possible is running when entering shadow mode. For example if I am watching a movie and want to enter shadow mode, I pause the movie to stop it's disk activity and then enter shadowmode. Do I need to do that, don't know, but I have never had corruption issues with SD
     
  12. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    Does anybody still use pre-SP1 Windows 7? Very strange. Let´s talk about Windows 10 1703.
     
  13. Athas

    Athas Registered Member

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    Probably not, the Hotfix in the link i posted should be integrated in Windows 7 SP1. Win8 and Win10 should not be affected by this bug at all.

    But if there was a bug that caused file corruption when using a certain function in disk filter drivers, there could be another one that's triggered by Shadow Defender.

    My friend's Win7 installation was of course SP1 and fully updated, and it still happened.
     
  14. darksky

    darksky Registered Member

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    I'm thinking about going with Shadow Defender. I'm running Windows 10 Pro 64 bit wanted to ask:

    1) Will it protect SSD drives (and standard drive) that have GPT partitions (instead of MBR)?

    2) If you encounter malware that forces you to do a hard restart and/or turn-off the machine rather than doing a standard reboot, does ShadowDefender still prevent malware files from transferring over from the virtual environment?

    Thanks!
     
  15. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    On No 2. No need to bother with a hard reset or turn off. Just let the malware initiate the restart. When rebooted your clean. Tested and verified
     
  16. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    :thumb:

    Second that. Had numerous run ins from testing junk that seized up the whole screen (RESET-REBOOT-CLEAN!)

    And some file infectors (these are very nasty snakes) that gummed up matters so bad there was no Shadow Defender exe to reboot normally with. Pull the plug (REBOOT-CLEAN As a Whistle)
     
  17. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    The answer to both questions is "yes". If it were not, SD would be of little use.
     
  18. Overkill

    Overkill Registered Member

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    I have noticed for quite sometime, that when in shadow mode some windows sounds doesn't work... i'm not positive it's because of SD, but I don't know what else it could be. Do any of you have this happen?
     
  19. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    Never happened to me in many years of use, although it is now a year that I have intentionally set my computers to "no sound" therefore if it is something recently related to SD I wouldn't be able to tell...
     
  20. BoarAnt

    BoarAnt Registered Member

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    I'd like to thank Athas for reporting/investigating the corruption issue, as for the past year or so I've also experienced similar things like user profile corruptions and system unresponsiveness on large file copies/moves, even when both source/destination isn't a shadowed volume (network drive copy to external drive). Once the system becomes unresponsive/slow, I end up restarting the system with a physical reset, and on the next boot my user profile is randomly corrupted (my user profile is folder excluded (C:/Users/XXXX/). Things like missing start menu icons, sfc /scannow errors, and missing taskbar pins, and an unresponsive [Start > Settings] icon are some of the problems I remember, and usually my workaround would be to create a new profile or, if it's bad, a reimage of the machine.

    665 seems to be a much more stable version than previous builds (no more sfc /scannow errors so far - yay!), but the large file copies still make the system unresponsive for me. I don't use any Write Cache so the data should flush immediately to disk to minimize loss if I need to do any hard resets. I have a feeling it's related to Athas's findings as well, so I thought I'd chime in on the matter.
     
  21. Mr.X

    Mr.X Registered Member

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    @BoarAnt

    Try this non released version: http://www.shadowdefender.com/download/SD1.4.0.668_Setup.exe
     
  22. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    I have experienced problems in shadow mode when downloading videos reaching sizes of 2-3 GB, once I had been working for several hours and when I was about to commit a large amount of work (as I said about 2-3 GB) the whole system blue screened and rebooted, wiping out everything...

    What I do now, I shift the work to a flash drive as it progresses so that if anything happens I don't lose everything, or I commit stuff on a regular basis which secures it in case of a crash. For this kind of work in shadow mode it is better not to have the Write Cache on, as it can get quickly used up and may affect computer performance in terms of speed (I think this was the reason my machine blue screened).

    This extreme situation happened twice in four years (different OSs though Win 8 and Win 10) and always dealing with large downloads, otherwise SD is very reliable for normal browsing, and ruthless in wiping out shadow data when rebooting, basically what it was designed for...
     
  23. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    I suppose by "write cache" you mean memory or RAM cache (there is always a write cache operating in shadow mode). If the assigned memory cache fills up, supposedly the cache is automatically extended using a disk cache. So the problem should only arise if there isn´t enough free disk space for the cache in the partition being shadowed.
     
  24. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    Yes of course I meant "RAM used as Write Cache"and I usually assign 4GB out of a total of 8/12 GB which should ensure plenty of RAM for the OS.

    Theoretically you are right, I have 1TB hard drive, and therefore there is enough disk space for months in shadow mode, but we are not talking about a huge shadow volume created in one session, the problem arises with huge downloads in shadow mode, as I said it happened at least twice and I really don't know what caused it.

    From memory the computer first slows down or freezes, and then it either bluescreens or I have to reboot it with the start button... Huge downloads are exceptional circumstances, it is difficult to draw conclusions or speculate with only 2 instances of such behaviour, maybe there are other factors...
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2017
  25. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    I did a test, could´n replicate your experience (SD 665, Windows 10 1703).

    Defined write (RAM) cache as 1000 MB, entered shadow mode, began the download of the Windows 10 ISO, which is about 3.5 GB. The RAM cache filled up but the download continued and finished successfully. The computer operated normally during all the process.

    Captura.SD_3.PNG
     
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