The unofficial Shadow Defender Support Thread.

If I understand SP correctly (and that is a BIG if) your entire system is completely frozen and if your AV is on when you activate SP, it stays on as if nothing has happened because as far as your c:drive is concerned nothing HAS happened (everything is being Shadowed). Your AV, and also ALL of your c:drive programs, will continue to function as usual because in reality nothing has changed. When you reboot they will just be reverted back to the moment you activated SP. Very powerful program, use with caution. (And also so simple to use which make it all the more dangerous to those who don't completely understand it).

Long story made short: you don't need to change a thing to your AV or any program, just use them and pretend that you are not even using SP (unless you want to upgrade any of those progames to a new version).

 

I have various PCs and a laptop. My main pc...I still use Windows XP whilst I still can with Shadow Defender Sandboxie and Anti Virus running.
To XP users just a reminder that not all the options are available such as Registry Exclusion List in Shadow Defender.
On my other PCs and Laptop I have Windows 7 and Windows 10 but with fast startup disabled as Tony (Shadow Defender developer) advised.
I have Shadow Defender and Sandboxie running on all...I just wanted to mention those missing Shadow Defender options to XP users who might be reading this thread.
Regarding Anti Virus. I never make any adjustments to it and just ignore it when I am going into Shadow Mode...I've never noticed any bad results.
One thing I'd like to mention. On XP last night I was doing some video editing in Shadow Mode and with a heavily filled drive. I noticed a bit of a struggle and got a bit slow and sticky on reboot after Shadowed session.
After a couple of a couple of re-boots and a defrag (in unshadowed mode) things came right again
I think that a drive with plenty of free space is best for large file operation. That's just a thought.

Patrick (sdmod)

 

light virtualization is not that reliable. vm's are much more robust. sd's commit feature doesn't play well with large files and/or many small files. and memory dumps are saved in case of a bsod. that's not good. and unlike deep freeze, it doesn't prevent system time changes. its memory management is not good at all.

 

Thanks bjm, this is very interesting indeed, as I 've never really thought there was any active interaction between SD and the AV when entering and exiting shadow mode.

I've been using Avira Pro and Kaspersky I.S, and have noticed in the past that upon rebooting out of shadow mode sometimes (1 out 10 instances) some of Avira's modules where turned off, and likewise Kaspersky's protection would be paused. My reaction and solution was to exit shadow mode and shutdown rather than exit shadow mode and reboot.

It works, but your post has clarified that there is definitely erratic behaviour during these operations, nothing serious but worth knowing about. I've never had issues entering shadow mode therefore the problem exists during reboots. Thanks.

 

Not my experience since I've started using SSD. I usually commit with the right click menu up to 10 GB a day (files are often as big as 5-6 GB) and never had an issue.

When I was using a hard disk drive (HDD), I had all sorts of problems sometimes BSODs, sudden unexpected reboots, it got so bad that I had resolved to transfer files directly to USB drives as the commit feature was too unreliable. I believe this was due in hindsight to my HDD malfunctioning, and beware, sometimes it takes more than a year for an HDD to die. My experience suggests that if one has serious problems with SD, one should check the condition of the hard drive with proper tools.

 

it's not installed on any of my rigs. i tested it on a system with a ssd when there was a giveaway.

 

To each his own,whatever works for you.

 

Hello.


Is this software still maintained?

 

Officially yes, in practice nobody knows for sure, the developer disappears for long periods of time. The latest version works with Win 10 1909.

 

Not by the developer (unless he reappears after being MIA for nearly 2 years)! However, there is pretty good support available right here on this forum.

While I know there are those who have had SD issues, I've been a user for 8 years without any problems whatsoever. Maybe the reason for my success is due to using SD simply (just it's original basic functionality) - i.e., no exclusions or commitments.

I absolutely love (and depend on) this software!

 

Though, this is mere speculation until someone has proof that those features are responsible for issues.

 

Wouldn't be the first time Let's keep positive. He may well be back. At any rate it still works fine for me.

 

Of course it is, after all l I did say "Maybe". However, there's no speculation at all that I've experienced zero problems throughout my 8 years of using SD (on a few very different PC's)!

 

I have bought and tested a large number of security programs in the last 15 years, and at the end of the day what really matters for security is Shadow Defender and a reliable fast backup imaging program, in my case Macrium Reflect. It would be awful to see SD drift into oblivion as the program is too useful and robust. Tony should be more aggressive in promoting it for schools and libraries, making money is the only incentive to keep a program updated.

ShadowUser by StorageCraft was the forerunner of Shadow Defender, a great program which also allowed persistent reboots in shadow mode. It was abandoned by StorageCraft because of rampant piracy and IMO it was competing with their main product ShadowProtect, an excellent albeit expensive imaging software. Unfortunately even though SD is very easy to use, average users don't really care that much, and therefore the only way to make money would be to licence it to big institutions which interact with the public.

 

If there were no keygen, this program would also have a future.
There is a good alternative - Toolwiz Time Freeze http://www.toolwiz.com/lead/toolwiz_time_freeze.php
Freeware. Works well on Windows 10 latest builds.

 

This software has not been updated for longer than Shadow Defender. And I had a lot of problems with this one.

 

Well this is one of the problems of SD, the developer should make it harder to activate it by unscrupulous users, piracy in the movie business is
questionable but they still make a lot of money, with security programs piracy will bankrupt the developer/s. As of alternatives, there are many but they are not as good as SD, I should think to mention the competition in this thread is not fair.

 

Mention of an alternative does not imply a lengthy discussion.

 

In terms of a future development of Shadow Defender, I think that it has almost got to the stage where it has reached a completed state and I'm beginning to think that many of the problems that we see are not to do with Shadow Defender but are hardware related. Having said that I do not hear of many people experiencing problems anyway.
As @pvsurfer says in post 5860 'I absolutely love (and depend on) this software!'

 

TTF was discussed on Wilder for a long time here
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/toolwiz-time-freeze.313299/
and I think it isn't equal competitor for SD...not so stable and not so featured.

 

What happened with Shadow Defender 1.4.0.680?
http://www.shadowdefender.com/download.html

 

Dunno but pick any you like here:

Code:

https://sendit.cloud/f/ml12a0s2fpa2

I personally put them there.

 

Here is mine backup versions.
http://www.mediafire.com/folder/po63lrcbxc3bp/Shadow_Defender

Meaby he discover huge bug or something and he decide to rollback to prevous version?!
but i dont think so... version was relased 2 years ago to this time.

 

http://www.shadowdefender.com/download/SD1.4.0.680_Setup.exe

 

Hello everyone!! I have a problem: I have the SD installed and when I click "enter shadow mode" the message "please wait" appears and does nothing else. It gets stuck and I have to restart the machine.

I have w7. This is SD 1.2.0.346 version. Thanks. (Sorry my bad english)