Truecrypt 5.0 PROBLEMS AND ISSUES

If you have an image of your drive before trying the system encryption, why not try it? Mine is working fine - as advertised.

BTW, If you want to create a new image with TC5.0 on the drive, be sure that system encryption is turned off. You will get a normal image. Upon restoration, you will need to turn system encryption "on" and reboot.

 

Do you mean decrypt the hard drive before you make an image? what do you mean "turn off and turn on" i would guess you mean make a backup of your c:\ unencrypted in an image ?

 

Exactly, I'm talking about for testing purposes.

 

Thanks Gerard for the encouragement to image my HD before installation. It makes perfect sense - and I am pleased to learn that HD encryption can be toggled ON / OFF to enable imaging after TrueCrypt 5 is installed.

I am reluctant to charge forward (even with a saved image). I use a ThinkPad laptop, which has the HD locked with a Password set inside the BIOS - and some other security (fingerprint login) software that uses a security chip on the motherboard and a pre-boot area of the drive. Honestly, I am afraid to add another pre-boot program until I understand how the various pieces of software would behave afterward. OK - I admit it, I am a coward! LOL

 

I must say, I'm curious to know the outcome, but agree that you are right in being cautious in moving up to it, and your not a coward.

Let us know what happens when you finally do it.

 

Greetings everyone,

Just found this forum looking for other people who tried TrueCrypt 5.0. I downloaded that version yesterday and spent the evening today trying to get it to encrypt Windows XP on my laptop.

My experience so far...

First of all, I got a clean drive to test with and installed a fresh copy of Windows XP SP2. The step with creating a recovery CD was the source of the first problem.

Burning the image TC gives you with Alcohol 120% doesn't work. Maybe it requires some special configuration (I left all settings on default), but the burnt CD failed to validate. I then tried to burn a second CD with PowerISO - it wouldn't even recognize the file as a valid image.

Then I did what TC recommends, click on the link for burning software, download InfraRecorder and burn with that. This did work, though I think it should be a considered a bug when your iso image requires some special software to use.

Anyway, validation passed and at that point I ran into the same issue as a number of other people on this forum. At 21% the encryption process died with a "Data error (cyclic redundancy check)" message. I ran checkdisk with the option to test for bad sectors. There were no problems found.

So that's where I am at this point - 21% of the disk (the partition rather) is encrypted, the rest isn't. I have no problems with the TC boot loader, so I can restart and do whatever else I want to the machine.

If anyone finds a solution to the data error problem, please post it here.

 

perhaps antivirus software is removing the boot program or something. I am trying this now in my system, i have sorted out my partitions with newly encrypted versions, so im nice and fresh on XTS, and now im testing WDE on my c:\ partition. i had alcohol problem too, but i did not burn when i saw that screen, i went to the link on the program and got another advanced program from the list. It varified, and so far im at 55% complete encrypted.

 

I tried whole-disk encryption with TC5.
System: Windows XP SP2, 2 partitions (well, 3; primary NTFS, extended, in-extended NTFS)

Installed fine; configuration process a breeze. Rebooted and carried out encryption fine.

After rebooting post-encryption the second NTFS partition ceased to be detected by the operating system. I could not mount it in any way or form.
A partition repair tool (ARAX disk doctor) detected the partition, but I couldn't mount nor use it.

The Disk Management in 'Computer Manager' in windows saw the partition as free space on the drive, but the extended partition itself wrapping it was still present. i.e. the partition itself was not detected - not that it was detected as not being a partition.

I had a hypothesis that I perhaps had to mount this other 'non-partition' somehow but honestly that didn't make much sense to me and I couldn't work out how to do it regardless.

I am looking forward to TC5 working properly. TC4 changed my computing life.

 

http://img159.imageshack.us/my.php?image=truecryptdataerrorxp3.jpg

I get the same error and running check disk didn't solve the problem for me either.

 

Truecrypt 5.0 PROBLEMS AND ISSUES - Boot loader?

Hi

I'm running XP SP2 with my primary disc partitioned into C and D drives. I have installed Truecrypt 5, prepared my rescue disc and encrypted my C drive. However when I boot from my C drive the only dialog that I get is 'TrueCrypt Boot Loader'. I do not get any of the options.

I have restored the boot loader but it doesn't change things. I then restored the data key but this had no effect. However I can boot directly from the rescue disc without problems.

Has anyone got any suggestions as to how I can sort this out?

Thanks

Mike

 

Re: TrueCrypt 5.0 Reports "Invalid Handle" on Network Mount File Container

I, too, am experiencing the "Invalid Handle" error when trying to access a network file container with TrueCrypt 5.0. All my symptoms are the same as "kpGrelling" describes with one interesting addition ... the file container that I cannot access from my PC, my wife CAN access from her Mac.

I originally created the TrueCrypt 5.0 file container (that I am referring to above) on my PC and can access it locally without problem. I copied the file container to a network drive that my wife's Mac has access to ... and she can access it fine. But, as noted above, I cannot access the file container from my PC (the PC that created the file container) when the file container resides on the network drive.

 

Re: TrueCrypt 5.0 Reports "Invalid Handle" on Network Mount File Container

To those who are getting the CRC Error during encryption, after looking at the graphic, an idea has come to mind.

Try running a full chkdsk on the drive(s) in question. Its possible that the error exists in the source data itself, and TrueCrypt is attempting to prevent further damage.

 

Posted by Tadoussac

After making a fresh HD image, I decided to install TC5.0 and test Full Drive Encryption - despite my earlier concerns about conflicts with other pre-Boot software on my laptop. Here's what happened next:

(1) On the reboot, where you test the TC Bootloader, I was greeted with a BSOD: "Hardware Malfunction - MMI: Parity Check / Memory Parity Error". I did a forced shut-down with the power button.

(2) On the next reboot, the 1st screen to open was the TC Bootloader. When I entered my PW, the WinXP splashscreen loaded - but then the screen went black, and all HD activity stopped. I did another forced (power button) shutdown.

(3) On the 3rd reboot, my ThinkPad security login software (also pre-boot) loaded for the fingerprint reader. After swiping, and having the credentials accepted, the TC Bootloader opened --- but this led me to the same black screen I received in step 2.

Fortunately, the TrueCrypt developers built in a simple way to exit a failed Bootloader test, and I was able to recover my original bootloader without using the TC Rescue Disk, my image DVDs, or any other heroic efforts. (phew!)

My conclusions:

1) I believe the Memory Parity Error message was software driven - (I double checked with memtest-86, and passed all tests.)

2) The TC bootloader conflicts with the ThinkPad pre-boot security software. Hopefully a work-around will be discovered.

3) I'm back to TC5 traveler mode - it's terrific, and I am happy.

 

Re: TrueCrypt 5.0 Reports "Invalid Handle" on Network Mount File Container

We did that already, it didn't change anything.

Right now I booted from a FreeBSD 7 install CD and am overwriting the contents of the entire disk with random data (should have done that anyway before encrypting). Afterward I'll do a disk refresh to make sure that there are no problems reading any sectors.

Somehow though I think this is a problem with TC. Will reinstall XP once the overwrite procedure finishes, maybe something will change.

 

I tried 5.0 on several Thinkpads and had the same issue with older ones (X31, T43), but no problem with a T60. I traced the issue to the ATI video drivers where these conflict with the Truecrypt drivers. I also tried different ATI drivers with no luck.

Once I reverted to the VGA drivers on the X31, it booted fine and started encrypting. Since the MS VGA driver does not work well at all (very slow), I decided to just create a hidden volume for now and wait until the TC forums are back up to see if there is a fix or a work-around.

 

Thanks kansei!

I have an R60, which is relatively new - and it uses the ATI Drivers. I never considered that video drivers might be an issue. Like you, I am waiting until the TC forums are up, and more people are offering feedback.

Thanks.

 

When attempting to encrypt the system partition, I encountered the "data error (cyclic redundancy check)" popup after the 11%-complete on encrypting the system disk. I hit the defer button, followed the directions to decrypt the volume, and TrueCrypt effectively restored the system to as-was. I ran a check disk on the drive, but this did not resolve the problem. If anyone discovers a solution to this problem, please post.

I haven't encountered any other problem with TrueCrypt 5.0 after testing various features on a couple of different Windows platforms -- great software.

Future feature suggestion -- When encrypting the system disk, TrueCrypt forces you to create a rescue CD. I didn't have software ready to burn the CD, so I networked the ISO file over to another machine, burned a CD, then mounted it in the laptop's drive, and TrueCrypt validated and moved forward... It would be nice if TrueCrypt would let you manually skip the create-rescue step if you wanted to during testing. Also, if a USB drive could be used for this purpose, it would offer greater utility over a CD.
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Testing environment -- Truecrypt 5.0, ThinkPad X41, Windows Vista, both current on maint…this laptop does not have the IBM-preboot config and has been reformatted ground up. It has two NTFS primary partitions on the disk, and I attempted to use both encryption options 1) Encrypt the Windows system partition… and 2) Encrypt the Whole disk… and both scenarios resulted in the same CRC data-error problem.

 

I had the same problem with a CRC error. I ran SpinRite (from GRC.com) on the partition and it found 1 bad sector. After SpinRite was finished with the partition I tried TC system partition encryption again with success.

 

Heavy drive activity "fixed" your problem. SpinRite is a joke. No serious person in the IT industry or in Data Recovery accepts it as a legitimate program. Steve Gibson has been exposed so many times that it's hard to believe anyone still pays any attention to him.

 

Wow...

 

I think you're on to something here. This morning I overwrote the contents of the entire drive with random data, followed by a second read/write op with no changes (dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/ad0 bs=1m && dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/ad0 bs=1m).

I'm not sure if the second operation is needed, I wasn't in a rush so wanted to see if there might be any problems reading the data. When I got home I again installed Windows XP SP2 and tried to encrypt the system partition.

This time, the process went through with no problems at all. By the way, even though I wasn't able to use alcohol 120% to burn the recovery CD, it is able to mount the image to a virtual drive and pass validation.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what to suggest to those people who run into this problem and are unable to overwrite the entire drive. See if just refreshing the contents does the trick (the second dd command). Otherwise I'm not really sure.

 

I encountered the same problem on an ThinkPad X41 (2525-63G) too (but at 46%), I really hope that this problem isn't connected with the computer model.

Have anyone successfully encrypted a ThinkPad X41 system drive?

I also agree that it would be nice to be able to skip recovery disc validation, my X41 doesn't have a CD/DVD-reader.

 

See my post here: http://forums.truecrypt.org/viewtopic.php?t=8708

Try doing a disk refresh and let us know if this solves the problem. Many people are having the same issue, so it would be good to know if a refresh is sufficient to fix it (because then it could be implemented as part of the encryption process).

 

I have what sounds like an identical setup. Have you tried TC5 yet, or found anything to suggest there would/would not be a problem with the stacked pre-boot security?

 

Hi Joseph_N:

Yes, I tried TC5 - it was not successful, and I describe my experience in this thead, post #38.