Imaging problem (must restart) and mounting / unmounting problem (errors)

I'm trying the demo of Paragon Drive Backup 9 on Windows XP SP2 and I've had a couple of problems already.

1) My understanding was that I'd be able to perform backup operations without having to reboot my computer or anything ("Perform system backup without interrupting Windows..."). However, the first time I tried to image a drive, the software told me that I had to reboot in order to continue:

2) I imaged a drive (as described above -- I had to restart the computer
and have Windows unavailable for hours while the imaging process was
performed in "boot-time mode") and then tried to mount the archive. The
first time I tried to mount it I got a cryptic error:

I tried it a second time and it mounted. I'm also trying the ShadowProtect demo, and in that app I noticed that there were actually 2 volumes mounted by Paragon, one of which doesn't have a drive letter assigned. I eventually found that I could also see that in Paragon by clicking the Volume Explorer sub-tab of the Disk View tab.

Now, when I try to UNmount that archive, I get the same cryptic error message as when I tried to mount it the first time. So now I have 2 volumes mounted by Paragon, one of which has no drive letter, and apparently I can't unmount either of them, and Paragon offers no explanation of what is wrong or what to do about it.

 

Hello Jawbone,

That error code means the image is in use. You might have mounted the same image twice. Make sure you don't have anything opened from the mounted archive. Secondly, do a simple reboot and then try to unmount. Remove the drive letter in Disk Management before unmounting.

 

Hello Tommy,

Well, like I said, I did try to mount the archive twice, since the first time there was an error message and no visible indication that it had been mounted. Apparently the first mount operation had done something because I later saw 2 mounted volumes in the Volume Explorer in Paragon, but the first one had no drive letter and didn't show up in Windows Explorer.

I shut down all applications and all Windows Explorer windows and tried to unmount the archive. I got the following message:

I rebooted the computer and the 2 volumes that Paragon had mounted don't appear anywhere (Paragon's Volume Explorer or Windows Explorer).

I tried mounting the archive again and this time I noticed this Windows alert pop up in the notification area:

Then that alert disappears and a Windows dialog window opens that says:

At some point after that, or in between the 2 Windows alerts, an "Operation failed" error message pops up in Paragon. This time the error code is 0xe0000026.

I rebooted the computer and tried again and the same thing happens.

 

Sorry I didn't catch this earlier, but the mounting feature is not available in the demo version of the product as well as the converting dynamic to basic volume feature.

 

I don't think that's the issue. I talked to a Paragon sales rep before trying the product and he told me "I've cut and released a fully functional 30-Day NFR Eval license of Drive Backup 9.0 PRO" and gave me a product key. Also, I have actually had an archive mounted. When I tried twice to mount an archive (as I described), the second time it did mount with a drive letter and was available in Windows Explorer.