Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

This beta has an expiration date, which is 1 Feb.
Best regards,
Wajamus
AX Team


There it is, right up front as Mr. Waj originally said. I just wish the man who scammed me out of $1,100 on home repair that was never done, that he would offer a refund as Mr. Waj is doing, vs just disappearing. THAT is something to be emotionally broken up and anguished about, not this.

 

This is true but at the time the Feb 1st date was mentioned the expectation was that either a new beta or an official release would be made to replace the beta. Now we find out that not only has the beta expired but that what the beta was testing has been put on hold while other problems are dealt with (what other problems?). So its not so much that the beta expired but that the situation was not made clear as to what was happening. Any work that was done by the beta testers was a waste of time, any work that was done by the developers relating to the beta was also a waste of time. Basically we are back at the time of the original release of V2, no progress has been made since then.

You may well say that no beta replacement was promised but I have never heard of the expiration of a beta and then nothing. It was therefore reasonable for those beta testing (and those interested in, and waiting for, a new functional release) to expect something to come after the beta.

When you get right down to it all that was needed was for the developers to give the folks here a heads up on the situation, they did not do that until the speculation mill began to churn apx a week after the beta had ceased to work.

 

Yes you are right, there was a "reasonable expectation" that after Feb 1 a replacement for the expired beta would be available.
Right now am in such a state of dismay after months of being put off by crooked repair man, and now finally realizing the eleven hundred dollars is in fact gone, that to read of the upsetedness over this issue seemed trivial. But it's not.

 

via e-mail

Its not the dollars,,,,in fact I never did buy V2, nor did I try the beta, but I do not like the way things have gone. In the early days I was a very big booster of AX64, and I could have gotten the program for free as many on this forum did but I felt I wanted to support Isso given his clear dedication not only to the program but even more so to the end user. He spent a lot of time helping me (via e-mail) to determine what was interfering with my use of AX64 (and this was before I was a paying customer) so I felt he deserved our/my support. Then things changed with his loss of control of the product and have been going steadily downhill from there. So its not the dollars that make it NOT trivial, its the disappointment at the possible demise of what could (and maybe still will be but God knows when) a game changer product. I don't believe this would ever have happened had Isso remained in charge and its a dam shame he did not.

 

Hm, looks like some of us have more concern for the software, more than the developers
By the way, so, nobody knows the change log?
So I'd better stick to what's working for me then.

 

Mix-iz-pittle-lik... I perused the thread and found that almost all the changes in the v1.4.x series had to do with RECOVERY MEDIA issues, with v1.4.1.48 dealing with a bug that popped up during the v1.4.x testing (couldn't find old images).

Personally, I've been using it since it's release and it's been error FREE (for me, at least). There's nothing in it that dealt with intermittent HOT restore failures so it won't help anybody in that particular bowl... other than those, it's worked pretty well (it was the last v1 BETA release).

 

Thanks Mr Frog.
So, am I correct to say that I can use 1.3.0.7 just fine (since I'm fine with its recovery media function) & won't lose any interesting functionalities from versions beyond it?

 

Sure can!

 

I would suggest that you take a look at my post above (link is below), I was using that version successfully untill I began having the issues described.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre...napshot-software.339999/page-394#post-2455123

 

To Mr. Peter. Am so sorry, how horrible. What is the answer to such wickedness. May you in time recover, the money never, but hopefully at least some peace. If a man sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet, well it's painful, but at least you know he is an honest crook. Theft by confidence and deception is totally despicable. Again, my condolence to you.

As for v1.148, am holding on to it for all eternity, and maybe even longer. And a backup copy, and the serial number for it which the late Mr. Isso himself presented to me, both are in my safety deposit box under armed guard.

 

For the folks who were burned by the expiration of the Beta versions 2.0.0.548 and 549:

Luckily the method they used to make these versions unusable are not very elaborate. Just a hard coded date check within all the executables, but no "Expired" flag in the Registry or some well hidden file. And the date is only checked once at the start of the program. Easy to defeat...

Note: I do not see this as piracy, in this special case I see it as an act of self defense.

To continue using the beta just set the system date to mid January 2015, start the software, restore the date. This can be automated with a simple batch file.

If you want to use automatic backups, you will have to edit the scheduler entry manually.

And to create a rescue media you need to do this using the stable version 2.0.0.528. This rescue media handles the backups created by the beta without issues. If you want to install the startup manager you will also have to exchange the "Boot.wim" file in C: \Recovery with the one from the resue media.


Cheers
manolito

 

And this happened with 1.3.0.7?
Hm, so far I've never needed to go cold, all hot restore worked just fine.
Let me ask the spokeperson

How do you respond to the above precaution?

So guys (Mr Goodman & Mr Frog), between 1.3.0.7 and 1.4.1.48 (and all versions in between [in my archive I have 0.18, 0.19, 1.24, 1.36] ), which one is the best choice?
Or everything depends on one's configuration (& one's lucky stars)?

Again, just to make it clear, I have been holding on with 1.3.0.7 because I felt than I can afford that while waiting for a stable v2 (or even v3 etc.).
But with recent development (where AXTM team even can't tell the buyers of v2 when they will get a stable v2), now I have more interest to find out, whether I need to upgrade this 1.3.0.7.

Way to go

 

I have been using 1.3.0.7 for quite a long time with little issue. I experience maybe 5% failure of hot restore and 0% failure of cold. Then, Starting a month or so ago the failures of hot went up to maybe 30%. Not great for sure but I figured cold restores would be fine until the new version of 2 was released. Then, a couple of weeks ago I had my first cold restore failure and then again 2 days ago (2 cold failures). I have not had occasion to try any restores with 1.4.1.48 and will do my best to avoid doing one unless I have to,,,,I just do not trust the program any longer.

 

I'll give you guys credit for sticking with a lame duck for so long.
I realized that it wasn't going anywhere quite a while ago.

 

Main point here... you better go COLD just to make sure it'll work when you need it most... you don't want those kind of surprises.

BG's system has been running like a clock for a long time, now all of a sudden he's experiencing some "incidents." Do you really think that v1.3.0.7 is slowly changing over time and going bad? I didn't think so. Most likely, BG's system has been changing ever so slightly over time and maybe now is causing some problems with his v1.3.0.7. His documented COLD restore failures are very unusual even for this app. In his case I would have tried additional COLD restore attempts with a different RECOVERY MEDIA version (maybe v1.4.1.48... remember, the main improvements along that development path <v1.3.0.7 > v1.4.1.48> were mostly PE-based).

And in your case, I would squirrel away a safe v1.3.0.7 system image, install v1.4.1.48, create a new RECOVERY CD (and LOCAL BOOT environment if you use it), and a new v1.4.1.48 BASELINE and move on from there... just to get a good feel for the reliability of v1.4.1.48. If you take this advice, make sure, if you're using the LOCAL BOOT environment, you REMOVE that environment (using the installed v1.3.0.7 app) before you remove the app itself... then the rest should go pretty clean.

That's mostly in the eyes of the user. At the developers level, they state that v1.4.1.48 is the most trouble free (and has had the most fixes applied) of all the v1 releases... I guess you can find out yourself by taking my suggestion above (that's what I did a long time ago).

Whatever floats yer boat, ImpMeister.

 

Hmmm
I wonder, what could you do that made it so upset? I'll have to be very careful then...
So you left AX64 brotherhood after those cold failures?

Yes, sir, thank you for your suggestions, sir.
I will do it & report back to you, if anything out of ordinary happens.
By the way, I used EasyBCD to install 1.3.0.7's ISO image in my boot menu. Am I correct to say, that I just need to use 1.4.1.48 to make an ISO image with a same filename as the old ISO & then replace the old ISO image with it?

Another by the way, what were the reasons for the jump from 1.4.1.48 to 2.x.x.x?

 

I would say Froggie is correct. My problems with cold restore occurred shortly after an MS update. If you have been doing restores, both hot and cold, without issue you probably are OK to continue. Just wanted you to know that there are potential issues with cold restore which previously had been perfect.

 

Your archive should contain 18, 19, 23, 24, 36, 43 (Browser not functional) & 48.

Wow! I didn't know there were any kind of stars at all in the 5th dimension!

 

While I might overlook 23, I think I could deliberately leave the one with dysfunctional browser alone.

Here, we create our own stars. We can even make star shaped stars.

 

Wow!! I WILL find a way to get there!

 

There still seems to be a lot of inquiries about what versions work and what versions don't work, so I'll offer my 2¢!
On a x64 W7 SP1 utilizing a SSD (Seems there are questions about that too!) PC that I built, I only ever "hot" restore and have never had a failure with versions 1.3.7, 1.4.1.48 or 2.000.528! I've never even experimented with warm restores. I only manually make snapshots and when I reach 10 to 12 I start a new chain. The only issue I've had, and it's with all three versions, if I attempt a restore via media ( I tested this a few times.) it doesn't see my MS 5000 mouse so I have to get my USB mouse.
I went from v1.3 to 1.4 in the context of the latest and greatest. That pretty much sums up what happened with moving to v2 as I'll probably never use its features.
I will state this, months ago, a poster mentioned that he/she felt that the v2 snapshots took longer than v1s. An AX staffer rebutted that, stating it was the same engine so it could not be the case. However, I would concur with the poster. Now perhaps my system is just growing, however, snapshots always took less than 30 seconds but from day one using v2 they take 40+ seconds. Because of that I'm always tempted to go back to v1, especially since I have no interest in v2's features but I'm still using v2. What does 10 seconds matter?

 

Thanks Ratchet, that info should help some. I've found that system configurations that created intermittent HOT restore problems were definitely assisted with the introduction of the WARM restore in v2 (not with the HOT, it was the same as v1) and definitely with the HOT restore in v2 Build #548. The problem is, many new problems became available with these releases and that's why most folks were craving additional BETAs. In my case, a perfectly functioning, HOT restoring (under any version) system failed under Build #548... haven't a clue as to why. Devs reported back to me that they had found the issue and were trying to decide how to deal with it (more than one fix method was available)... nothing since.

I think the snapshot time has increased a tad but I believe the "discovery" method (what are the changes to be dealt with) was changed in v2 and as a result, the time to restore has also grown a bit.

 

I probably should also have mentioned that there has never been a conflict with W7's own backup tool, Paragon, which I still own but only occasionally use or Macrium Reflect v5.xxx, which I use daily in addition to daily use of AX64. Have a good weekend Frog!