Returnil Personal 2.0, blue screen, disk corruption

I am posting here because I saw another Returnil thread redirected to here by the moderator.

Yesterday, I installed Returnil Virtual Session 2008 Personal Edition version 2.0.0.5011. I used it for 6 or 7 hours before shutting down the computer for the night.

Problem 1: As a test of the virtuosity of my system partition (C: ), I saved an email attachment from web based (Yahoo) email with Session Lock enabled. Using the file browser to locate the save point, I clicked on C: in the dropdown list box. I immediately received a blue screen with the system halted. I have not had the BSOD with Vista (new Acer laptop) since I started using it last September ... heavily every day. I repeatedly tried to reproduce the problem, but I could not. I was able to save file to various locations in the C partition. On reboot, they were satisfyingly gone.

Problem 2: The next morning I started the computer with System Protection enabled in RVS preferences. Everything seemed ok until I clicked on the shortcut on the QuickLaunch bar for the OpenOffice wordprocessor. The executable was not found. On stepping through Program Files to the program folder within the OOo folder, I encountered a message saying that the folder was corrupted and inaccessible. No disc corruption has happened with this laptop before this point. Chkdsk found and fixed a problem with $I30 index for file 5630. It also quickly listed dozens of orphaned files. I do not know what is meant by orphaned unless it's that they have incomplete index entries. After these repairs, the OOo shortcut resumed working.

Note that there was a quick succession of severe power fluctuations due to a storm a few hours after installing RVS and with Session Lock active. The power went off 2 or 3 times in quick succession ... long enough to cause my LCD monitor to go black. The laptop, fully charged, did not show any obvious problems. I continued without booting and without apparent problems for several hours more until shutting down for the night. Shutdown was normal. Startup the next morning was normal.

System: Model: Aspire 5610Z BL50, Intel Core Duo T2080 at 1.73 gHz, 2 gig RAM, 160 gig Harddisk, Vista Home Premium fully up-to-date.

I am now very nervous about using RVS. No other posts that I have found seem to describe exactly what I have experiend. I have searched within Wilders Forum and on the internet in general. Any advice will be appreciated.

 

I use Returnil for a while Now with No ill effects and really do not know the cause of your problem.but perhaps coldmon from returnil, will be here at some point to answer your concerns.One thing I did see you mention Is the storm. If you where using a laptop during a storm you should not be using power from (AC) Wall current.It sounds like you got surged or it crashed from the power failure, this is very bad for any electronics and the fact computer data can be lost or corrupted from this type of surges or spikes and at worse, damaged circuits. No matter how good a surge protection device Is, In storms like this its best to avoid use If at all possiable.If you must use any pc during a storm with a laptop or any pc,you may want to consider external battery back up.My feeling here the storm may very well have been the culprit.

 

Thanks, djohn. It is good to know you are not having this issue. I wonder what version of Windows you are running and what version of RVS? You are right about the danger of power surgers. I always disconnect the power. This time I did not know a storm was in progress. An important note I forgot to include is that my monitor is external. That is why it was possible for the monitor to go off while the laptop seemed to be unaffected.

 

Hi RainForest,

I apologize if this was the impression as our official support forums are at CastleCops. I frequently post links to information or other points of interest related to a Wilder's discussion thread in the CCSP forums if it has relevance to a question a user asked. The membership at Wilder's have engaged in quite a few lengthy discussions about RVS, using the program, comparing it to similar solutions, and how it functions when used with other programs and rather than quote or paraphrase the discussion I feel it is more appropriate to give them a chance to read the answer as well as the context of that answer.

When did this happen? Can you describe the relation of the power surges to the problem reports? Did you receive any error messages regardless of whether it was RVS or another program? Also what other programs are running concurrently with RVS (Security? Recovery? Other?)

Thanks
Mike

 

Thank-you for your reply. I discovered the forum at Castle Cops after posting here. You mentioned there that it is the official Returnil site, so I also posted there. I'm sorry to have two threads going on different forums.

I was not clear about the power surges. I have a separate, external monitor attached to the laptop. One of the 2 or 3 quick light flickers was almost a second long. It caused my monitor backlight to go off. Pressing the on/off push button on the monitor bezel brought it right back on with no harm. (I hadn't known a storm was in progress.) There were no error messages on the laptop nor any indication of any kind that it had suffered a problem. There were no program error messages. I continued using it for some hours. I had no problems of which I was aware. Finally, I shut the machine down normally - again with no error messages. In the morning, I booted Windows - all seemed normal until, after a couple of hours, I decided to use the OOo wordprocessor. As usual, I clicked the shortcut, but, as described above, I received a dialog box informing me that a search was being made for the file associated with the shortcut. This led to the discovery of the invalid index node that chkdsk was able to repair.

I noticed in another thread that there is/was an issue with hibernation. It is possible that my machine hibernated at some point with Session Lock enabled. I normally hit the Sleep button when I leave the machine. After an hour, it leaves sleep mode for hibernation. This may have occurred. I wasn't paying attention at the time. If it happened, it awakened with no problem. I would have noticed if it hadn't.
The problem of the blue screen with Session Lock enabled while saving an attachment to the C: drive from Yahoo web-based email happened before the power clitches. It happened only once.
Other security software running on this machine is:
1. the Spybot resident - (teatimer 1.5.2.16)
2. Avira (free edition) - product version 8.1.0.308
3. ZoneAlarm (free edition) - version 7.1.254.000
Although I also use Ad-Aware, there is no resident module and I did not run it yesterday nor today.
I am very excited about the protection this product can provide. With my system-level background, I fully understand exactly what it is doing. It behaved very well in all other respects.
Again, thank-you for your attention.

 

Vista sp1 with Returnil free

 

This discussion has moved to the Castle Cops forum. That is the official site for Returnil discussions, I have now learned. Paste the following link into your browser address bar:

http://www.castlecops.com/t223421-Returnil_Personal_2_0_blue_screen_disk_corruption.html

 

So as not to duplicate assistance, We'll bring this thread to a close. If for whatever reason it needs to be re-opened, Please feel free to PM myself or any other Wilders Forum Staff.

Bubba