Rollback Rx and Service Parititions

Hi all,

I have a Thinkpad R61i. On it is a hidden service partition that I can boot into in the case I need to recover from a virus, software screwup etc and reimage the drive from a backup.

I'm thinking of getting Rollback RX and have a few questions.

1) Does this program write to the MBR? If it does, will I be able to access the rescue partition?

2) It seems that this program is designed to software screwups. will it be hekpful in the case a virus stops windows from rebooting? What about rolling back a newly installed driver with a serious conflict? It won't be effective in the case of hard disk failure right?

Thanks in advance,
Jeremy

 

1) With Rollback, has anyone tried it either with a multiboot system or a service partition? What is the process to get Rollback to recognize all bootable partitions?

2) Good point! But I guess thats where full scale backup and imaging tools comes in.

 

You should be able to still access your rescue partition with rollback installed. I have an acronis secure zone which is a hidden partition containing my back up images and rollback works fine alongside that.

You should be able to rollback fine from any of the disasters you mentioned. In case of harddisk failure rollback has an imaging option which you can use to make backup images of all partitions including hidden ones.

I've never used rollback in a multiboot environment but it does have an option during install which allows you to use it in a multiboot environment.

 

Inspired by another thread here I tested release 8.1 last week.
I noticed that not only the MBR, but also the partition table gets overwritten by the bootcode. Rollback RX chainboots the original MBR from a backup file, so for Windows there is no problem. My Linux installation choked on it, though and also any rescue CD/service would interpret the MBR as unpartitioned.

Not good.

 

does anyone have screenshot of what a boot up would look like under rollback rx? does the service partition appear?

 

Well i don't have anything that can take pre-boot screenshots so i just used my digital camera. Heres a couple of shots of what the rollback boot screen looks like. You can't see partitions from the rollback boot screen. However if your service partition has a boot option that should show up after the rollback boot screen. Thats what my acronis boot manager and powershadow boot screen does.

 

Thanks farmerlee for going to all that trouble. So as I understand it, the Rollback RX mini os will pop up that shows in your second screenshot giving you the options to take a snapshot, rollback, advanced options, uninstall and exit. However my current Thinkpad has a screen that shows the lenovo, intel and thinkpad logo where I have an option to press F1 to enter bios and the thinkvantage button to enter the rescue partition. When does that screen come in?

 

Nice to have such a digital camera. I could use it to take pictures of fast disappearing BSOD's, so I can finally read them for a change.

 

Well on my thinkpad the logo, bios and recovery boot screen always come up first before any other. I don't normally use rollback on my thinkpad but i just tried it out and the RB boot screen came up afterwards. My thinkpad is an old x23 model so i can't guarantee yours will work the same. I'd suggest you do a complete hard drive image beforehand just in case.

 

Another way that works is to disable "Automatic Restart after System Failure":

 

Many thanks, alot cheaper.

 

Hey guys, sorry to bring this up again but can anyone confirm or deny that Rollback RX works on laptops such as thinkpads with a rescue partition?

 

I can confirm that it works on an X23 thinkpad with rescue partition.