Rollback rx

That is a good Idea, one way or the other we must pin this down. My running apps/system tray items are: KAV 5, KAH, Winpatrol plus, Openoffice 2, Creative volume panel, Logitech mouse and keyboard, Nvida settings and Rollback RX.

 

Hmmmm, I don't see what this would have to do with it, perhaps just a shot in the dark ... what about the recent bunch of bad MS Windows Updates?

Acadia

 

My last Win update was a few days prior to my incident, so I don't believe that's a probable cause... But the facts are that something bad happened for sure on (at least) 3 systems with Rollback installed.

 

Pete~

Over the 3 weeks I have had Rollback, I must have done at least 3 defrags with PD, but the day of the incident was the first time I had it do a boot-time defrag since I installed Rollback. It's too early to tell if that was the culprit, but you can bet I won't be doing that again anytime soon!

Re uninstalling Rollback, that's a very risky proposition as you lose your snapshots! It's really too bad we can't just temporarily disable Rollback, (without actually uninstalling it) to preserve our snapshots. Just being able to do that would solve a lot of problems, including the creation of a restorable disk-image with the likes of TrueImage!

~pv

 

The only utilities I have is Appdefend and Tiny Firewall. I dont use anything else utility wise. but I dont belivethese two programs, which I have had installed ever since I installed Rollback for the first time, could do anything all of a sudden without any changes. I dont use anything else, ie antispyware, antitrojan or other HIPS that in theory could mess with Rollback.

The idea that MS updates could have done something, is not that far fetched actually, that is the only change to my system that has happend lately. Of course that doesnt explain why it has not messed up more Rollback installations...
And I agree: this is a serious problem, one should be able to trust this kind of software, it is in their nature so to speak
I know that new programs always has some problems in the beginning, the trustworthiness of this app lies in the hands of HDS I guess, depending on how they´ll handle our reports.

 

Well guys, it doesn't appear that any of us had other software in-common running at or before our similar Rollback incidents. It's starting to look like the problem is within Rollback. Chris may be onto something when he suggested that these problems seem to happen (even to his setup) when the number of snapshots exceed 20 or so. In any case, I sure hope HDS can find the bug and fix it quickly!

~pv

 

A few problems I cant make sense of;

(1) "In fact you can use any defragmenting tool on a Rollback Rx protected system. It won't damage the snapshots or system. However the defrag won't help much (or anything), because the defragmenting tool will not know the Rollback Rx Data strcuture"(Rollback Knowledge Base )

To me this implies that its useless to try running a defragmenter,as it may go through the motions and look very pretty,but will have zero effect.

The built in defragger only is useful for the following;"Another way to look at it, Rollback defragger only defrags the changes in each snapshot, that's why it's so fast"

It appears that whilst Rollback is working(and there seems no way to disable it,short of uninstalling,it is not possible to effectively defrag a disc.

I think everybody agrees complete disc defrag has to be carried out regularly-I try to defrag every few days depending on the confusion goin on.

A major worry, if this cant be easily carried out!

What am I missing

Maybe a disable button-a la GoBack,would generally help-but no doubt there is some technical limitation,probably the mapping sectors would still remain to upset the op. or vice versa.

At the moment I am testing a little free rocket defragger-http://www.majorgeeks.com/Power_Defragmenter_GUI_d4647.html


(2) I was disappointed that HDS Clone needs FAT partitioning to operate,surely not many users would still be using FAT.

Take both into account,please.Surely it could be a good Image alternative.


(3) I am using True Image for that occasion when my C drive destructs;

"True image cannot write over Rollback rx MBR and start a boot sequence. So the Windows cannot boot up after the cloning.
To fix this problem, try one of these options:

"Boot up the system from a Windows 98 start up floppy disk or a bootable CD and run "FDISK /MBR" from the command prompt to reset the MBR.
Or press HOME during boot up to enter the Rollback Rx subsystem console and select Uninstall to the baseline snapshot.
Or press CAPS LOCK & F8 keys (at same time) before the Rollback rx subsystem logo to bring up the rollback rx recovery console. Select uninstall from the recovery console, if it asks for password, the default password is 12345678 (if you didn't set one already)."

The safest options seem to be 2 or 3,possibly,as there seems to be some doubt about the command option.Is this correct?


(4) Is it practically possible to make a True Image snap with Rollback operating?

Theory and practice arent always the same-eg When using GoBack,I could Image with no problem,even when GB was active.

"If you use the file backup feature of Acronis, their shouldn't be any problems with RollBack Rx. Acronis file backup shouldn't modify the MBRs unless it does a complete drive image backup. The only way that Acronis could conflict with RollBack is if it changes the MBR.

The Acronis True Image cloning operations will definitely NOT work. The primary reason is that Acronis will not be able to see the data that is being protected and moved around on the hard drive by Rollback Rx."

This says that file backups are OK,but not complete drive images.

Fairly useless for me.



A gentle dig only,as the main program seems to be FANTASTIC except for the foregoing,-a proofreader is needed for the Rollback website FAQ-etc-ambiguity and spelling mistakes are much in evidence!



EDIT-regrettably,I seem to have duplicated some previous points made.

 

I have done no Windows updates since 11/05. I have been just switching back and forth between different betas restoring from an older image.

I have not used any defragmenters since installing Rollback. I haven't noticed much slowdown from my disks.

So we have had two reports in this thread about hal.dll? Is this correct?

The most I have received is the chkdsk running on restart and this was after I checked the option to only take snapshots when the system is in consistant state.

I'm racking my brain thinking about wwhat might cause this. OK to the people that had the hal.dll error were you using the option to only take snapshots when the system is in consistant state? Sorry if this has already been discussed but I just thought of it while posting.

Thanks,

Chris

P.S. Also another user had asked about Rollback and VMWare. According to the Rollback website both programs run fine together.

 

Thanks for the reply,Peter.

Looks like I will be uninstalling weekly or so-doesnt matter if I loose the baseline,as its not a pristine copy in any case.

Mike

 

Pete,

Just discovered this info from Acronis,which looks like the answer to our TI imaging problems,when using Rollback!!

Just image, BEFORE Windows loads,from the Acronis Rescue CD,thereby bypassing Rollback.

Works fine.

"There isn't a whole lot to mess up when imaging a hdd with True Image so why did this Hal.dll become corrupt?

Please note that this problem is most likely related to the boot.ini file which has not been imaged properly. This usually happens because of the conflict with some other software (e.g. partitioning software).

Please take a look at this Mcrosoft Knowledge Base article (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314477) describing the possible reasons and resolutions for this problem.

In order to avoid this problem in the future I would recommend you to create images when your PC is booted from Acronis True Image Bootable Rescue CD, since there is no operating system or any other applications running in this case. "(Alexy Popov-Acronis)

Mike

 

Hi, is anyone having random freeze up problems?

 

Yes Chris, both sukarof and I experienced the very same 'system32 missing hal.dll' incident on the very same day (and that in itself is spooky)! I don't know about sukarof, but at the time I had between 20 and 24 snapshots (that's a wee bit less than the 32000 maximum for our Pro version). Immediately afterwards, I found several of my snapshots were corrupt and would not restore!

Since then, I pruned my snapshots down to 17 and this morning upon bootup my system reported that my disk was 'dirty' - proceeding to perform a major cleanup and re-indexing! Again I thought it best to revert back to a previous snapshot and (you guessed it) it too resulted in the 'dirty disk' report and chkdsk process! I am positive that my system was quite stable when I created that snapshot.

I don't know what's going on, but it is a very serious matter and I am quite sure that Rollback is at the root of these problems. Although I reported this to HDS (via an online tech support submital), I have yet to receive any word from them. Fwiw, all of my snapshots ever since my baseline have been created when the disk is in a consistent state.

My first 2 1/2 weeks with Rollback was a beautiful dream. Now (ever since this past Monday) it's become a big nightmare!!!

~pv

 

Pete~ Even if the last Windows update had something to do with the Rollback incident, it's still a Rollback problem. The reason I say that (without reservation) is because my wife's PC has the exact same version of Windows that I have including the exact same updates and hot-fixes. She also uses Perfect Disk and the same file and reg cleaners that I use. She is an active PC user and has not suffered a hal.dll problem, nor a 'dirty disk' problem. The one significant difference between our configurations is that I have Rollback installed and she doesn't (instead, she chooses to rely entirely on True Image backups)! ~pv

 

Dont give up yet
Hopefully they have contacted you by now.
I got responce from HDS today. They are looking in to the matter with the missing files in system32 folder, including Hal.dll. They asked me to send the log files (128.dat, setup.log and subconsole.log) hopefully they can see something in them.

I do not have O&O defragger, but I did install O&O Clevercache a couple of days before I got the problem with ROllback. I dont know if it has anything to do with anything, just popped up in my mind...

I am not 100% sure, but I do belive I had that option checked. I remember reading something about that and decide to use that option, but then again I might have unchecked it later when testing stuff... but that was a couple of weeks ago.

 

Howdy; there is certainly no problem whatsoever with you quoting the Acronis support folks public statements, but I really think it would be helpful if you could include a link when you do so

 

Sorry to repeat my question but where is this option in the settings?

Ya, it was me. Thanks.

 

As requested;

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/archive/index.php/t-109198.html

 

Thank you mikisu - that is very helpful

 

My pleasure

Regards

Mike

 

Settings-->system settings

Thanks,

Chris

 

Ah, I was just trying to find on left sided column. Thanks.