ShadowProtect Desktop 3 is out...

The recommended Recovery Environment is based on WinPE2 and the legacy is WinPE1 based. From the early BartPE days the time problem has existed but for me it varies from zero to 1 hour. With SP my clock is moved forward around 12 hours. I haven't looked closely as I expect the clock to be wrong and I correct the time when Windows has booted.

 

Try booting the Legacy environment rather than the Recommended environment. I can tell you for sure that the Legacy environment is better for nForce chipsets. Don't worry, the Legacy environment is by no means old - it's based on Windows Server 2003.

 

I got the same hanging problem with the Legacy environment. I am going to do a bit of testing by getting rid of the RAID volumes, and just trying to install on a single hard disk to see if the problem is related to RAID.

I've also got a couple of other ideas.

BTW, the Asus P5B Deluxe uses the Intel P965 chipset.

 

Right, I have tried several things but the problem still exists.

Let me give my setup and what I have tried:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 OC'd to 3.24GHz
Asus P5B Deluxe WIFI (with WIFI module removed) with BIOS update 1216
2 x 1GB GEIL PC6400C4 ULL
2 x 500GB WD 5000AAKS HD's
nVidia 7600GT video card

All disabling was done within the BIOS and at each stage both the Recommended and Legacy environments wee tested:

1) I disabled RAID
2) I disabled the onboard JMicron SATA/PATA (ie. IDE) controller and booted from an external USB DVD drive.
3) I disabled everything else I could (eg. onboard sound controller, firewire controller, both LAN controllers)
4) Set CPU back to stock speed
5) Disabled USB and re-enabled JMicron SATA/PATA (ie. IDE) controller and booted from internal IDE DVD drive

I haven't tried disconnecting one of the hard disks yet, but will probably try that eventually.

Does anyone else have a similar system setup to me (particularly the Asus P5B Deluxe WIFI mobo and/or Intel Q6600 CPU) who is successfully using the SPD 3.0 boot environment without problems ?

 

A Couple of suggestions for SPD:

1) Boot environment: Allow user to set display resolution + load/include proper display driver (maybe include MassStorage and Graphics Driver Packs www.driverpacks.net)
2) Windows: Re-write ImageManager without .NET.

 

Strange, I have a very similar configuration on my primary dev machine and I don't experience those issues. Will test more.

My dev box:

Mobo based on Intel P965
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4GB RAM
2xWD3200AAKS SATA in RAID 0
2xHitachi 200GB SATA in RAID 0
nVidia GeForce 8600GT w/ DDR3

I'll double check the Intel HBA drivers on the recovery environment CD. I know that there was some SATA polling going on in a previous version of this intel driver that would cause some systems to hang if they had other SATA devices with old firmware, and that it could be resolved by simply upgrading your firmware if for instance you had a SATA CD/DVD drive. As a workaround I believe intel disabled this legitimate feature within their miniport driver, to accomodate bad SATA firmware on some SATA devices. I'll check to see if our recovery environment is using the workaround-driver. In the mean time, please update the firmware on all of your SATA devices (if possible), particularly if you have a SATA CD/DVD drive. Firmware upgrades in this circumstance often resolve the issue.

Regarding your requests.

1) I'll bring up your suggestion to have the ability to load a desired display driver, but as the purpose of the recovery environment really isn't to look pretty I doubt this one will be a high priority, so don't hold your breath.

2) We will not rewrite ImageManager as a non-.NET app. Frankly it takes about 5 times longer to write an app with MFC/ATL/DCOM/etc vs. C# and .NET. We may wrap ImageManager.exe with Thinstall or Salamander such that its binary is completely independent of the .NET framework, to ease deployment. Would that help you?

 

It does seem like the environment is waiting for something at each stage, and then eventually times out. I don't have any SATA CD/DVD drives, only an internal IDE DVD-RAM writer and an external USB DVD-RAM writer. Both hard disks are SATA, but they are pretty new.

How long does it take to boot the enivronment on your system, from the menu where you make the selection of Recommended or Legacy, to when the SPD GUI is displayed (ie. after all initialization) ?

Re. suggestions, thanks for at least considering them. Don't worry about wrapping up ImageManager, as it was more to do with the amount of memory it was using, rather than being reliant on .NET (I like the apps I use to be lean and mean ).

One more suggestion - the ability to configure the time zone the boot CD uses before it's burnt, so that it doesn't have to be manually set each time. Image For Windows allows you to do this and it's very useful as you may forget to change the timezone sometimes.

 

Hmm. Okay. I still suspect the intel storage matrix miniport driver. The symptoms match. I'll dig into this and keep you posted.

I'm at home right now so I don't have physical access to my dev box to test exact boot times of the recovery environment. It takes a couple of minutes.

As to memory utilization, it helps to know that .NET apps will suck up a lot of memory before they even do any real work, but they also yield (return) that memory back to other processes if those other processes need it. My initial reaction was the same as yours until I learned this, and indeed observed it. That really is better than simply having unused memory, doing nothing for you.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

That makes 3m10s, not much difference with SP2, which has a loading time of 3m30s on my computer and your computer is probably faster. I thought the loading time of SP3 was reduced with 50%.

 

While 3 minutes is still a lot longer than what I'm used to with IFD/IFL boot disks, mine is taking at least 10 minutes, and then there are delays/hangs when performing operations within the boot environment (eg. clicking on Backup).

Can this still play a factor when the disks are not configured as RAID (in both BIOS and Intel Matrix storage manager) ?

 

Yes, absolutely.

 

FYI - WinPE can experience slow boot times if you have floppy disk drive(s) enabled in your BIOS setup without actually having physical floppy disk drive(s) connected to your machine.

If this applies to you, simply enter your BIOS setup and disable all floppy drives.

 

It makes the WinPE boot itself and all operations within WinPE very very slow.

 

Pete,

It totally disables them.

Silver

 

I did some testing, to check if the boot sequence makes a difference in the loading time of the SP recovery CD.
To avoid any confusing regarding the loading time : my loading time begins, when I click on the option "1. Start StorageCraft Recovery Environment (Standard Drivers)" and ends when I see the main menu of "ShadowProtect Desktop v2.0".

1. First I changed the boot sequence in BIOS (CDROM, HARDDISK, FLOPPY) and even disabled the floppy disk with "Device Manager".

Loading time = 2m52s.

2. Then I kept the boot sequence in BIOS and enabled the floppy disk with "Device Manager"

Loading time = 2m52s.

3. Then I changed the boot sequence in BIOS (FLOPPY, CDROM, HARDDISK) and kept the floppy disk enabled. In other words back to my first configuration.

Loading time = 2m52s.

That surprised me a little, because the very first time (long ago), the loading time was 3m30s. I have no explanation for this improvement of 38 seconds and I didn't change anything in my hardware or drivers.
It could be my mistake, but my habit is to avoid such mistakes and certainly not a mistake of 38 seconds.

One thing is certain : changing the boot sequence and/or disabling the floppy drive didn't make any difference on MY computer and that was the main goal of my test.

 

That was indeed the problem as I don't have a floppy drive!

After disabling, the hanging problem disappeared although the first time I booted the SPD environment (the Vista one) there was no mouse cursor visible. However, this has only happened once.

Many thanks for not forgetting about this problem grnxnm, and for coming up with the solution!

I was beginning to lose faith in SPD, but I can now test it thoroughly.

The clock being moved forward is most annoying though. I hope this can be fixed soon (whether by MS or SC).