Snapshot not Booting after Update

Hello folks,
although i h' been using FD for past 10 months without much problem. However their were some things i wanted to bring to notice to the Advanced FD Users here.
I had installed Deepfreeze on my Primary and Freezing and Thawing by Deepfreeze had gone smoothly, until one day i decided to Copy/Update of my Primary when i was in Secondary. Primary still had DeepFreeze installed ie., in Thaw mode.
Although it Updated correctly, the Primary failed to Boot correctly. I could hear the Windows Boot Tone, but the Screen would not show the Desktop (Screen was dark).


I tried everything I could think of i.e.,Remove FD / Completely remove FD, tried formatting my PC ,since I had my Back-up Archive. Then again I tried Installing/Uninstalling Deepfreeze, so that the MBR is correctly written and unwritten.
Nothing has helped, my Backup Archive contained fresh install of Winxp SP3, MS-Office, Avira Antivirus Free Edition and few Hardware Drivers, and now that Archive is rendered useless.
I think now its due to incorrect Uninstallation of DeepFreeze.

Also I found few glitches in FD, like the Anchoring and Grouping of the Snapshots.
I had Anchored one game (CIV III) from my Primary:: on Booting to Secondary I could not run the game with the PLAY DISC, also I had anchored Canon Printer Drivers that was on my Secondary and on trying to print some pages, the Printer is not recognized. But my Secondary was Winxp SP2 and my Primary was Winxp SP3 (may be because of the Sp differences).

I had set Secondary to a Group, basically this failsafe method was for someone not to access the desired Snapshot, however anyone can Boot to the Secondary from the GUI:
Right-click the desired Snapshot and click Boot to Snapshot.

In next Re-Boot it would boot to the Secondary, no password is asked.
If i start and want to go to Secondary, then it does asks for a Password. (Although i dont use that function too much).
Although my main problem is I still cant Boot to the Snapshot I Updated from the Archive.
Although i h' installed Winxp from scratch and i would like to update one Snapshot from that Archive. But it simply doesn't boot.

 

Indeed, as Peter said, only items that a person would keep in My Documents should be anchored, no drivers or games.

Acadia

 

Thanks for the Heads-up, i see a lot of use for Anchoring,but it did not work, anyways it was when i lost the Canon CD Drivers, so i had to Anchor but it didn't work(maybe because of SP differences).
Anyways i would never try any stupid thing , by not uninstalling DF, i h' already performed clean installation and made an Image of my Drive n will use FD for what it was meant to do ie.,System Restore.

 

Well my problem is solved ,,,,any news about another FD-ISR: compatible with Win7,,,,,,

 

FDISR does work with windows 7 if you run the vista recovery disk and update the mbr

run e:\boot\bootsect /nt60 c:

 

Well last time i had anchored some game folders, i anchored this CIV III Folder and made a Registry backup of this game, on the Secondary i just used the Registry Entry and to my suprise the game CIV III run. Although i still had to insert the Game Disc.



On seeing this i further proceeded to Anchore 4 more game folders, two of them were preety old which didn't require any Registry backing. Like back in Win 98 games where a game didn't require a Game Disc to run.
But i hvn't yet so far tried it on a Printer Driver, since the Drivers installs in Programfiles as well in System 32 folder and backing the Registry is quite daubting, hence i gave up.

The working CMD for meh was :bootrec.exe /fixboot

 

What about Firefox bookmarks or Thunderbird mail folders?

 

Yes, I would think that those things would work just fine.

Acadia

 

Hi Pete, I appreciate what you're saying. My concern stems from a recent need to boot to my FDISR secondary, and when doing so, lost tracking of a bunch of email I had sent since that secondary had been created.

Is the only solution to this to rely upon daily backups (I use Mozy online for daily backups, and Acronis True Image at best monthly for full imaging.)?

 

Quite frankly, Anchoring is the only feature of FD that I have never cared for. The only time that I ever used it (on my wife's system), it made the system unstable. Also, something in me simply doesn't like the logic behind it: when I revert a system, I want to revert EVERYTHING, maybe that's just something weird in me. If I want to save something from my current Snapshot, I simply drag and drop it onto one of my other drives, then after the recovery, drag and drop it back. Yeah, the manual method takes a little time, but it has always been stable and always worked.

Acadia

 

Got it! Thank you.

 

Greetings All,

As Peter mentioned, Data Anchoring should be just for Data. Pictures, Music, Documents, Favorites, etc. This is a uber powerful feature that be a greatest strength of the product or a nightmare. Anchoring any other part of the OS or applications can get all sorts of files, registry, DLL's etc. out of sync as you boot between snapshots.

-Todd

 

Thanks, Todd. In response:

1. I do consider "bookmarks" and Thunderbird email data (no dll's, etc.), don't you?

2. I also sometimes have data on my desktop for ease of access.

3. When trying to anchor that type of data (on desktop, email data) FD-ISR rejects it (file name too long), even though the desktop is shorter than many. Any idea why it acts that way?

In gratitude for your tremendous work!
Chamlin

 

I hear ya'. And really appreciate the guidance and support!