Strange problem now with powershadow. Lost quit function.

I'm a bit confused at the moment as to how I did it but I've been using power shadow 2.6 for awhile now and this is the first problem I've had with it. I'm using FDISR with it and all running fine until now. What happened immediately before the problem was during the boot process and before you get the boot screen for powershadow, you get the FDISR boot screen. Well I accidently pushed "esc" instead of F1 and then the next thing that happened was the computer skipped right into the next boot sceen when it fact it should have went into the "change boot order" screen in normal xp setup. I chose to go into shadow mode from the boot screen and when I wanted to end the session I selected "quit" but NO menu now comes up where I can select to reboot or just shut down. GRRRRRRRRR It puts you in a never ending loop if you keep selecting to go into shadow mode from the boot screen. The only way to stop it from doing that is to just select to log in without going into shadow mode during boot up. That's not good. So now I think I have an MBR issue. I bet I have to uninstall this and redo my MBR. I've even tried to uninstall this by deleting the FDISR snapshot that has powershadow in it and remaking a new snapshot. I did this and even installed power shadow 2.82 and I get the same problem!!!!!!!! How is that possible? Only thing I can think of is it's an MBR issue. Help

 

Is it possible to right click Powershadow's tray icon near the clock and select "quit shadow mode" or one of the others.

This may bring up the needed menu?

Or at least it does when working properly.

 

Yes that right click menu comes up still when in shadow mode and when you select "quit" it only allows you to reboot. Normally when you click "quit" from the right click menu it brings up another menu that you select to either fully shut down the computer or reboot. I don't get that menu anymore to either reboot or shut down. It only just reboots automatically when selecting quit. I get stuck in a never ending loop. GRRRRRRRRR

 

You'll read many similar as well as different issues and conflicts in the FD-ISR forums where FD-ISR clashes badly with another program. I wish i had something more helpful to offer but i never used that snapshot program myself but read enough about it in their forums from time to time.

I do know those heavy duty imaging programs like TI, FDISR, and others can cause a lot of grief when they go astray.

Judging from your description and pattern of events that happened, i would lay odds that one action of pressing the escape button caused the MBR change and likely responsible is FD-ISR because i never seen Power Shadow fail to follow commands, but then i haven't tried any imaging programs like FD-ISR with it either.

I hope someone experienced with FD-ISR can help you resolve that issue. I would jump to their forums and post about this if i we're you, it will be worth your while i think.

 

Problem solved now. I had to disable and reenable the FDISR pre boot screen after I deleted the snapshot that was causing problems.

All is well and I have both running again normally and working fine. Whew. Yes both reside in the MBR. Hitting the esc button was what did it to me during the initial early bootup process. Easy fix was to just delete the snapshot , disable the FDISR preboot screen, reboot then re enable the preboot screen on the next reboot. After than I just made a new snapshot. Everything is back to normal and working just fine.

 

Horus37,I was following your story with apprehension,so i'm glad all is ok for you.
I am only a bit interested in establishing if PowerShadow actually IS in the MBR or f it MODIFIES the MBR.....

Personally i dont think PowerShadow modifies it,but i could be wrong,of course.
PowerShadow and Acronis8 went very well together without any MBR problem, perhaps if you run Acronis 10 or if you enabled things like Acronis Secure Zone,you might run into troubles there....but not because of PS.

Just a little ,unimportant annotation, why did you title your post
'Strange Problem with Power Shadow'
when the latter only ,at best,uses the MBR,while FDISR is HEAVILY involved in using and altering said MBR?
Wouldnt it be more appropriate to title it
'Strange problems with FDISR ?'

I hope you're not worried by this remark,no offense whatsoever intended,just a little thing.
Best regards,

 

Hi, folks: As per my reading on PS's chinese info, it seems that it does not modify MBR. Does it make any sense?

 

Yes Peter2150, no problem to admitting i used a very little, i'd say even minuscule, terminology.
The smallness of my writing is nevertheless on a par with the quickness which was used by you in first denying what i implied-that is-the fact that PS was not modifying the MBR:
I had said:

and you replied:

then when Perman brought some light:

you were quick in saying:

Sure?
Rather bizarre.

 

Well someone pointed to a chat forum that said that powershadow doesn't supposedly modify or sit in the MBR. I looked at the post at don't know if I trust the sourse as it is just some person on a chinese chat forum. Rather get official word from powershadow company itself. Either way I don't see an issue now as both are happily running again together.

 

Glad to hear that issue is been put to rest for you. I think your unintentional error actually led to some very valuable pointers for correction so i intend to copy/paste your reply for reference in the future. I may or may not try FD-ISR but at least your issue brought about a resolution without too much difficulty.

Exactly the point i made in my post.

A new undiscovered issue surfaced only because of an inerrant KeyPress as Horus37 admitted to, but disaster? I don't think so. He already said there is been no problems before of having them "BOTH" together.

FD-ISR is still being tweaked from the reads/posts in their forums so it behooves me to shudder somewhat when i read users who experience problems from FD-ISR. No program, and especially those that do some heavy duty cloning/imaging is failsafe completely untill all possible issues have been successfully addressed. FD-ISR is not quite there yet IMO even though it does produce enough satisfaction in what it's designed to do for users.

 

To be sure I know the problem happened when I got to the FDISR preboot screen when I powered on the computer. When I got to the FDISR preboot screen you have about 5 seconds to hit "F1" to go into the FDISR selection screen where you can choose a snapshot to boot into. During this 5 seconds of deciding to hit the f1 or not I accidently hit the esc button. That apparently disabled the power shadow quit screen in an odd way. I wasn't having ANY problems at all running the 2 together over a few weeks period. However when I had a problem and it looked like it might be an MBR issue I was distressed to find out how weird it is to use the MBR reset tool. Looks like all it does is reset the MBR to PRE FDISR installed settings. I assume that means a whole new MBR. IF that's the case one could just use the various MBR tools found around the internet that reset the MBR to new. That is unless this FDISR mbr tool somehow saves something that isn't found in a brand new pristine out of the box MBR. I think the fix MBR tool with FDISR is a bit too dated. Who uses floppies anymore? I'll have to brush up on how to boot to dos when starting up xp. I ran a few tools before that worked with MBR without having to restart the whole computer and boot up in dos. These other programs just have you go into a dos box while still in windows. Seems easier. Thankfully in FDISR there is an option to disable and then re enable the preboot screen. I still had to delete the snapshot and recreate one. Took 15 minutes. But even after that I still had to disable the preboot screen, as I found out just a simple delete and recreate of a snapshot still had problems with the powershadow quit screen with a new install of powershadow in this new snapshot. So I had to disable the preboot screen then reboot, re enable the preboot screen and then installed powershadow and now all is well again. One thing I never tied was when I was originally having the problem I didn't disable then reenable the preboot before I deleted the snapshot. It's just so easy to delete snapshots and recreate them I immediately thought of that first. One wonders if that would have fixed it without having to delete the snapshot. Guess we will never know. I'm not going to try to recreate that. Maybe someone else might want to who is running both. I've fiddled enough with this and got it perfect again.


However I don't see using both at the same time as disaster until we get the final word on if Powershadow does sit in the MBR or modifies it. If a simple disable then re enable of the FDISR preboot screen is all that it takes to fix any error like that then big deal. However I was just being thorough when I deleted the whole snapshot and recreated another one. Fix might have taken 2 minutes had I tried that first. What would be a good test is to find out if any other keys cause this power shadow quit menu error when booting up the FDISR preboot screen and hitting any other key but the default F1 key. Anyone want to experiment?

 

I didn't even know the right click on the PS icon near the clock until now. Basically I just Turn Off the pc and the little window popped up to ask me to Turn PS Off so I just did that. I did not even quick but it reminded me to do so.

 

A bit O/T but an alternative is to slipstream the drivers into the windows install disk