I'm using the latest SP on Windows Vista. I am seeing instability in the SP program when editing an existing job, and odd things while creating new jobs.

 The following problems are reproducible.
 

- OK, I create a new job, select monthly fulls, but I also want some incrementals. Problem is that I can't select any checkboxes in the incremental area of that dialog box. Boxes are inactive.

- After creating this job, its marked "init" but that doesn't seem to change...

- If I "edit" this job, as I go through the wizard SP crashes when I press "Next" on the "Backup name and destination" screen. Job is now marked "disabled"

- If I right-click on any job name, and press "edit schedule" then change the time of day, SP crashes as soon as I press "OK"

This exact scenario occurred when I first started using the program, and I reinstalled, and finally managed to get a job created with fulls and incremental backups, and it has been running fine, but today I decided to create a new job, and the same problems are reappearing... I'm really disappointed that the program is this flakey, for what it cost...
 

 We're looking into this right now.  I'll get back to you on it.

One thing to note is that you can only have incrementals on one job at a time for a given volume.  The reason incrementals would not be available would be if (1) you didn't reboot after installing ShadowProtect and therefore the stcvsm.sys snapshot driver is not loaded and therefore no incremental support is yet available or (2) you already have a backup job for that volume which has incrementals and as I mentioned only one job can have incrementals for a given volume at a time.

After creating a backup job it does not immediately kick off a backup unless you either checked the box in the wizard indicating that you wanted it to do the first backup immediately, or if coincidentally the schedule you specified happened to trigger right after you created the job, or the job is of type "Backup Now."  Init basically means the job is waiting for its schedule to trigger the next backup.

I am unable to reproduce the crash you are experiencing when you edit an existing job and click Next on the "Backup Name and Destination" page of the Backup Job Editor wizard.  Is the selected destination location you chose a local or network location?  Also, are you using version 3.1.0.3 or an older  3.0.x.x version?

I have reproduced this one: "If I right-click on any job name, and press "edit schedule" then change the time of day, SP crashes as soon as I press OK"

That explains the disabled checkboxes, as I had another backup job with incrementals on that volume. It would be nice if the interface informed the user about this.

 Looking forward to a fix for the crashes. Thanks.
 

We've fixed this issue (thanks for reporting it).  The fix will be available freely in the next minor release which I believe is about a month out. 

Nate:

I am unable to reproduce the crash you are experiencing when you edit an existing job and click Next on the "Backup Name and Destination" page of the Backup Job Editor wizard.  Is the selected destination location you chose a local or network location?  Also, are you using version 3.1.0.3 or an older  3.0.x.x version?

Sorry Nate, I didn't see this part of your reply earlier. Here's how to recreate the crash you couldn't reproduce:

1. There is an existing job, fulls on 3rd & 18th at 5:00 am, incrementals on Mon. & Thurs. 7:00 am

2. Hit New to create a new job. Double-click to change the file name to something else.

3. Schedule Monthly, Full backups on 3rd & 18th at 5:00 am.

4. Set retention at 2 sets, with deletion of both full & incrementals

5. Press Finish. Job is now in "init" state.

6. Press Edit to edit this new job. (I noticed that the job switches to "disabled" at this point)

7. Press next, etc. Don't change anything. When you press Next at the "Backup Name and Destination" page the program crashes.

To answer your questions:

The destination is a network share UNC: \\myserver\myshare\ 

I'm using v 3.1.0.3 

Thanks a lot for fixing the other crash. :)

Sweet!  Thanks for the extra info!  We'll do our best to make sure that both of these are resolved in the next minor release. 

Leeb, would you mind testing the attached interim fix to ensure that we captured and fixed both of the issues which you reported?  We were able to reproduce both issues, and our testing indicates that we've fixed them both, but I'd love to have confirmation from you on this as well.

To apply this interim patch, simply exit/close ShadowProtect.exe (you must right-click on the ShadowProtect tray icon if it is running and select Exit, or kill it from the Task Manager) and then rename ProgramFiles\StorageCraft\ShadowProtect\ShadowProtect.exe to ShadowProtect.exe.INSTALLED (or any name other than ShadowProtect.exe) and then unzip the two files in the attached .zip file to your Program Files\StorageCraft\ShadowProtect directory and run this newly unzipped ShadowProtect.exe and test to ensure both issues are fixed. 

UPDATE: Note that if you are running ShadowProtect on a non-English locale then after you extract the files in the attached zip file you will need to rename ShadowProtectENU.dll to ShadowProtectLOC.dll. 

 SUCCESS!

Looks like it is fixed. I haven't done any backups yet, but that part always worked fine (I'll let you know if anything unexpected happens during the next few days).

The anomalies I experienced with the GUI seem to be fixed. I couldn't make it crash after trying all the things I described above. So it looks like the problems are fixed. Thanks so much!

 Lee

 

Sure, you bet, and thanks for your help too!  Although it may not appear so on the surface, ShadowProtect is a rather complex solution, and there are *so many* use cases that it's virtually impossible to do full regression testing between every single modification to ensure no side effects were introduced.  We do our best to QA everything but bugs are pretty much inevitable in any complex software solution.  As long as you guys will report them, and be a bit patient with us, we will always do our best to resolve them.