Hi.

I'm evaluating ShadowProtect 3.2 Desktop.

Some of my PC specs:

Asus P5k-Pro
Intel Core2Quad Q6600
2X2GB RAM
Windows Vista Business SP1
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA II HD in RAID1 (mirror)
Intel Matrix Storage RAID Drivers and console version 7.8.0.1012

1 x Western Digital WD2000JD 200GB SATA I HD

Kaspersky Antivirus 7.0.325
No other third party software executing at statup.
 
Yesterday night I scheduled a continuous incremental backup to run from 9AM to 7PM every 2 hours. I did the initial full backup manually choosing Execute (Full) from the backup job contextual menu.

This morning I switched on my pc at about 9.30AM and immediately after logging in to desktop it just hung there. It wasn't completely frozen: the mouse pointer would move and the CAPS LOCK key was working, but it wouldn't respond to anything else.

I powered it off and tried to restart, this time not loggin in. After what seemed approximately the same time the same appeared, but of course this time I was stuck at logon screen.

I switched it off again and this time booted in safe mode, disabled the ShadowProtect service and rebooted yet again.

It booted with no hiccup whatsoever.

ShadowProtect was installed on my machine already, but before I scheduled that incremental backup booted fine. Shadowcraft does manual backups without any problem, and it's fast too, it takes about 55 mins to backup 200 GBs. Scheduled incremental backups run just fine if the machine is already on, and they are blazing fast, just a matter of 30-40 secs. It seems they create problems only at startup.

By the way, you gave me a link to download the ISO image of your full CD to evaluate the CD boot environment as well, but it was version 3.1. Is there a way to download version 3.2? If something goes wrong with my PC during the evaluation process, can I use the 3.1 CD to restore a 3.2 backup, or are there problems I should be aware of?
 

My instincts tell me that this is likely an interop issue between our snapshot driver (stcvsm.sys) and some other storage-related driver (perhaps Kaspersky).  What other products (other than Kasperky) do you have installed which may be involved in the storage stack?  Products such as anti-virus, anti-rootkit, disk /volume encryption, disk/volume backup, etc.

We can narrow down on the cause by process of elimination.  Uninstall Kaspersky (temporarily) and other such products and see if the hang goes away.  When it is determined which product causes the interop issue (the hang) then we can attempt to reproduce it here at StorageCraft and diagnose and resolve the issue. 

The 3.1 recovery environment works just fine for restoration of images from 3.2.  To date, the image format has never changed since the initial release of ShadowProtect, so really, any version of the recovery environment can be used.
 

Nate,

it seems your instincts are in pretty good shape :p

But the murderer isn't the butler. Kaspersky is innocent.

Here is what I did:

1) Yesterday night, just before shutting down my pc, I scheduled a full backup to run very early this morning, using the "Later" option
2) This morning the PC booted without any problem. It seems unless VDIFF is involved the PC doesn't hang.
3) I scheduled a continuous incremental backup to start in a few mins, powered off, waited, powered back on, the PC this time hung.
4) I switched off, back on, started in safe mode, turned off Kaspersky from msconfig, restarted in normal mode, the PC still hung
5) Same as before, turned Kaspersky back on, turned Intel Matrix Storage Event Monitor off, restarted, this time the PC booted. I ran SPD interface and the process was running

So the murderer is Intel.

In order to reproduce my exact situation you might need a machine with a P35 chipset, to make sure the same drivers will be used, though it could happen with different chipsets too. The motherboard, drivers and console version are in the OP.

BTW, switching ShadowProtect Service's startup mode to "Automatic (Delayed Start)" is an effective workaround for me, so no biggie. You guys might want to install the service with that startup option directly, it just makes sense to me. Even when there aren't incompatibilities, that options still speeds up the PC startup process whenever "auto execution of unexecuted tasks" is active, since boot operations don't have to fight for resources with a backup happening concurrently.

Ah, and you didn't tell me if it's better I request a 3.2 ISO in case in find myself in need of doing a bare metal restore before my evaluation process ends (knock on wood).

Wow, that's good info.  I'll test this myself (I have a similar box handy).  Unfortunate that it's an Intel issue as that's such common utility software.

We do actually install ShadowProtectSvc.exe (our NT Service) with Start value 2 (Automatic).  Did you perhaps change this at some time?  Also, I'm a little confused about this because you say that switching the start value to "Automatic" is an "effective workaround."  Does this mean that you don't experience any hangs with ShadowProtect with Intel's Matrix Storage Event Monitor ON as long as the ShadowProtect service is set to Automatic start?

Fill out this form to gain access to the 3.2 recovery environment ISO. 

Hi Nate.

Actually, if you read my post carefully, I wrote I switched the service startup option to "Automatic (Delayed Start)" which is different from just "Automatic". I think the registry value is 1 but I'm not positive.

The incremental backup was working fine with the machine fully started, but it hung if it was initiated while the startup process was still happening. Probably Intel's monitoring service does some operation when it's being initialized that intereferes with your snapshot driver. So I figured, if I delay the ShadowProtect service start after that operation has already been done, the problem should go. It seems I was right, at least in my case.

Hope I explained myself better this time.

Edit: yes when I switched to Automatic (Delayed Start) it worked with Intel's service on. 

I am evaluating ShadowProtect Desktop 3.2 on my Vista SP1 laptop. So far so good!  Thanks!

I notice that the 'ShadowProtectSvc.exe' service was not set to Delayed Autostart as you mentioned in your post on 5/13.  I assume that the planned change just didn't make it into the 3.2 release.  Is it safe to change the service to Delayed Autostart on the 3.2 version?

The reason I ask is that I ran into a similar situation today as well.  After a reboot it appears that a scheduled backup job automatically fired off, dragging my system login time into the gutter (it was many minutes before the Desktop became active). 

I have since modified my Backup job to throttle it, but also want to experiment with setting the service to Delayed Autostart.  For earlier versions of Windows, perhaps you can investigate putting your own delay into the service code so that missed backups are delayed for perhaps 5 or 10 minutes after boot?

On a side note, since we are discussing new Vista features (Delayed Autostart of services), perhaps you can also investigate using Vista's I/O Priorities?  Setting ShadowProtect backups to run at a 'low' I/O priority (instead of 'normal' I/O priority) might also reduce any perceived system sluggishness (of course, backups would then take a little longer).   For more information see the "I/O Priority" section at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc162494.aspx .

Thanks!