Tweaking.com Support Forums
Main Forum => Tweaking.com Support & Help => Topic started by: streetwolf on December 10, 2012, 05:22:01 am
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After I did a clean install of Windows 8 Pro X64 under a UEFI environment and formatting my boot/system drive as GPT I always get a message after RB runs as an auto backup, when I first start up my machine, stating that an error was encountered. Examining my backup folder it appears everything was backed up. I do not get any error message if I run RB manually. Prior to converting to UEFI I had no problems.
Here's what I have in the Event Log:
Faulting application name: TweakingRegistryBackup.exe, version: 1.4.0.3, time stamp: 0x5071e5f1
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000
Faulting process id: 0x770
Faulting application start time: 0x01cdd6d791f65069
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Tweaking.com\Registry Backup\TweakingRegistryBackup.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report Id: d90fd982-42ca-11e2-bed1-c86000a0a026
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
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Doesn't happen when you do it manually, only happens at startup?
And check the backup logs. If the logs are complete and everything back ups then it looks like the program is crashing when it closes itself.
I am on Windows 8 and have it set at startup but I am not using UEFI, and I have no crashes.
But why at startup? I guess that is where we should look first. When you run manually it is running under your account, what account do you have it set to run as from the task scheduler?
Shane
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Happens only at auto startup, never manually. I run both under my account which has Admin privileges. I also have added a delay of 4 minutes to the startup task so that my disk image program, which also uses VSS, has time to complete first at startup. I've always done this with no problems until I went UEFI.
I've attached two log files for you to look at.
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Yeah the backup totally finishes, it looks like when the program is closing down that it is crashing.
Try this, I want to see if it is something witht he task scheduler. Go to the task scheduler and run the backup from there instead.
Does it still crash?
Shane
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I ran it from the Task Scheduler and didn't get the error message this time. However, I got the same error in my Event Log. Why no error message this time is anyone's guess.
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OK but there was an error in the event viewer.
Ok now lets see if it is the task scheduler or perhaps how the program is shutting down from the command line.
If you look at the task for it you will see the command it uses to run the program. Like /silent and and such.
So lets try manually running the program with that same command from a shortcut instead. :wink:
Shane
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I created a shortcut, which btw, I use /supersilent. I got the error message as well as the Event Log entry.
I then ran the shortcut as Administrator and it worked perfectly, no error message or Event Log error.
I did setup the job in the scheduler to run under the SYSTEM account but that didn't work either. Maybe I need to run it under something else?
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But the odd thing is it is completing the backup. So now the hard part, trying to find at what point is it crashing :-)
Shane
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I also setup the shortcut to run as Administrator under the Advanced tab and that also worked fine. I think I'll just add it to my startup folder and see what happens when I start my machine tomorrow.
The reason a manual run works might be because I also have that shortcut setup to run as Admin.
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The manifest file tells Windows it needs to be ran as admin. Very odd.
Shane
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If my memory serves me correctly I recall that after I switched over to UEFI I ran a manual backup and that also failed with some kind of error. That is what led me to make the shortcut run as Admin.
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Is the manifest file in the folder with the program?
My machine supports UEFI but I would have to do a reinstall and dont want to do that lol. SO I cant test it myself yet.
Shane
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Yes, the Manifest file is in the folder with the program. Since UEFI requires the volume to be GPT perhaps GPT is the problem. I also hesitated going UEFI as a full install of W8 is required along with everything else but I wanted to take advantage of UEFI which so far I haven't seen any.
For some reason the shortcut I placed in my startup folder didn't start up when Windows loaded in the morning for the first time. I then manually ran it and got the error message and Event Log error. Seems marking the shortcut as Admin doesn't always work for some reason.
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UEFI isnt required for Windows 8. It is just one of the new options, suppose to protect against some viruses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface
Secure boot
The UEFI 2.2 specification adds a protocol known as Secure boot, which can secure the boot process by preventing the loading of drivers or OS loaders that are not signed with an acceptable digital signature. When secure boot is enabled, it is initially placed in "Setup" mode, which allows a public key known as the "Platform key" (PK) to be written to the firmware. Once the key is written, secure boot enters "User" mode, where only drivers and loaders signed with the platform key can be loaded by the firmware. Additional "Key Exchange Keys" (KEK) can be added to a database stored in memory to allow other certificates to be used, but they must still have a connection to the private portion of the Platform key.[23] Secure boot can also be placed in "Custom" mode, where additional public keys can be added to the system that do not match the private key.[24]
Again though, the oddest part is that the program does the backup, even finishes the log. I think the crash is coming when the program tries to close itself. I wonder if there is a problem with any of the controls in the program closing out when the form isnt visible.
Shane
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Shane, if you look at http://www.tweaking.com/forums/index.php/topic,278.msg3112.html#msg3112 you see that I have a similar crash on my brothers computer(Win xp Sp3) and the crash is still there!
Tomas
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I might have discovered the cause of my error. I had the main program run as Administrator under the Compatibility tab. I removed that and when my backup kicked off this morning after turning on my machine I didn't get any error at all. Fingers crossed.
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Yeah you dont need to have the admin set int he compatibility tab. The manifest file tells windows it needs admin rights :-)
Let me know how it goes after a few days.
Shane, if you look at http://www.tweaking.com/forums/index.php/topic,278.msg3112.html#msg3112 you see that I have a similar crash on my brothers computer(Win xp Sp3) and the crash is still there!
Even the new version is crashing on his XP? Does it finish the backups before the crash?
Shane
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Even the new version is crashing on his XP? Does it finish the backups before the crash?
Yes even the latest version(1.4.3) and Yes the backup finish before the crash.
Tomas
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Has to be something with the custom controls and when it shuts down.
Hit me up in a new thread in the next day or so. I will make some test exe's that will have message boxes during the closing of the program. This way you can tell me what the last message box you see is before the crash. That is how I try and locate bugs LOL
Shane
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Ok! :smiley:
I will go to my brother in the beginning of next week!
Tomas
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Sorry to say the error came back this morning. As usual the backup was taken successfully. I also got the error message when I had to reboot my machine. No backup was taken as I use the once a day auto option.
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Yeah I dont think this is a Windows 8 problem. I think it has something to do with the shutdown process of the program and it cleaning up the custom controls that I use.
I will do more testing in a bit and see if I can at least fig out which control it is. The thing that bugs me is that it doesnt happen every time. So going to be a hard one to find.
Shane
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Thinking that maybe by unchecking run at highest privileges for the RB task in the task scheduler might fix the problem it didn't. RB didn't backup this morning and the message in Event Log clearly stated I needed elevated privileges. So I checked the box, saved the task, and ran it manually. It ran perfect. You are right about it being intermittent.
If you can code some sort of debug routine in RB to see what's happening I'll gladly try it out. I could also run Process Monitor and see what that produces when the task get's the error. Let me know.
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I have seen this problem is some of my other programs.
In the shutdown process you have 2 way to close a VB app.
1. When all the Windows are closed it closes the exe
2. You can call "End" which will close itself even if other things are open in the program.
The odd bug I run into is this. When I do #1 sometimes the program will never close, even though I clean up after everything, for some reason something doesn't close all the way, normally it is a control on the form.
So I use #2 after I am done cleaning up and closing everything. What is happening is a control or form isnt closing properly at random times and the end command is killing it, thus giving us the random error.
2 hard things about trying to fix this. Is the fact that it doesn't happen every time and finding which control is doing it. In my CleanMem mini monitor program I had this problem as well. I found a few tricks that worked on fixing it, such as giving it more time to close and better cleanup. I need to see what I did different there and see if I did or didnt do the same close down process in the reg backup.
When I have had programs do it every time I could code and test till it is fixed. These random ones are a pain, I can try a few things then wait and see if it keeps happening.
Shane
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Working on the program now.
Quick question, do you have the program set to remove old backups?
Reason why I ask is it removes the old backups when you do a backup. I am wondering if the removing the old backups is still working when the program tries to close. That might explain the crash.
If you do have it enabled does it still crash if you turn it off?
Shane
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Yes I do have it setup to remove old backups. I'll turn it off and get back to you with my findings.
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I noticed it after a huge mistake on my part lol
I was adding the new code to clearing old backups while keeping a minimum amount of backups. Well I messed up on one part and the code started deleteing everything on my work drive lol
Out of 368GB I only had 171GB left. Thankfully I have nightly backups and I am restoring it now.
This was a blessing in disguise though. What had happened is I had caused it to send the delete path to the root of the drive because the loop error out on me. So I redid how it does it now and put in a ton of safe guards. It now does it better than ever. One of the safe guards is if the path to delete doesn't match the backup location in the drive it stops.
This was never a problem before, it was my own mistake.
I also redid the shutdown to wait and let the clearing of old backups finish before it closes. So far working great. New version will be 1.5.0.
I will have it done here shortly :-)
Shane
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One thing I don't understand about the error. I've had the error restarting my machine after I already took my first and only auto backup of the day. I realize the task get's fired off everytime I log on but why after RB sees that I already ran my auto backup would it try to erase old files?
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It shouldn't. So perhaps that isnt the problem. I did change how it shuts down though. So this might fix it. Here is v1.5.0 ready to go. Lets see if it still crashes for you.
Replace your exe with this one and lets see how it does.
Shane
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What does the 'Keep n Backups' do in conjunction with the 'Delete backups that are n Days or older' setting? I'm not clear on this.
I ran one test and I had no error. Not really any indication since RB would work at times. When I fire up my machine tomorrow it will make a new backup and delete backups older than 7 days. We'll see what happens but I think it might take awhile before we can confirm it is fixed unless I get an error then we know it isn't.
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Here is the change log, see if it explains it, if not I need to word it better :-)
v1.5.0
Per user request I added a new option to the auto delete old backups. You can now set it to always keep a minimum amount of backups. Example: A user has their system off and is gone for a while, when they come back and run the reg backup it would remove all the old backups, since the user was gone for a while all old backups where removed. With this new option it wont remove all the backups.
Fix bug where if the program had trouble pulling the system info it would load the tree view incorrectly and thus not backup those files. This is now fixed.
Changed the way the program closes itself. On a few systems after the backup was complete and the program closes itself it would randomly crash. Hopefully this new close down process will fix that.
Multiple code changes and improvements.
I will wait till tomorrow to put out the new version when I here back from you. Hopefully thomas will try the new version on his brothers machine and see if it still crashes or not.
Shane
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Keeping a minimum number of backups is a great idea. I've run into this situation a few times where my backups were deleted because I was out of town. Nice addition.
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Thanks :-)
Let me know how tomorrow goes.
Night!
Shane
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Will do. If you don't hear from me then the Mayans were right. :rolleyes:
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Already the 21st on almost half the world lol
Shane
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But it's the Mayan timezone which is CST.
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lol I am not worried. The Mayans didnt do leap years. Their calender ended in Aug 2011 :wink:
Shane
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Ok I have tried the new version now on my brothers xp computer, so far so good! :smiley:
First I had "Auto Delete Old Backups" set to delete 7 days and keep 7 backups, but it didn't delete any backups so I changed the settings and restarted several times, now I have it set to "delete" 1 days and keep 0 backups, I will try this for some time so I know that it all works.
Tomas
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RB fired up this morning and got the error message. Also, it did not delete my oldest files as Tomas_Sweden mentioned.
I ran the task manually from the task scheduler 3 times. The first one got the error, the next two were clean.
FWIW, I've never gotten the error when I run RB via it's GUI. I only get the error, intermittently, when I run it through the Task Scheduler.
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The auto delete old backups with the new keep # of backups works like this.
The program loads all the backups into a list. The list is sorted from newest to oldest. The program looks at how many backups to keep.
For example, I have it set for 5 backups to keep. The backup list shows 10. So the program skips the first 5 in the list and then checks the rest of the list and if they are old enough to delete.
Even if you have only 4 backups and they are very old they wont get deleted. The goal of the new setting is to always keep a min amount of backups from being deleted by the auto delete.
Tomas_Sweden, how goes the program so far on the crashing? And from what streetwolf said I think I am making headway on the crashing. Seems to be happening less.
When you guys have it run through the Task Scheduler do you have the program set to be hidden, minimized or showing and with what account?
Shane
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Tomas_Sweden, how goes the program so far on the crashing?
I will go to my brother tomorrow and check.
When you guys have it run through the Task Scheduler do you have the program set to be hidden, minimized or showing and with what account?
I have it set to be hidden!
Tomas
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I also have it hidden. I tried both type of accounts.
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And the crashes only seem to happen when they are ran from the schedule. So when the program finishes the backup it then closes itself. When you run it normally and close it the crash isnt happening.
And with the new version it has gotten better but not fixed. That is pointing me to think I may have a timing problem. Something in the program isnt finished when it closes itself. I redid the shutdown and it helped. I think I will tweak the shutdown some more and post an new exe for you to test :-)
Shane
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Since I never have the error when I run RB from the GUI what makes running it from the task scheduler different? I even ran it as a shortcut in my start up folder and I would get the error at times.
I really can't say if the new version is better. It was intermittent before and it still is.
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Because when it runs automatically it calls the closedown the instant the backup is done, where when you run it manually there is a few sec before you close the program. So I think something isnt always finished when it closes.
This new exe now calls a timer at close down. The timer is set for 2.5 sec and then calls the closedown.
I just tried it on my system repeatedly from the task scheduler and have 0 crashes. Lets see how it goes for you guys as well.
Shane
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Does RB crashes because it uses Task Scheduler as hidden or does it crash because it uses Task scheduler as hidden and at the same time use "auto delete old backups"?
Tomas
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No I think it is just calling the close down to quickly after the backup. Try the exe I just posted and see how it does :-)
After a auto backup it will now wait 2.5 sec before closing.
Shane
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Looking good Shane. Ran it from the TS, logged off/on, restarted Windows, all worked fine.
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Outstanding :-)
Looks like I will be putting out the new version later today or tonight :-)
Shane
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Ok I have tried the latest RB 1.5.0 on my brothers computer and I ran it from Task Scheduler, logged off and on, restarted windows and it worked as it should all the time! :cheesy:
Tomas
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Fired up my rig this morning and I got the error. If you recall I also have my disk imaging software kick off when I first start my machine. It also uses VSS. I noticed that the RB error message took quite a long time to appear so I'm thinking that there was contention going on between RB and my DI software.
I've run the task manually from the scheduler a few times since with no error. I'll change the RB task to delay running for 5 minutes to give my DI software time to finish. I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to see what transpires.
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Progress none the less :-)
Let me know how it goes.
Shane
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I have got the error two times now, it's then I start the computer. I see nowhere in Win XP where I can delay the start of Registry Backup in Task Scheduler, so I can try that.
Tomas
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I still get the error at times Shane.
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Do they at least happen less often?
Also have them run to where you can see the program and see how it goes as well.
Shane
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It seems that I am having the error when my disk imaging software fires up first thing in the morning. I set a delay of 5 minutes for RB to give my DI software time to complete it's thing but I still get the error.
Today I started up my machine later than usual so my DI software didn't kick off due to the settings I use for it. However RB did run with no error after it's 5 minute delay. And As I've said before I can run RB manually from Task Scheduler with no problems.
I've set the RB delay for 10 minutes for tomorrow.
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It happens as often as before, but it's only the first time I start the computer I get the error.
I will try run RB normal in Task Scheduler, have to wait couple of days to see what happens.
Tomas
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I got the error again when I started up this morning even though I had RB delay for 10 minutes to give my disk imaging software time to finish. As a test I deleted the RB backup and restarted my machine. No DI backup was taken because I already took it but RB started up and finished with no error.
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And the backups still finish? streetwolf when it is ran from the task scheduler are you running it as normal and not hidden?
Shane
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And the backups still finish? streetwolf when it is ran from the task scheduler are you running it as normal and not hidden?
Shane
I've always run it has hidden. Want me to change it to something else? If so what?
I don't understand why it works as long as my imaging software doesn't run when I first start up? Is it VSS related? Perhaps some VSS component doesn't get released by my imaging software?
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Remove the schedule startup and tell the program to make a new one and have it run as normal.
So far I am leaning towards something with the cleanup of the controls. As for you other program I am wondering if something with its controls loaded into memory get in the way of mine in so odd way.
Try running your other program manually then the reg backup, does it still crash?
I dont think it is the VSS because the backups are Finishing. We have confirmed that the crashes have to be happening at shutdown of itself. Which tells me it has to be something with the cleanup of the controls.
Shane
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will do.
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I have run the RB with "normal" start in schedule options for a week now (on my brothers win xp computer) and no error!
Tomas
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I have run the RB with "normal" start in schedule options for a week now (on my brothers win xp computer) and no error!
Tomas
Good to hear. Also helps confirm that it is a control problem (buttons, text boxes, ect. in the program). The reason why is controls are handled differently when they are not shown vs being drawn on screen.
Shane