Compatibility with Lenovo Rescue and Recovery

[joblot6]

Hi - I have a ThinkPad laptop, and I use Lenovo's own "Rescue & Recovery" (ver 3) to back up my system.

After I installed OA Free, I noticed that RnR was popping up warnings during the backup jobs that certain files were in use by another application, and not being backed up. One file that is continually blocked is ntoskrnl.exe - which means that my backups are incomplete images and will not boot.

I uninstalled OA Free (reluctantly, I should say) - and then the RnR backups were not blocked.

Is there a configuration setting I'm missing that might solve this ? If not - how does OA Free play with other backup / imaging software - like acronis TI?

[MikeNash]

Hi - I have a ThinkPad laptop, and I use Lenovo's own "Rescue & Recovery" (ver 3) to back up my system.

After I installed OA Free, I noticed that RnR was popping up warnings during the backup jobs that certain files were in use by another application, and not being backed up. One file that is continually blocked is ntoskrnl.exe - which means that my backups are incomplete images and will not boot.

I uninstalled OA Free (reluctantly, I should say) - and then the RnR backups were not blocked.

Is there a configuration setting I'm missing that might solve this ? If not - how does OA Free play with other backup / imaging software - like acronis TI?

Hi,

Leave this with me - I might have an idea what it is.


Mike

[MaB69]

Is there a configuration setting I'm missing that might solve this ? If not - how does OA Free play with other backup / imaging software - like acronis TI?

Hi Joblot and welcome,

You can find here users of True Image, Paragon products, Shadow Protect and many others and no one reported this kind of problem when imaging.

Regards,

MaB

[Peter2150]

Hi - I have a ThinkPad laptop, and I use Lenovo's own "Rescue & Recovery" (ver 3) to back up my system.

After I installed OA Free, I noticed that RnR was popping up warnings during the backup jobs that certain files were in use by another application, and not being backed up. One file that is continually blocked is ntoskrnl.exe - which means that my backups are incomplete images and will not boot.

I uninstalled OA Free (reluctantly, I should say) - and then the RnR backups were not blocked.

Is there a configuration setting I'm missing that might solve this ? If not - how does OA Free play with other backup / imaging software - like acronis TI?

HI Joblot6

I use Shadow Protect with OA on my Thinkpad Tablet with no issues what so ever. Reality is what you are doing is only a small part of the job. True if something hoses your system, but the disk is okay, you can restore, that backup. But if the disk itself fails, that backup will be useless, where as something like shadow protect can restore to a new disk.

Pete

[beeline]

Peter2150:
I use Shadow Protect with OA on my Thinkpad Tablet with no issues what so ever.

MaB69:
You can find here users of True Image, Paragon products, Shadow Protect and many others and no one reported this kind of problem when imaging.


Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad to hear that other imaging software are working with OA.

OA is blocking Lenovo RnR backups, and critical XP files are not being transfered to the image. If I hosed my system, my backups would also be useless, and unbootable.

Before I dump Rescue and Recovery and go to Acronis TI, Paragon or ShadowProtect, I'm hoping to hear from Mike Nash - who indicated that he might have an answer to help me get RnR working with Online Armor. (Fingers crossed)

Thanks!

[joblot6]

Sorry: Seems I have a second old login profile - beeline is me. The preceding post is mine.

I apologize for the confusion! :oops:

[Peter2150]

Sorry: Seems I have a second old login profile - beeline is me. The preceding post is mine.

I apologize for the confusion! :oops:

Hi Joblot6

Having been thru the install experience on the think pad, I have a recommendation. The security pro's may jump me but..

I know my think pad had a bunch of stuff running, and given a lot of it was related to the tablet functions, I didn't feel like sorthing thru it.

My solution was install OA, and simply mark all the stuff trusted. Also when ever Think pad reminds me about the back up I decline.

This way you should be able to live in peace with it, and do your backups to an external drive.

Note as the only caveat, I don't generally use my machine at internet cafe's or big wide open LAN's etc. Also my machine has the ability to turn off the radio's so I keep them off unless needed.

Pete

[MikeNash]

If you mark the thinkpad stuff as trusted (which you should, because you do trust it, right :D ) then some of the internal OA protections against malicious activity are toned down.

This will almost certainly solve your problem. Just take a care to get all processes


Mike

[joblot6]

Thanks for the responses. Some Progress made !

Following the advice of Mike Nash and Peter2150, I went through the OA Programs tab and set ALL the Lenovo / ThinkPad items to Trusted - and set Rescue and Recovery to backup to an external drive.

This time, the backup was interrupted 17 times ("file in use by another application") - but it seems that none of them are critical Windows XP components.

Here's a list of the files:

From C:\Program Files\Tall Emu\

antispam.dat
firewall.dat
fwdata.dat
IPRanges.dat
Notebook.dat
Notebook.pak
OAcached.dat
Programs.dat
reference.dat
server.dat
sites.dat
unins000.dat

From C:\windows\system32\drivers\

ndisrd.sys
OAdriver.sys
OAmon.sys

Mike, I have 2 questions:

(1) Can you see any items in this list that would cripple a backup image from booting or are otherwise critical system files?

(2) Anything I can do inside OA to prevent Rescue and Recovery from stopping on these files? If not, then I am OK - except for the inconvenience of having my automated backups needing frequent manual intervention. RnR has a capability to exclude files from backup, and I just placed all 17 files in the exclusion list. I'll report back after the next backup)

Thanks.[/b]

[MaB69]

Hi joblot,

(1)All these files are related to OA (drivers and data).

(2) you can stop OA during backup
This soft has a strange way to image your partition. If i have one advice to give you : change it :roll: :wink:

MaB

[Peter2150]

I agree with MaB69

You could right click on OA and chose close and shutdown, and then let the lenovo stuff do it's thing.

But I also agree your back solution is bad.

You first need to decide why are you backing up. You really should be doing an image to an external drive. Otherwise if your disk fails your back up is for naught.

Also I image from within Windows with Shadowprotect and don't have any problems. I would never rely on the Lenovo solution.

Pete

[joblot6]

MaB69 & Peter2150:

Thanks so much for your thinking, I appreciate it. Just some comments:

(1) I am using RnR to back up to an external drive. I agree that backing up to my primary drive is useless, especially if and when the drive fails.

(2) I am not in a hurry to dump Lenovo's Rescue & Recovery software. It has served me flawlessly for years, and only started giving me problems after I installed OA.

(3) I don't want to dump OA either; it's a nicely engineered Firewall + HIPS. My hope is that we can figure out a way to get RnR and OA to play well together.

(4) If OA and RnR are incompatible, then I have 2 choices:

OA + A Different Backup Software ... as you have both suggested
OR
Rnr + A different Firewall and HIPS

Thanks again !

[MikeNash]

Mike, I have 2 questions:

(1) Can you see any items in this list that would cripple a backup image from booting or are otherwise critical system files?


Hi - these are all Online Armor files, and self protection probably prevent you from accessing them.


(2) Anything I can do inside OA to prevent Rescue and Recovery from stopping on these files? If not, then I am OK - except for the inconvenience of having my automated backups needing frequent manual intervention. RnR has a capability to exclude files from backup, and I just placed all 17 files in the exclusion list. I'll report back after the next backup)

Thanks.[/b]

That is probably the best bet.

[MaB69]

Rnr + A different Firewall and HIPS

Why ??? I'm sure that if you shutdown OA during backup, this could save Online Armor folder and drivers

MaB

[joblot6]

Why ??? I'm sure that if you shutdown OA during backup, this could save Online Armor folder and drivers


MaB69:
I think you're right, although I would prefer a more automated solution, not requiring me to manually shut down the OA firewall before the scheduled backup.

Mike Nash:

I placed the 17 OA files in the RnR exclusion list, but unfortunately this didn't solve the problem. During the next scheduled backup RnR still stopped on each file.

Looks like I've reached a dead-end getting these 2 fine programs to co-exist on my system.
Thanks.

[Peter2150]

Why ??? I'm sure that if you shutdown OA during backup, this could save Online Armor folder and drivers


MaB69:
I think you're right, although I would prefer a more automated solution, not requiring me to manually shut down the OA firewall before the scheduled backup.

Mike Nash:

I placed the 17 OA files in the RnR exclusion list, but unfortunately this didn't solve the problem. During the next scheduled backup RnR still stopped on each file.

Looks like I've reached a dead-end getting these 2 fine programs to co-exist on my system.
Thanks.

Hi Joblet6

This may sound harsh, but if RnR can't handle what you are asking of it, by my definition it isn't that great a backup program.

If you consider backup as critical as I do, then automating should be a low priority. Reliability should be first and foremost. When I image my systems, I always restore the image. Only forsure way I know, to be sure it will work.

Pete