Another issue with virtual drive

drteeth

I can reproduce this.

I have not used virtual drive for a while. I mount an ISO…NO drive letter appears. I mount a second ISO, no drive letter appears. The ISOs cannot be deleted so something is happening. When I mount a third ISO, I get a BSOD. I mount by right-clicking an ISO and selecting 'Mount as Virtual Drive…@

I am writing this from Linux as my Win7 x64 PC reboots for the 6th time with this issue. I casn test it on other OSs on other PCs if needed.

Please just ask for any further info. I go through phases of using this feature and am lost without it.

Using the latest version of PA 2012 and the Starport drivers - I check for updates quite frequently.

Please advise.

Regards

DrTeeth

Update: Uninstalled the Starport drivers and reinstalled via PA with no change (2 no drive letters and 3rd one gives BSOD). Until I get advice for troubleshooting, I will uninstall and have to use another software solution for virtual drives.

spwolf

did something change in your system? It seems as if something is blocking virtual drive drivers or something like that… actual drivers have not changed in years.

drteeth

Hi,

I am not aware of anything that has changed. I have another x64 bit Windows OS on this main PC, that is running the same system drivers etc and The Virtual Drive works perfectly. I assume that that rules out anything ‘low level’?

I thought I had found the conflict, but further investigation revealed that I had not. The virtual drive worked immediately after the driver install.

I can mount an ISO, but no drive letter appears. I can TRY to unmount an ISO, but, in spite of a message saying that the drive has been unmounted, it still appears as mounted in the unmount dialogue. The presence of the mounted ISOs stops a reboot. I’m completely stuck now.

DrT

Mili

Just to confirm,
It works fine on one system but it does not on another one?

drteeth

Yes, it also works fine on the same system in another 64 bit Windows setup (Vista SP2) using the same drivers as the Win 7 x64 setup (I multi boot my main PC). I have uninstalled and reinstalled both the PA and SPTD drivers several times without any change.

They have always worked flawlessly for me before.

DrT

spwolf

it is obviously something that has caused this, some other driver or something similar… i need to check how to actually uninstall the driver properly (aka clean installation)… Remind me if I dont post anything in few days :-)

drteeth

Will do spwolf.

Thanks

DrT

drteeth

Reminder for spwolf for manual driver uninstall instructions as requested. Thanks in advance, DrT

drteeth

Could you please post the manual uninstall instructions for the virtual device drivers that you mentioned?

Thanks again,

DrT

spwolf

@drteeth:

Could you please post the manual uninstall instructions for the virtual device drivers that you mentioned?

Thanks again,

DrT

i am on vacation until Sunday :-)

I tried to quickly figure it out but didnt help….

drteeth

I thought you were a bit quiet ;-). Sorry to hassle you on holiday, but I had known I would have stayed schtum.

Though the issue is very annoying (as PA’s virtual drive works the best out of all the others I have tried as a replacement) I do have a working replacement, though don’t like it. At least I can wait for the manual uninstall.

Regards

DrT

drteeth

Any news on this one yet?

DrT

spwolf

still not Monday :-)

drteeth

@spwolf:

still not Monday :-)

Sorry, I thought you posted over a week ago - damn my addled memory. I am REALLY sorry.

DrT

drteeth

Gentle reminder<hoping spwolf="" has="" not="" extended="" his="" holiday="" and="" is="" sipping="" pina="" coladas="" on="" some="" distant="" sunny="" beach="">

Regards

DrT</hoping>

spwolf

Device Manager> Storage Controllers> Starport Storage Controller… uninstall it and then reboot… then install pavd again and see if that helps?

thanks and sorry for the delay! I couldnt find it initially, who knows where was I looking.

drteeth

Hi,

@spwolf:

Device Manager> Storage Controllers> Starport Storage Controller… uninstall it and then reboot… then install pavd again and see if that helps?

That was the first (and second and third and…) thing I tried and it does not help at all.

Please see screen shot - still no drive letter. Problem still remains.

Regards

DrT

drteeth

Sorry for my impatience, but I use this feature daily and am really missing it. Can anything else other than a standard uninstall be advised?

DrT

spwolf

@drteeth:

Sorry for my impatience, but I use this feature daily and am really missing it. Can anything else other than a standard uninstall be advised?

DrT

unfortunately it seems that something else in your Windows installation is blocking it as it works on the same computer but different Windows installation.

Is it too much work to reinstall Win?

drteeth

Reinstalling is not an option as a) it would be a massive undertaking, but more importantly, b) I would very likely install the software that is conflicting as I would not know which was the guilty party.

I am more than happy and able to modify the registry or anything else that could fix this if you have any ideas.

What sort of things could conflict? All chipset drivers are the same version across all versions of Windows on this machine.

Regards

DrT

RJWaring

Can you try and (“Repair”) windows via the recovery disk?
That way your not going down a route of formating and installing from scratch. It could be anything from Driver’s, Corrupt Windows Components such as Registry issues.

Windows Repair might help, if it doesnt then even i would suggest a rebuild.

An Odd one indeed!

drteeth

Thanks for your input Sir.

The problem is that although I really like the PA implementation of virtual drives, that is the ONLY issue I have with my current setup. Also, all other virtual drive software that I have tried as replacements work flawlessly - the only common denominator is that they have drive letters pre-allocated…they appear as empty CD/DVD drives.

The issue could be down to some installed software, which I would unknowingly reinstall.

TBH, as much as I do not like computers to ‘win’, trying to fix this one by way of repairs and rebuilds just is not worth it.

Like last night - installed Fedora 17 - used to work well when first released, then had issues with some updates not taking. Tried again (last night) after a couple of months and after 2 hours of installing and updating, the sod would not boot up correctly (it did initially, but not after all the updates). problems with the free source nouveau nVidia driver. Not worth the hassle to fix either - I have 4 other Linux distros installed and OpenSuSE 12.2 is out in 5 days.

I will be happy to test any fixes that the team can come up with if this is found to be fixable.

Regards

DrT

spwolf

did you try using System Restore to the time when you think it all worked? I think it makes new restore point automatically, but you can make sure it does…

drteeth

The issue is with the automatic issue of drive letters. I found another piece of software that worked similarly to PAs and also used StarPort drivers. I have updated these drivers via windows device manager without any difference. Anybody have any ideas where the upper and lower filter keys for the PA virtual drive are in the registry or even what the drive is called (Rocket, StarPort, PowerArchiver, SPTD)? Restore points will not help, old ones gone as many installs and uninstalls have written new ones.