StableBit Scanner not playing nice with VMWare Player 6

[saiyan]

My PC with StableBit Scanner installed does not seem to play nice with either VMWare Player 6 or Oracle VirtualBox.

I'm not talking about running Scanner inside a virtual machine OS but have Scanner installed on a PC that also has VMWare Player 6 installed..

 

A few days ago I decided to install VMWare Player 6 on my Windows 7 x64 PC because I need to run Windows XP for testing purpose.

After VMWare Player 6 is installed and I rebooted my PC.

 

Upon log in to my desktop, I noticed several problems:

1) Windows Task Manager and Notepad both have classic looking border even though my Windows 7 has Aero effect enabled.  All other programs still show the normal Aero borders.

2) I tried right-click context menu option to run CMD "As Administrator" but nothing happened.  Afterward, the Start Menu does not respond to any left click either and the whole desktop feels somewhat sluggish.

3) When I launch Scanner dashboard, an error message indicating that it was unable to connect to the Scanner service.

4) I went into Computer Management and attempt to restart StableBit scanner service manually but its status stays at "Starting..." instead of "Started..." forever.

5) When I decided to "Restart" my Windows 7, it took forever to logoff and and shutdown so I had to press on the reset button on my PC.

 

At this point I was thinking VMWare must have done something to WMWare Player 6 since I did not have such problem in VMWare Player 5 but I have never have Scanner and VMWare Player 5 installed on the same PC so I can not be certain.

 

Luckily for me, I made a system image backup of my C drive before attempted to install VMWare Player 6.

 

So I restored my system drive using Acronis True Image recue CD and restored my C drive to before VMWare Player was installed and this time I installed the latest version of VirtualBox to see if it has the same problem.

 

Well, after Virtual Box is installed and my Windows 7 PC is rebooted, upon login to the desktop I experienced all the SAME PROBLEMS again.

Once again, Scanner service seem to be the problem.

 

To be certain that StableBit Scanner is causing the problem, I decided to restore my system drive again and this time I uninstalled both DrivePool and Scanner first.

Then I proceed to install VMWare Player 6 on my PC which no longer have DrivePool and Scanner running.

 

After the VMWare Player 6 is installed and my PC rebooted, I did NOT encounter any problem after I login to my desktop.

 

So the next thing is to install StableBit Scanner and see if I will have those problems again.

 

And immediately after the I installed Scanner (StableBit.Scanner_2.4.0.2928_Release.exe) but before I reboot my PC, Stable Scanner dashboard is launched automatically and all the problem I described is back!!!

(One good news from all these testing I did is that StableBit DrivePool appeared to be okay and shows no compatibility issue with VMWare Player or VirtualBox installed.)

 

Can anyone check if StableBit Scanner has any compatibility issues when VMWare Player 6?

 

Thank you.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Could you try the Beta version of Scanner and see if that helps?

 

If not, then could you get a memory dump of windows when it's "misbehaving"?

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_System_Freeze

[saiyan]

Hi Drashna,

 

I will probably do that the next time I have the chance (probably on a weekend).

 

But I'm curious if you or anyone else can duplicate the problem by simply installing VMWare Player 6 on an existing Windows 7 x64 system that has the latest non-beta Scanner installed (StableBit.Scanner_2.4.0.2928_Release.exe).

 

Thanks.

[saiyan]

Hi Drashna,

 

 

I finally had the chance and installed Scanner 2.5.0.2954 BETA today.

Unfortunately, the result is the same; system became slow or unresponsive on my Win 7 x64 system that has VMWare Player installed.

 

To make my system usable I had to restore system drive from backup again.

 

The fact that the problem occurred on my system with either VMWare Player or Oracle VirtualBox installed could mean there is some compatibility issues between StableBit Scanner popular Virtual Machines programs.

I would prefer NOT to install any new version of Scanner (beta or not) just to find out whether the problem is fixed or not.

 

Can any programmers at StableBit duplicate the problem by installing VMWare Player 6 on Window 7 64bit system?

 

Thank you.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

That is very odd. I know that Alex uses VMWare. I believe workstation and not player.

 

I'm going to see about duplicating the issue tomorrow in both products. 

 

 

And to make sure, you're running them on WIndows 7 x64 as the host OS, right?

And aside from maybe acronis, do you have any other software installed? especially AV or disk/backup utilities?

[saiyan]

Yes, I'm running Windows 7 64 bit host and installed VMWare Player 6 (and also tried Oracle VirtualBox too).

 

As soon as I installed StableBit Scanner on the same Windows 7 64 bit host, the scanner service will freeze and slow down the host OS.

(The Scanner is not installed in any virtual machine OS).

 

The anti-virus software I installed is Avast free edition.

The only disk backup software I have installed is Acronis True Image 2014 but it co-existed with Scanner just fine as long as I don't have VMWare Player or VirtualBox installed.

 

I hope you are not going to ask me try to install or uninstall various software packages just to see what software Scanner works with.

 

Each time Scanner service freezes, I can not even properly shutdown my Win 7 PC (the shutdown process would take forever).

And each time I restore my C drive from backup image (40+ GB), I feel like I'm killing my SSD.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

saiyan,

 

No, I just want to be able to duplicate the system as much as possible to see if it's one or more parts that are the issue.

[saiyan]

Okay..  If you need more information for research, please let me know.

Thanks.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Unfortunately, I'm having issues duplicating the issue. 

I've tried it in a couple of VMs, and I've tried it on physical hardware. With *all* of the software you've listed, and still, nothing. As stable as it can be.

 

 

By chance, do you have the "unsafeDirectIO" setting enabled for StableBit Scanner? If so, that could actually be the cause here. 

 

I'm also flagging this thread for Alex, because aside from what I've already recommended (that system freeze link), I'm not sure what else I can suggest doing to help fix the issue.

[saiyan]

I don't remember if I have "unsafeDirectIO" setting enabled.

I will install Scanner again this weekend or when I have the chance to verify its settings.

 

Are you able to duplicate the problem by enabling "unsafeDirectIO" option on the PCs (physical, not virtual) you tested?

 

Thanks.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

If you have it enabled, you'll have a "C:\Program Files (x86)\StableBit\Scanner\Scanner.Service.exe.config" file present (even after uninstall). If you do not, then you are not using this setting.

If you do have this file then you *may* have this setting enabled.

 

If you have a card that uses these unsafe methods, and Scanner is configured to allow their usage, then it can cause the instability. However, if the drive controller doesn't uses these methods at all, or it's not enabled... then this wouldn't be the cause. 

 

And unfortunately, the only system I have that has a controller that uses these unsafe methods is my server, which runs HyperV (and my testing and work VMs), and runs Server 2012...

 

The reason I asked is because I noticed that I had not asked it before. And since the setting can cause the system to become unstable....

 

 

I'm still trying to test this out and reproduce the issue. 

But in the meanwhile, if you are willing to, getting that crashdump for when the system is locking up/hanging would be most useful.

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_System_Freeze

[saiyan]

I checked "C:\Program Files (x86)\StableBit\Scanner" directory but I don't see any "Scanner.Service.exe.config" file.

 

You mentioned cards using "unsafe methods".

Are you talking about add-on SATA or RAID controllers?

 

My PC has a Areca ARC-1220 RAID controller but all hard drives connected to the card are in JBOD mode.

 

I don't know if Scanner was configured to use any unsafe methods or not.

I have previously changes settings trying to see if Scanner would read S.M.A.R.T. attributes from hard drives connected to the RAID controller so perhaps some settings were changed to use unsafe method.

 

When I have the chance, I will uninstall VMWare Player and put Scanner back to see if any settings are using "unsafe methods".

[Christopher (Drashna)]

The "unsafe" methods are for the controller, raid or sata.

 

But if you don't have that config file, then you're not using those unsafe methods (as that is specifically enabled by that file).