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Retrospect 7.7 and issue with NT 4.0 SP6a clients


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Hi,

I have encountered an issue with Retrospect 7.7 for Windows and Windows NT 4.0 SP6a as a client.

 

Retrospect 7.7 isn’t able to backup Windows NT 4.0 clients. When I try to backup Windows NT 4.0 SP6a machine the following message appears on the client desktop:

 

Title: Pcpds.exe – Entry Point Not Found

Message: The procedure entry point GetLongPathNameW could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll.

 

I have tested the following configurations:

- Retrospect 7.7. 325 (32-bit) with Driver Update and Hot Fix (7.7.2.100) installed on Windows 2003 Server STD 32-bit.

- Retrospect 7.7. 325 (32 bit) with Driver Update and Hot Fix (7.7.3.102) installed on Windows 2003 Server STD 32-bit.

- Retrospect 7.7. 325 (64-bit) with Driver Update and Hot Fix (7.7.3.102) installed on Windows 2008 Server STD 64-bit.

 

The above configurations were tested with two different clients: 7.6.107 and 7.7.106

 

Retrospect 7.6 works fine with NT 4.0 clients so I suppose that it is a bug in version 7.7.

 

Please let me know if there is any solution or workaround for this issue. Every help would be appreciated.

 

Many thanks in advance.

Bartek

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Robin,

 

Thank you for your response. I was afraid of such answer. I wonder why EMC discontinued support for NT 4 clients while version 7.6 works quite well with them. I have made a quick research on the Internet and found out that the procedure “GetLongPathNameW†doesn’t exist on NT 4 systems. I believe that it wouldn’t be too difficult to implement a simple condition like example presented below with “IF†and “ELSE†clauses to support old NT4 clients.

 

If (Client==NT4)

{

Call equivalent of GetLongPathNameW () like in Retrospect 7.6;

}

Else

{

Call GetLongPathNameW() ;

}

 

Currently we are using version 7.6 but. In order to improve performance and switch into 64-bit architecture we wanted to migrate to Retrospect 7.7. Unfortunately because of NT4 clients the test migration finished with failure. I know that the easiest workaround would be to upgrade old NT4 systems, however for some reasons it is not possible. I suppose that there are other clients who are still using NT4 systems and they also will be affected by the lack of the NT4 support.

 

Could Retrospect make its Clients happy and implement in the new 7.7 and later versions support for Windows NT 4 clients?

I believe that it wouldn’t be time consuming as the proper code already exists in 7.6 version. It would be a great step toward Customer needs.

Robin, please talk with your DEV team and let me know if it is possible.

 

Many thanks in advance for your help.

 

Regards,

Bartek

 

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I think this has been discussed before, whilst it's a shame that NT4 isn't supported it's getting a bit long in the tooth now. How long should they support it for? Forever?

 

IMO Retrospect should consider a paid-for add-on to put back support for NT4 (and ome other legacy systems). At least then, the additional effort in supporting them is a revenue stream...

 

This may not be a viable work-around, but there used to be tools around which made a Windows machine look like a MAC system on the network (I'm talking old OS9 days). If you run that software, Retrospect might be able to add NT4 as a OS9 client and mount/backup the data. I'm pretty sure system recovery will fail horribly though, but your data should be safe.

 

Forgive me if that's a barmy idea... I've not worked iwth MACs/NT4 for many years now!

 

Rich

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IMO Retrospect should consider a paid-for add-on to put back support for NT4 (and ome other legacy systems). At least then, the additional effort in supporting them is a revenue stream...

 

Just for the sake of argument... If it cost us $50,000 in testing and engineering time to add this feature (I have no idea what it would cost) and only 50 customers even needed it at this point, would you really pay for your share of that cost? Probably not at those prices. Just throwing that out as food for thought.

 

To my knowledge I have only heard from about 10 people that they miss NT 4 support

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I understand your point of view but I don’t think that it would be so expensive especially taking into consideration that the proper code already exists in Retrospect 7.6. The code could be used and left as it is without any excessive testing. How many clients have not updated the old Retrospect versions yet? Probably some of them will also be affected by the lack of the NT 4 support.

What is a real workaround of the issue? Should clients with NT 4 systems switch into competitive backup solution? Should they keep two different versions of Retrospect (7.7 for the new clients and 7.6 for NT4 systems)? I am not a fan of old NT4 systems but please believe me they are still using in production in some particular implementations. I am not talking about new installations. They have been running for years.

 

Is there any chance to recover the NT4 support? The implementation of the new functionalities could be skipped for NT4 systems. Only level from Retrospect 7.6 could be maintained.

 

Please let me know what is your advice?

 

Thanks,

Bartek.

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This may not be a viable work-around, but there used to be tools around which made a Windows machine look like a MAC system on the network (I'm talking old OS9 days). If you run that software, Retrospect might be able to add NT4 as a OS9 client and mount/backup the data. I'm pretty sure system recovery will fail horribly though, but your data should be safe.

 

Forgive me if that's a barmy idea... I've not worked iwth MACs/NT4 for many years now!

 

Rich

 

Thanks Rich,

It sounds interesting but unfortunately cannot be used in production.

 

Bartek.

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Support ended but unfortunately some of them did not magically vanish into thin air.

 

If I were a magician ... :)

 

Just for clarifying, no one expects any additional effort nor excessive testing and implementation of the new features for the old NT4 operating systems. Even though support in its strict meaning is not expected. Just the working and already created code from the 7.6 version could be used along with the new one.

 

Bartek.

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Just the working and already created code from the 7.6 version could be used along with the new one.

The problem is that new code is added for Win 7 and Windows 2008 server that may have broken the NT 4 code. So the old "working" code no longer works.

 

You need a legacy backup solution for your legacy clients.

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