Windows XP Crashes

[LynneLarry]

I've never had a problem with Retrospect in 4 years or more, but now a second problem in the same week.

 

I installed Retrospect Pro 6.5 for a client this weekend on a brand-new Windows XP machine (Athelon processor, 1GB memory, 2 internal hard drives) and also on two clients (WinXP notebook and Win2000 desktop). He wants to use 2 Maxtor USB 2.0 hard drives as the back-up media and swap them weekly. I turned off System Restore for the USB drives, made sure the Retro installation was the latest release (6.5.336), but cannot get the machine to survive a single backup session. Sometimes the crash occurs on the first drive, sometimes on the second, but always before it is done backing up the local drives. The Windows blue screen appears with some details of the crash, and then WinXP re-starts the computer. I've tried both file and disk backup sets.

 

The client can run for days without problems using all of his other software, including Photoshop and CAD/CAM S/W (he's an architect), without the computer even blinking.

 

Any ideas?

[natew]

Hi

 

My guess is there is a problem with the USB2 controller or USB2 drivers for said controller. I have had a rough time with USB2 with my Maxtor drive in some OSes even on the same computer.

 

Make sure to get any chipset updates from VIA. Also see if there are updates to the USB2 controller. Personally I find firewire works much better on all OSes involved in my tests. It may be worth getting an add in card.

 

As a test try copying large amounts of data to the drives using windows explorer. Have you seen any "delayed write failed" errors when using the external drives? When you right click on the drives in the device manager what are the settings under policies?

 

Thanks

Nate

[LynneLarry]

OK, I moved this over to a Firewire interface (one of the Maxtors has both USB and FW) last evening, downloaded all driver updates from Microsoft and Maxtor, re-formatted the Maxtor 5000DV, disabled the XP features for indexing and system restore on the Maxtor (did NOT install the Retrospect Express and One-touch backup s/w that comes with the drive). It scanned, backed up, and compared the first disk (3.6GB of data), then scanned and backed up over 8 of the 10GB data on the second drive, and then CRASH, the blue screen with the words "Windows XP has encountered a fatal error...." and the machine goes into restart. When Retrospect starts up again, we get the lovely notice that "Retrospect terminated abnormally, probably due to a system crash or power failure" (or words to that effect).

 

Any ideas out there??

[AmyJ]

For testing purposes, try backing up to the local drive if possible. Any drive other then the current Maxtor drive should suffice. If the problem occurs only when writing to the Maxtor drive I'd say you've got a failing drive on your hands.

 

If the problem occurs when writing to other drives as well try using a disk utility on the source drive. There may be system or directory corruption that is causing the blue screen when certain files are being copied.