Locked Volumes in Win7 & WinXP

Happy New Year! I really like your program. It is fast, and I like the ability to start with Windows, plus auto-save the ram images.

Please confirm the following issue that I noticed when running both Win7 and WinXP:

1) When I try using the Windows "chkdsk" function on the physical c: hard drive, it is unable to perform it. Error message says the Volume is locked or being used.

The problem goes away when I uninstall the Softperfect RAM product in both Win7 & WinXP.

2) I'm not sure if also related, but certain backup-disk "imaging" (AMEOI) program on Win7 is also unable to access the physical c: hard drive. No error message, but insure if it may not be able to access due to the same issue of volume being locked or being used(?)

It would be great if core Windows functions (chkdsk) are not be altered, and allowed to operate normally, especially if we encounter a hard disk problem. I think it is valuable to be able to make normal disk-image backups of my physical drives without having to uninstall or disable anything prior.

Please confirm these observations. Thank you.

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beta2

When I try using the Windows "chkdsk" function on the physical c: hard drive, it is unable to perform it. Error message says the Volume is locked or being used.

What exact command did you use to run disk checking? I suppose something like "chkdsk /f /r", right? Also, is the volume C: a system volume where the Windows operating system is installed?

Thank you for helping.

Yes, the physical hard drive c: is where my Windows operating system is installed on all my computers.

The general command I performed is as follows: > click on Computer > right-click on physical hard drive c: > click on Properties > click on Tools tab > click on Error-Checking Check Now > (enable) click on both options, which then sets chkdsk to perform on the next boot up. Upon the next bootup, normally as you know, chkdsk should start first before Windows gets to the desktop, but it appears that maybe the Softperfect driver is already loaded first(?) or is failing to release(?)

This behavior was noticed on both Win7 and WinXP, and goes away when I either uninstall Softperfect, and also, when I tried stopping & disabling the Softperfect "Service" files before rebooting. I hope you can confirm this.

Thanks again.

I was unable to reproduce this issue on Windows XP (32-bit) and Windows 7 (64-bit) with a simple 100 MB RAM disk mounted on E:

Scheduled disk checks ran the way they should after a restart with and without the RAM disk.

Is there anything specific about your RAM disk? May be it uses an image file stored on C:\ or something?

Thank you for trying to confirm this.

Correct, the RAM disk is started automatically to load an image file that is located on the physical hard drive c:\ (root folder)
The RAM disk is also set to automatically save to the same image file on the physical hard drive c:\

The RAM disk is set up very modest in size (350MB).
I do not have another physical drive or partition, to try confirming the issue by trying to save and load the image file to the other drives/partition.

Thanks again.

Behaviour confirmed.

When a boot-time RAM disk is used with an associated image file, the volume where the image is stored is not checked by chdsk at startup.

I suppose this is by design and as a workaround, I recommend to use a logon-time RAM disk (choose Disk - Add, not Disk - Add Boot Disk from the main menu).

In this case the image file is read at a later stage and scheduled chkdsk runs without a hitch.

Thank you for checking this out, and confirming this behavior.