I have a mess on my hands.....

[Froggie]

Sorry to say, only Rollback knows where those files are. I've been through this twice, albeit for different reasons (an MBR-style virus) and all I could ever get back was the baseline snapshot.

[Owl]

I'm hypothesising about how RBRx works here, the others may have done more dissection and have a better idea.

I can think of two ways RBRx might work: Either, when you create the baseline snapshot, the FAT is frozen and then RBRx imposes it's own driver between Windows and the hard drive for accesses thereafter; or RBRx updates the FAT for the current snapshot and keeps the old sectors out of sight.

The way you could tell between these is if you access the drive without running the OS and RBRx, what do you see? If what you see are the baseline files, then it works the former way, and if you see the current files, then it is the latter.

In your case you are seeing the baseline files. That suggests the former, but you have been trying to roll back to the baseline so that confuses things.

Either way, accessing the drive remotely naturally accesses the FAT (or whatever the equivalent is for the particular file system, presumaby RBRx supports NTFS even though the specification is not public domain), so the files you see are the files identified using the FAT and the directory structure.

Files in other snapshots are not hidden files in the file system, they are held in hidden disc sectors outside the file system. That is why you need a full disc image to do a complete backup of all snapshots.

The data is there somewhere (as long as you have not allowed any non-RBRx aware software to write to the disc in places it might believe are free), the problem is knowing how to access it. Without knowledge of the RBRx equivalent of a FAT, it will be painstaking.

[carfal]

Grantm, I have read all of this post but am unclear as to whether your able to boot into any snapshot at all.

You mention occassionally being annoyed by Rollback wanting to be activated. Is this occuring when you successfully boot into Windows and you try to access the Rollback console?

If this is the case then leave your PC in this snapshot and email Horizon for a activation reset. Include your product key for a speedy response.

Once Rollback is activated then simply open the Rollback Console and mount the latest snapshot where your current files reside and recover everything of importance and store it on an external HD.

Once this is achieved then i recommend you uninstall Rollback and perform a checkdisk and defrag (in that order).

Once your sure your HD is in working order then reinstall Rollback and things should be sweet again!


EDIT: Froggie's right. Unless your able to mount the snapshot with Rollback your files are irrecoverable.

[Owl]

From another thread:

Originally Posted by Froggie

....I've had this happen twice on the same DELL system and it both cases it was a result of a virus (of the MBR type)... the user has a bit of a p-o-r-n addiction and he got a drive-by while on the same site both times. Only way to get by it was to restore a standard MBR record on the PRIMARY drive. When this was done, Rollback became inoperative (it will due to the MBR change) and the system was back at the baseline snapshot.

This lends weight to my first hypothesis:

Originally Posted by Owl

I can think of two ways RBRx might work: Either, when you create the baseline snapshot, the FAT is frozen and then RBRx imposes it's own driver between Windows and the hard drive for accesses thereafter;

With RBRx disabled you get the baseline snapshot. I think we knew that, nice to have confirmation.

So, that means RBRx replaces the FAT that Windows (and windows apps) sees leaving the original FAT intact on disc (and the FATs in other protected partitions), and no amount of rolling back/forward to different snapshots will change anything except for a re-baseline.

What we need now is somebody with a bit of time on their hands to dissect the data tables RBRx uses to track multiple FATs (must look a lot like a FAT otherwise it's going to be hard work telling Windows where to get data from), and then we would have the means to extract files from failed RBRx installations and also back up RBRx partitions efficiently.

[grantm]

Hello:
I figured out what to do - reformat hard drive, reinstall XP, programs, etc. When I tried uninstalling Rollback during bootup it always hung up. I have not reinstalled Rollback.

Thanks to everyone for their input.