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Acronis File Protector causing BSOD PC Crash

I have a 64bit Win10Pro host with a 64bit Win10Pro VM and recently I have experienced host crashes when running Windows Update in the VM. Crash always happens when the VM reboots to complete the update/ Crashes started around the time I first got Acronis Active Protection for the host.

A dump file analysis shows the culprit to be C:\Windows\System32\drivers\file_protector.sys (an acronis file.)

A google search shows a lot of people complaining about file_protector.sys.

  • Is there a known issue with file_protector.sys?
  • Is it part of Acronis Active Protection?
  • I already have AVG Internet Security which has Software protection. Is it possible there is a conflict between both products?

I have also had problems running Windows Update on the host since running the latest True-image - It never finds anything.

For now, I have disabled Active File protection -

Host runs Acronis Backup and AVG Anti virus, VM runs Defender

 

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Welcome to these User Forums.

I would recommend opening a Support Case directly with Acronis Support for any issues that cause a BSOD crash and work with Acronis to investigate this in more detail.

Acronis Active Protection is an integrated part of the ATI 2018 application by design, so if you want to disable this then you need to first 'Turn off AAP' either in the main ATI GUI or via the system tray icon.  After doing this, you then also need to open the Services.msc control panel and disable to AAP Service found there, followed by a restart.

There are known BSOD issues if you are running a Windows 10 Insiders build (17017, 17025 or others) where Acronis have published KB 60589: Acronis True Image: Windows Insider Program (beta) builds support to state very clearly that they will not support these builds.

Okay, I will contact support with details, dumps etc but I honestly cannot see myself ever re-enabling AAP. I am happy with ATI being just a great backup utility and using something else for protection.

I am not running insider editions just the anniversary version.

So far, disabling AAP seems to have resolved my issues and my VM is now updating without crashing the host.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Hello! We have checked the dump that you have sent to the Acronis Support but it is quite hard to tell the exact issue cause basing on it. From the dump we see that some application interferes with the Acronis driver. 

I can totally understand that you would like to keep the machine from BSODs in the future but maybe you could reenable the Acronis Active Protection feature for the investigation purposes? Please, let me know, and I will PM you with the details.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Hi, I am currently doing some QA work for a release and so will not be able to carry out any tests at the moment.

However, I do have some information which might help. 

During the upgrade of the virtual machine to Windows 10 v1703, the VM itself had a couple more BSODs during reboot stages. This was after I had turned off AAP. However, in both cases, the host did not BSOD.

So when AAP was running on the host, it seems that a BSOD triggered on the VM would somehow cause the host to BSOD. 

Prior to this, the host machine had never had a BSOD on Windows 10 in over 2 years.