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nonstop breaks msi install and TurboTax

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Enabling nonstop backup consistnetly breaks standard software installs under Windows XP SP3. The installer fails with messages about being unable to access a file. Turning of nonstop backup allows the install to complete successfully.

The same problem exists for normal use of Intuit's TurboTax 2009. Attempts to save the tax file fail when nonstop is enabled.

It looks to me as though nonstop is using a file locking mechanism that breaks some standard coding models.

The least that Acronis should do is to give us a simple way of enabling nonstop from the sys tray. It is easy to disable nonstop, but you have to bring up the main Acronis application to enable nonstop.

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Hello Carl,

Thank you for posting your question, I will be happy to help.

Actually, since an installation implements a lot of changes for the source operating system, it is not recommended to install a program during a backup operation. You are correct, Acronis software locks the access to the partitions during a backup. Here is the description of the snapshot technology:

Once Acronis software initializes the backup process of a volume, Acronis Snapshot Manager flushes the file system mounted to that volume temporarily freezing all the operations on the system volume. Immediately thereafter, the Snapshot Manager driver creates a point-in-time view of the system volume and a bitmap describing the used sectors on this volume. Once the bitmap is created, the filter driver unfreezes the I/O operations on the system volume. It generally takes just several seconds to create a point-in-time view of the volume. After that, the operating system continues working as the imaging process is under way.

Acronis software reads the sectors on the system volume according to the created bitmap. Once a sector is read, the appropriate bit in the bitmap is reset. In its turn, the Acronis driver continues working to hold the point-in-time view of the system volume. Whenever the driver sees a write operation directed at the system volume, it checks whether these sectors are already backed-up, if they are not, the driver saves the data on the sectors that will be overwritten to a special buffer created by the software, then it allows the sectors to be overwritten. Acronis software backs up the sectors from the special buffer, so that all the sectors of the point-in-time view of the system volume will be backed up intact. Meanwhile, the operating system continues working and you will not notice anything unusual in the operating system functionality.

About TurboTax 2009.

To give the issue a closer investigation please obtain the below information and send me a Private Message, attach the files to your message.

1) Download AcronisInfo file ;

Run the downloaded file. The gathered information will be put in adv_report.zip in the same folder, where the AcronisInfo was saved. Running AcronisInfo may take up to 5 minutes.

2) Please provide us with the screen shot of the error message that appears:

If you are not familiar with making screen shots, please read the below step-by-step instructions.
- Get to the window which you want to make a screen shot of;
- Hit the (Alt+)PrintScreen button on your keyboard;
- Run Paint usually available in Start\Programs\Accessories or another graphics application;
- Choose Paste command in Edit menu;
- Save the result picture in JPEG format being preferable.
3) Please let us know the exact sequence of your actions that will allow us to reproduce the issue.
4) Let us know the exact version and build number of  TurboTax 2009 software. 
I will request the possibility to turn on Nonstop backup from the systray, maybe, this option will be added for the future releases.  
We are looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.

Please do not hesitate to ask additional questions if the provided information is not clear or you need a further assistance. 

Thank you.