FC 6.1 Hangs Windows 7 Topic is solved

[Michail]

Hello!
(P.S. sorry about my poor English, I'm from Russia)
First of all i'd like to thank your team for such a good product! We have a file server which have bottleneck in IOPS Perfomance of storage system. For a long time i've searched how to solve this problem, and I think your FancyCache can help very much.
At first I tested it on my work computer, and get next results:
My system have 3 volumes, C - system, D - work files (very fragmented with about 5% free space), Z - new and clean SSD OCZ Vertex-2 (took it for this tests).
I've used FuncyCache for Volumes.
Firstly i set up FC to cache Volume D and tested it for about 3 days very intensively without any problems. Results a very encouraging. I attached it to this post, you can use it on your site if you want.

Fancy Cache_2.zip

(595.88 KiB) Downloaded 28 times

I've tested using AS SSD Benchmark and IOMeter, tests are for pure HDD, HDD+FC Lev.1 on RAM, pure SSD, HDD+FC Lev.1 on RAM and Lev.2 on SSD with different settings. Iometer tests are for 4k, 66% read - 33% write, 50% random - 50% seq.
After that i stoped caching vol.D and started it for vol.C to test for some days in working environment. And from that moment begin problems. After some time from starting FC (from 3 min to 1 hour) Windows hangs It doesn't give BSOD, just picture on screen freezes and after about 5 seconds mouse cursor freezes too. Nothing helps, just hard reset
At that time computer doesn't used very intensively, just web-browsing in Firefox or Opera, with many open pages, some with Flash content. I checked it about 5-8 times with R/W cache and Only Read Cache with same results. After than stopped FC and now working about 2 days without problems.

If I can help to deeper investigate this problem, I'd be happy to help, just tell what I should do. I don't think that there is any Dump because Windows can't get to BSOD...

Another questions:
1. When approximately you plan to release FancyCache (few months or maybe year or two...)?
2. What will be approx. price for x64 server?
3. How FC works with Microsoft Cluster Service? Now we have fileserver on MSCS of two Win'2003 servers...

Best regards, Michail.

[Michail]

Forgot to say, testing system is Windows 7 Professional x32.

[intika]

Hello...

Awaiting support answer...

i can tell you that fancy cache are in development 1 year ago... i think in 6 month will see a first version... i'm not sure support will tell

About the problem you got using it :
Generally FC work fine with Windows 7 x86 ALONE ... generally problems come with other softs/services/hardwares...
according to that you have to look and check what's going wrong...
check your windows log and see what soft is hanging...
May be you can close all opened softs and services (those not needed to make windows work)... lunch cache on c: test some time and see... if it's okay... tray to add soft and service to identify which one is hanging...

Hope my answer help

Cheers

[intika]

Be careful testing on production machine !!! make a backup before !

[Michail]

Thanks for your answers...

I agree that problem is most likely in compatibility with some soft/drivers, but system is quite clean, there was Nokia OVI in autostart, but I've disabled it and nothing changes... Though... I forgot about our corporate antivirus, Kaspersky (http://www.kaspersky.com/). Maybe it's the reason... I'll try to disable it at tuesday, now we have vacations here in Russia.
I don't think that there is something in Log, because it is in drive C and most likely it doesn't catch to write to the HDD, but i'll check it.
And, yes, awaiting for official support answers...

P.S.: I know about risks of testing, but there is nothing unrecoverable on my system, and I have backups.

[intika]

And, yes, awaiting for official support answers...

Yep

i talk about system logs cause it helped me to find problem that i had with FC... and even c: cached and got bluescreen error... i found the log about my error...

may be you can also check also in safe mode...

[JimF]

Are you overclocking? I have found that FancyCache requires a stable system to start with, and any instability will be amplified, probably due to the additional read/writes to the DRAMs.

[intika]

i don't think it's about stability... it's more complex then that... from the first window till now the only big persisting problem is not on hardware even not on the OS but in different other levels between them-self (i mean driver/service/softs/special.system.config) ... fancy cache is made a way to do not disturb all this stuff but as Microsoft windows is not perfect on the management of all this stuff we got bugs... we could be sure that some thing (soft) do not like the way FC Working and cause bluescreen or hang, it's just that... the support team are making their possible adapting and rewriting the soft to make it compatible 100% with all the shit lol we could find under windows... :p
according to that debug and tray to find what soft/driver/etc. don't like FC...
Tray this :
1. Make a backup
2. start in safemode
3. enable FC and check
4.1 let fc enabled and reboot on safe-mode
4.2 at this time if the system hand you will see directly the responsible generally a driver/service used in deep with the system ... with this step you could identify if it's really a big problem or a minor one... but you risk to crash the system with no further boot
4.3 if it's okay it's a minor bug (let FC enabled)
4.4 stay on safemode use msconfig to disable all soft/service not needed (start with non microsoft)
5. reboot normal mode and check...
6. So on...
7. check also driver... (if you don't know a lot about it i don't advice you doing it) ... but if you made backup proceed...
8. to disable some driver you can use autorun from microsoft systeminternal... (kind of msconfig)
9. so on....
...
a long way lool
...
good luck
...
Note : The Blue Screen Just Stop Windows from working cause of a big error, but it don't do a savage shutdown... when bluescreen happen ram data are flushed to hdd, log are made and then reboot if reboot option is enabled... and even you got a really big bug and no data are flushed you can still access and see what happen just before... soft start/ minor error... or something like that...
Note 2 : i'm not over-clocking, just tweaking...

[intika]

aah sorry jim i was thinking the answer came from michael...
i don't know if changing the ram clock change something to FC Cache...

[Michail]

I don't overclock, it's my working system for working in office and browsing, i just don't need to overclock there
Yesterday I've installed FC on system drive of my home system, Win'7 x64, and it's working stable. Tomorrow i'll try to disable antivirus at working computer...