CTM and Track 0 (MBR)

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1

Question about CTM:

Does this program alter anything in the Windows XP MBR/ Track 0?

Norton used to have a program called GoBack which acted in a way which did write to the MBR/ Track 0. This used to cause problems and conflicts with virus scanning and multibooting, especially if a Boot Manager was installed (like Norton Boot Magic or the Linux GRUB Loader). And uninstalling GoBack could trash Windows, making a full reformat/ reinstall necessary.

Is CTM doing anything like this?

I would never allow any Time Machine program to mess with Track 0 information. Way too risky!

I realize that CTM is not a full Disk or Partition Imaging program. Just a sort of Windows System Restore on steroids. I am not expecting perfection, as this program is still in beta.

In concept, I like CTM. But if I want to install it, I want to know it can be safely uninstalled, and it won’t trash Avast 5.x.

Folks, remember that Avast makes shadow copies of critical system files (Avast has a database Module which does this during idle CPU cycles) and tries to restore these files in the event of a virus cleanup. Maybe could this Avast feature be one source of conflicts with CTM?

2

I have used Rollback RX and EAZ-FIX successfully for years. These 3 programs all share the same engine. I have never experienced the MBR corruption with either of these products.
I have only experienced the MBR corruption with CTM and I did not have Avast installed.

3

This is exactly what I was getting at. The same problem occurs with Norton Roxio GoBack in at least the earlier versions. Uninstalling did not restore the MBR to its original state.

The Avast issue is separate, and maybe could that be due to a conflict with the Avast Virus Recovery DataBase feature (VRDB)?

The inability to do normal Acronis True Image backups and recovery (when CTM is installed) is the real deal-breaker for me.

4

avast 5 does not make shadow copies of critical system files.
VRDB was dropped on version 5 also.
avast 4.8 did it for two or three files. Rather useless.