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Windows Forum / Windows XP / General Topics 2 / May 2008Problems with C:\System Volume Information\tracking.log
I am an ordinary user of XP Pro with no special technical knowledge. I'm encountering a problem that I can't find discussed anywhere on the internet. The Problem: Any program that tries to access C:\System Volume Information\tracking.log hangs up and has to be shut down using Task Manager. Even just attempting to view the file properties causes Windows Explorer to hang up. Anti-virus and -spyware programs scanning my computer get stuck when they try to read the file. Does anybody know what is causing this and what I should do? Or, should I erase the hard drive and start over? ------------- My system info and steps taken: I made a clean install Windows XP Pro SP2 onto my new Dell Vostro laptop hard drive [108 GB] after my old laptop died. I installed programs (including Zone Alarm and Spyware Doctor) and documents manually. I set the System Restore allocation to 3% of my hard drive space (= 2.8 GB). I essentially rebuilt my old laptop's software configuration on the new computer. XP Pro was fully updated before encountering this problem. After installing/updating Windows & appropriate drivers, I installed Zone Alarm Security Suite and Spyware Doctor. Both programs were able to run full scans of my hard drive without problem. After installing other software applications and moving my backed-up data onto the new drive, I tried to run scans again with Zone Alarm and Spyware Doctor. Both programs hung up while reading C:\System Volume Information\tracking.log. When I opened the System Volume Information folder, I could not either open the tracking.log txt file [file size displayed as '20 kb'] or view File Properties without causing Windows Explorer to hang up. (I restarted my computer between each of these attempts.) The System Volume Information folder already takes up the full 2.8 GB allocated to it. There is one Restore folder [2.8 GB] and a file 'MountPointRestoreDatabase' [file size shown as 0kb]. I tried doubling the System Restore allocation to 6% of disk space and restarting the computer. I still have the same problems. Windows Explorer now also hangs up when I try to change the security permissions of the System Volume Information folder. I was originally able to ADD Administrators to the permissions, but I am now unable to REMOVE them. ------- Why set system volume to 2.8GB total space.As far as file system info,go to run,type:cmd In cmd type:DiskPart In DiskPart,type:list disk Type:list volume Type:HELP For all cmds...Also,open event viewer to get specific OS info click on the errors/warnings. > I am an ordinary user of XP Pro with no special technical knowledge. I'm > encountering a problem that I can't find discussed anywhere on the internet. [quoted text clipped - 41 lines] > ADD Administrators to the permissions, but I am now unable to REMOVE them. > ------- Hi Andrew, I had reduced the disk allocation to 3% because System Restore had taken up 16 GB of my old 80GB hard drive. I've never used System Restore and hadn't even heard of it. I'm actually deliberating whether having System Restore is worth all the disk space it uses. I get the message "DiskPart was unable to process the parameters" Any idea what that might indicate? Thanks > Why set system volume to 2.8GB total space.As far as file system info,go to > run,type:cmd In cmd type:DiskPart In DiskPart,type:list disk Type:list [quoted text clipped - 48 lines] > > ADD Administrators to the permissions, but I am now unable to REMOVE them. > > ------- > Hi Andrew, > I had reduced the disk allocation to 3% because System Restore had > taken up 16 GB of my old 80GB hard drive. I've never used System > Restore and hadn't even heard of it. I'm actually deliberating > whether having System Restore is worth all the disk space it uses. System Restore is a valuable tool that can be be used to solve many problems. Turning it off would be a serious mistake. But the default (and maximum) of 12% of the drive that System Restore takes is a very poor one. In practice you can seldom go back more than a week or two, because any more than that and your registry gets out of synch with everything else. So allocating space for more than a dozen or so restore points is a waste. All you need for that is 1-2GB at the most.  SignatureKen Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User Please reply to the newsgroup Hi Ken, Thanks, it's good to know what a practical size for allocation would be. I've set my allocation back to 3% (2.8 GB) Even after I've been able to access the tracking.log file in Normal mode (see my replies to Bert's posts below), I still get the same "DiskPart was unable to process the parameters" when I try to follow Andrew's suggestion to run DiskPart. Does that mean anything to anyone here? > Hi Ken, > Thanks, it's good to know what a practical size for allocation would > be. I've set my allocation back to 3% (2.8 GB) You're welcome. Glad to help. Good that you've lowered the allocation. You could probably make it even smaller. > Even after I've been able to access the tracking.log file in Normal > mode (see my replies to Bert's posts below), I still get the same > "DiskPart was unable to process the parameters" I'll leave you in Bert's capable hands. He knows much more about this than I do. > when I try to follow > Andrew's suggestion to run DiskPart. Does that mean anything to > anyone here? Andrew E.? Sorry to be rude to another poster, but I believe in calling a spade a spade. Andrew E. is an idiot, and a troll. What he posts is at best useless, and is often downright harmful. You would be well advised to ignore everything he says. SignatureKen Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User Please reply to the newsgroup The next smallest allocation is 1% (1.2 GB). Is that enough? Thanks, Robert > The next smallest allocation is 1% (1.2 GB). Is that enough? Yes, that should be enough. SignatureKen Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User Please reply to the newsgroup Hi, Let's see if System Restore will function in Safe Mode. Boot into Safe Mode and perform a test restore using the following link. http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#3 How to starting Windows XP in Safe Mode: http://bertk.mvps.org/html/safemode.html If there are any Norton applications installed, take a look at this page. http://bertk.mvps.org/html/symantecdoc1.html Here are some more troubleshooting steps to take when System Restore fails to restore: http://bertk.mvps.org/html/srfail.html The Event Viewer can sometimes be helpful in tracking down errors. Using the Event Viewer to troubleshoot System Restore errors: http://bertk.mvps.org/html/source.html Regards, Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User http://bertk.mvps.org Member: http://dts-l.org > I am an ordinary user of XP Pro with no special technical knowledge. I'm > encountering a problem that I can't find discussed anywhere on the internet. [quoted text clipped - 40 lines] > ADD Administrators to the permissions, but I am now unable to REMOVE them. > ------- Hi Bert, I ran into even worse problems - now I can't start up Windows except in Safe Mode. (See bottom of message for results from checking Event Viewer) I created a Test Restore point following your directions, created a test shortcut, and then did a System Restore in Safe Mode to the Test Restore point. That task completed and Windows automatically shut down and restarted - so far, everything looks fine. When restarting, the Windows loading screen appears and then the screen goes blank. Normally, this would soon be replaced by the logon screen. Instead, it just stays blank and hard drive activity stops. I had to do a forced power-off. When the computer rebooted, I got the Windows advanced boot options menu. I tried using the Last Good Configurations option, but that didn't work either. Safe Mode DOES start up. When I booted up in Safe Mode with GUI, I got a "restore successful" message and, sure enough, the "Test" shortcut that I had created per your instructions had disappeared. It's just that I can't start up in Normal Mode anymore. EVENT VIEWER REPORTING: I checked this first before attempting System Restore. Under Application Events, there were able 60 instances of an Information message from HHCTRL of event "1904", category "none" all posted at 1:12 pm yesterday afternoon. When I double-click on any of them, I get a message that Event Viewer can't access the details. The last message on the Viewer that IS accessable was posted at 1:08pm from MSSQL server. The last event logged under System Events was on Aug 23, Information Event from Service Control Mgr, event ID "7036". Even after I attempted the System Restore described above and opened Event Viewer in Safe Mode, there STILL were no messages more recent than those listed in the paragraph above. Hi, The System Volume Information (SVI) folder is where System Restore holds it's restore points. Encrypting File System and the Indexing Service also stores information there also. Zone alarm has been know to cause problems with System Restore. Did this version of ZA work on the old laptop? ZA Free bloats System Restore - ZoneAlarm User Forum: http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=gen&message.id=34871 I would suggest deleting the contents of he SVI folder. Disable System Restore and use these instructions to empty the SVI folder. http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#14 How to Disable and Enable System Restore: http://bertk.mvps.org/html/disablesr.html Then enable System Restore and check to see if the problem remains. Regards, Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User http://bertk.mvps.org Member: http://dts-l.org > I am an ordinary user of XP Pro with no special technical knowledge. I'm > encountering a problem that I can't find discussed anywhere on the internet. [quoted text clipped - 40 lines] > ADD Administrators to the permissions, but I am now unable to REMOVE them. > ------- (This message was written after my reply to your first post) Partial success: I found out how to get my computer to start up again in Normal mode, but I haven't resolved the original problem. Yes, Zone Alarm is involved somehow. Details: --------------- 1. Zone Alarm (ver. 7) worked fine on my old system. On my new system, it had slowed down my computer and caused it to hang up during System Shutdown. (This was 2-3 days ago.) Per ZA's own recommendation on the ZA Forum site, I turned off On-Access Scanning - has something to do w/ the current build that they say will be fixed in the next program update. I haven't had any problems since, until I ran into the tracking.log problem. See #4 below 2. While in Safe Mode (GUI) I was able to access the tracking.log file Properties and open the file with Notepad. No problem, though the file itself looks mostly like gibberish. 3. Turned off System Restore. Rebooted. Same problem as before when trying to boot up into XP Normal mode. (Black screen, hard drive activity stops) 4. Rebooted Safe Mode. Uninstalled ZoneAlarm Suite. You were right - it is part of the problem. Windows booted up normally. Except now, of course, without ZA, which I will need in the future. 5. Turned System Restore back on. 6. Tried reading the Properties for the tracking.log file. Again, it caused Windows Explorer to hang up and I had to force it to close, once again, using Task Manager. 7. Checked the Event Viewer log. No new entries have been posted to System or Applications despite all the changes that have happened. 8. Unstalled a media codecs converter program called "Super (C)" that I'd installed yesterday afternoon. This was the only program -- other than MS XP Powertoys -- that I hadn't had on my old laptop system. (I had installed it about the time that the last messages were logged onto Event Viewer.) Still unable to read the Properties of the tracking.log file. So, I'm back where I started, sort of. While the problem hasn't been resolved, we do know: A. Whatever causes applications to hang up when accessing tracking.log IS NOT present in Safe Mode. B. ZoneAlarm is involved somehow, but secondarily, as it seems. (continued) 9. I shut down my laptop after uninstalling the Super (c) program. When I restarted in normal mode several hours later, I was finally able to access the Properties of the tracking.log file and also to open it in Notepad. Progress! 10. I re-activated Spyware Doctor, which I'd deactivated when this problem first cropped up. I ran a Full System Scan, and this time -- unlike yesterday -- it had no problems with the tracking.log file and the scan completed sucessfully. More progress. 11. After restarting the computer, I re-installed ZoneAlarm. After completing the install, the ZA requires the system to restart. BUT this time, the computer couldn't start in normal mode. It got locked up in a blank screen like it did earlier today. 12. I booted in Safe Mode and uninstalled Zone Alarm, and the computer was able to boot up in Normal Mode again. I didn't have a problem booting up with ZoneAlarm before I encountered the problem with tracking.log yesterday. 13. I'm still able to open/access the tracking.log file, which still looks like gibberish. Since I had cloned my drive onto an external drive 2 days ago, I opened the cloned copy and it looked the same as my current copy. 14. There are still no new entries to the Event Viewer log whatsoever, which I find rather fishy. 15. Tried updating with Windows Update instead of Microsoft Update, as suggested. Windows Update redirects to MS Update anyway, so no clues there. So, part of the problem has been solved, since security software can now scan the tracking.log file without hanging up. But there seems to be more to it than that, and ZoneAlarm is still having problems that it didn't have when I installed it last week. The Super (c) program seems to have been involved somehow, but I don't know how. Does that give you or anyone any clues as to what's causing this? With ZA having problems that didn't exist on my system before, there still seems to be a problem. Thanks, Bert, for the advice on Safe Mode and the links. They've been quite helpful even though the problem isn't completely resolved yet. Nice testing and documentation, Xiaomai. The events going on here are unusual, to say the least. The Super (c) program is the most likely suspect so far. Considering the unusual events I would suggest leaving it off the system. And if is not, uninstall ZA at least for now. I would then suggest reinstalling Windows XP to repair anything else Super (c) may have messed up. The repair install should not effect any installed applications. You will want to run MS Update afterwards. How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install by Michael Stevens MS-MVP: http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm How to perform a repair installation of Windows XP if IE 7 is installed http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3ben-us%3b917964 Regards, Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User http://bertk.mvps.org Member: http://dts-l.org > (This message was written after my reply to your first post) > [quoted text clipped - 44 lines] > > B. ZoneAlarm is involved somehow, but secondarily, as it seems. Followed instructions & the Repair Install itself went fine. That was the good part. Unfortunately, the system encountered an error attempting to install the 82 most essential windows update. (The error message appeared as soon as XP tried to install the first of 82, and all 82 failed simultaneously.) STILL no new entries in the Event Viewer logs. You'd think a Repair Install would get noted, right? Not this time. The failed updates was the last straw for me. I did a clean install and am currently re-installing my software. At this point, that's probably the most time-efficient option, and everything I have is backed up anyway. Will monitor the Event Viewer and the tracking.log file. My main disappointment at this point is that the cause of the problem was never definitevely identified. But given that my my old laptop had no problems and the only difference in software installed was: A. I installed more Windows Powertoys (I doubt these would be the problem) and B. the Super (c) audio program, and the last event logged was about the same time I installed it, I think it's quite reasonable to believe that the Super (c) was the cause of it. And if it does turn out to be Zone Alarm, this saga will continue on their message board. Thanks for your help! Thanks for the feedback. Now that the system is installed clean, I would suggest creating a restore point after every new install. Avoid installing any hardware driver updates from Windows Update. If XP does not have a needed driver, download it from the manufactures web site. I would also suggest running Memtest to check the insalled RAM to make sure there are no errors. Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool http://www.memtest.org/#downiso As far as ZA goes, how are you connecting to the internet, and is there a router involved? Regards, Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User http://bertk.mvps.org Member: http://dts-l.org > Followed instructions & the Repair Install itself went fine. That was the > good part. [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > Thanks for your help! Follow-up Post: After reinstalling Windows, I had no further problem until the end of December (2007) when the same thing happened, for no known reason. This time, I simply did a clean re-install, since I haven't found any other posts/solutions from people who've had this problem. > Followed instructions & the Repair Install itself went fine. That was the > good part. [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > Thanks for your help! What is "this problem"? SignatureHope this helps. Gerry ~~~~ FCA Stourport, England Enquire, plan and execute ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Follow-up Post: > After reinstalling Windows, I had no further problem until the end of [quoted text clipped - 32 lines] >> >> Thanks for your help! The problem was the C:\System Volume Information\tracking.log file. The whole issue began because any attempt to access the file (such as anti-virus software doing a routine scan) would hang up. Even trying to access the Properties tab for this file would cause a hung app - in fact, I can't remember that far back, but I might have had to do a force power off when the system hung up that way. All this for a file only 20kb. Attempts to diagnose the cause of the problem failed, so not surprisingly, I wasn't able to fix it short of erasing the hard drive and doing a clean re-install. At the time, Bert and I suspected a freeware program called Super (c) was the culprit. This problem happened again on Dec 28 but there was culprit I could suspect - that time I found it easier just to do the clean re-install and be done with it within 24 hours. I have now found the past history of your problem as recorded in Google: http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support/brows e_thread/thread/63c7d42bd965e6ef/3dec2098a431c0fc?hl=en&lnk=st&q=+tracking.log#3 dec2098a431c0fc I see we also corresponded just before the new year on a problem with a defragmenter. Did the solution suggested work? Your problem is with Zone Alarm. The solution for you is described here: http://forums.zonealarm.com/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=Antivirus&message.id =24929 However, there may be some doubt as to whether it resolves the problem. When does your Zone Alarm subscription expire? SignatureHope this helps. Gerry ~~~~ FCA Stourport, England Enquire, plan and execute ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > The problem was the C:\System Volume Information\tracking.log file. > The whole issue began because any attempt to access the file (such as [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > suspect - that time I found it easier just to do the clean re-install > and be done with it within 24 hours. I wish I'd seen your reply back in January! (It's May now, and I just renewed my ZA license last month), and I just got the same problem today (May '08). Any application that tried to access tracking.log. The system locked up when I tried viewing File Properties or opening it. Nonetheless, the link to ZA Forum that you posted enabled me to solve the problem, thanks! It appears to be a minor issue that I can easily live with. The actual post with the solution that I used is here: http://forums.zonealarm.com/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=Antivirus&message.id =27909 (I have both Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite and Spyware Doctor 5.5.0~ installed.) The solution is simple: I restarted my computer in Safe Mode. From there, I could view File Properties for tracking.log and open the file. I deleted the file and restarted normally. (XP automatically creates this file during startup.) When I tried accessing the file just now, I was able to open it and view the File Properties tab with no problem. Sure beats having to reinstall XP and all my files from scratch for the 3rd time in 8 months! Hopefully, this whole issue is now resolved and other people can benefit from my experience. If that is NOT the case, I'll update this post. |
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