Battle Shadow Defender Alternatives

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ToolWiz Time Freeze
Reboot Restore Rx
Macrium Reflect
In-depth Comparison

codswollip

Level 23
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Well-known
Jan 29, 2017
1,201
I'm having issues with SD (Win10 x64 Home). Each time I reboot from an SD session, the shutdown hangs with the blue screen of circling balls. If I click the mouse during this time, the screen goes black leaving only the mouse cursor. Ctrl-Alt-Del has no effect. So I must hard power off. Upon restart I wait through 15 seconds of black screen before my SSD password screen appears.

This is all quite nerve-wracking.

Since there is no official SD support (does Tony even exist... he reminds me of "Management" on HBO's Carnivàle), I'm looking for a simple, cheap tool to let me occasionally test softwares. I've used ToolWiz's Time Freeze in the past, but it appears that development has ceased. I ran across Reboot Restore Rx (free) but it seems to be always active (vs SD's on demand availability).

I have half a notion to use Macrium Reflect imaging to solve this problem, but that seems a bit extreme,

Suggestions?
 

I Walk MY Way

Level 6
Verified
Well-known
May 27, 2013
281
Dear Telos

Snap I have had the same issue on (Windows 10 x64 Home) with 3 pcs for the last 2 weeks.
Each time I reboot from an SD session , circling balls. or sometimes just a blue screen or a black screen,
1 pc failed to boot after circling balls and black screen. I had to use Macrium Reflect to restore a backup image
SD has been uninstalled from all my pcs now
 

davisd

Level 3
Verified
Well-known
Jan 27, 2019
107
Using myself Deep Freeze by Faronics, since Shadow Defender is incompatible with the Panda Dome. I quite enjoy it, it's stupidly easy to use, I haven't yet seen any crash or abnormal functioning. The only thing I don't like is there are not much options in the settings. It gets updated quite oftenly, but also has some known issues, so gotta keep an eye on those changes.


Here's always latest and updated Standard version which includes 30 day trial upon installation.

 
Last edited:

ichito

Level 11
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Dec 12, 2013
541
Using myself Deep Freeze by Faronics, since Shadow Defender is incompatible with the Panda Dome.
Curently there is no alternative for SD among LV apps...of course you can use TTW, WTF, Returnil/Qietzone but all of them are already out of development. I'm curious what was that "incompatible with the Panda Dome " you mentioned?
 

Thirio

Level 3
Verified
Well-known
Mar 3, 2017
126
There are a few alternatives but none as convenient as SD so I hope you are able to fix this problem. Going down the list...

Toolwiz Time Freeze - Only protects drive C and last update was in 2016.

Reboot Restore RX - Can protect all drives if you check them on installation. Changes MBR and sets its own splash screen on boot, there's an on/off switch if you right click the system tray icon (grey=off, orange=on) and the baseline can be updated without a reboot just by toggling on/off.

Rollback RX - Gives you on-demand system restores with snapshots and lets you test software requiring reboots. Changes MBR like above. Only protects drive C. Multiple snapshots which can take up gigs of space on drive C.

Sandboxie - Effective but a bit different from SD since it doesn't virtualize the whole system and you must sandbox everything yourself (software, browser, etc.)

Shade Sandbox - Alternative to Sandboxie but I have no experience with it, so no further comment.

Comodo Cloud Antivirus for auto-sandboxing the unknowns or on-demand sandbox testing software. CCAV lets programs installed in the sandbox to create a shortcut on your desktop for easy access (which is then deleted when u reset the sandbox). It is lightweight and convenient however still not the same style as SD virtualizing everything.

Incremental backups with Macrium (paid) or Aomei (free) - restoring takes longer this way compared to a simple reboot so not as convenient as SD, and you must also be certain the images you are restoring from are clean (shadow defender, reboot restore or an anti-exe are good at protecting your image files on a connected backup drive from ransomware)

Then you have Virtual Machines which can be very slow and not all that fun to use. Macrium has a ViBoot feature which lets you boot up images as a test machine on Windows 10 Pro. And Windows 10 Pro itself has a built-in sandbox which is coming in the next update.
 

ichito

Level 11
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Dec 12, 2013
541
IRS and backup apps are just "IRS and backup"...they are diferent kind of apps and for me aren't directly an alternative for SD. Similar it's with diferent kinds of sanboxes that are functionaly "invalid" in comparison to SD (or LV apps in broather meaning). If we will insist we can treat all mentioned apps as the replacement but rather in meaning like roller scates could be replacement of a bicycle or even car :cool:
 

codswollip

Level 23
Thread author
Content Creator
Well-known
Jan 29, 2017
1,201
shadow Defender is unmatched.
It's the best by far. :giggle:
Saw your post re: earlier version... I might give that a go. Just downloaded the previous 2 versions.

EDIT1: After cleaning out the registry of SD-related keys/data/etc, I reinstalled the previous version and it is working well. In another day or so, I'll try the current version again to see if it is responsible, or that bad reg keys were to blame. Thanks again to @bribon77 .
 
Last edited:

Frib004

Level 2
Verified
Nov 17, 2018
78
Yeah, I already had a problem with Shadow Defender on my Windows 10 Pro x64 machine, the boot became extremely slow, practically taking 2 minutes, already reinstalled, installed differences versions and the problem persisted ... a shame as the Shadow Defender is an excellent software ...
But an alternative to it would be the TTF, as quoted by colleagues above.
 

Frib004

Level 2
Verified
Nov 17, 2018
78
I have already tested Toolwiz Time Freeze on W10 1903 and it works normally.

TTF...you mean Toolwiz Time Freeze?...is actually abandoned from years so it's perhaps much more incompatibile with W10 than SD. Installing it can be risky.
I am on the latest Windows 10 insider build and SD is still working fine. I had an issue a few years ago with SD not starting up and the dev sent me an email with a reg fix and it has worked every since.

I tested the SD on W10 1903 and the system startup is very slow.
 
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ForgottenSeer 69673

I have already tested Toolwiz Time Freeze on W10 1903 and it works normally.




I tested the SD on W10 1903 and the system startup is very slow.

Did you try using SD's write cache option?

ScreenHunter_146 Oct. 04 08.50.jpg
 

JHomes

Level 7
Verified
Well-known
Jul 7, 2016
339
I personally prefer Rollback. It's got options to restore to previous states, revert to later ones. More fluid. Has a freeware that isn't supported any more but as is, it's still fine for now (time will tell how it holds up).

Unless I'm wrong I think only the freeware supports the single drive. The Pro Edition supports multiple drives and partitons.

Sadly the market for these tools is dwindling. Once Win 10 came out a bunch of the free tools stopped receiving active development, and those that did had issues with Feature Updates. I'd say Faronics and Horizon DataSys are the only two viable options, and unless I'm wrong I don't think Faronics supports Feature Updates.
 

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