Unmount device/image in safe mode?

[soulstace]

I get a black screen at startup using Daemon Tools v4.03 on Win32. It seems to happen whenever I leave an image mounted the last time I shut down.

My question is twofold. First Question in the title, and second, can I restore my system while still being able to enable Daemon Tools functionality when it is needed?

Thanks,


ss

[Underheaven]

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You mentioned some complicated things so let me know if I didn't answer your questions thoroughly enough.

When you boot to safe mode hitting ESC when prompted will disable loading of the SPTD driver.

If you want to "turn DAEMON Tools on and off" at a whim, there's a few options but the easiest seems to be unchecking the AutoStart and Automount checkboxes via the tray icon -> options menu.

[soulstace]

Hi Underheaven.

The thing is I can't access the options menu because Windows won't boot up (It freezes on a black screen).

I booted in safe mode and hit ESC to prevent the sptd driver from loading. When I do this, yes Windows boots fine in safe mode. But the only way I can seem to get Windows back into normal mode is by disabling the SPTD driver with autoruns.exe by sysinternals.

But now I can't start up D-Tools without the SPTD driver.

When I first installed D-Tools and rebooted it worked great! I was able to mount an image and run my program. BUT after I rebooted all I get is a black screen and Windows freeze. This is what leads me to believe it is related to device or image being left mounted at shutdown.

Thanks,


ss

[soulstace]

OK I have solved it. Although it did take me a few trials to get it right. Hopefully these instructions will come in handy for others who experience an issue similar to mine.

I followed the instructions in the Sticky thread How to remove DAEMON Tools v4. The uninstaller didn't run for some reason, so I just deleted the entire Daemon tools program folder as per the instructions.

I rebooted and tried reinstalling D-Tools. No go. Installation appeared to go ok, but when executing D-Tools it gave error about "SCSI virtual device not found". At this stage, I can't remember whether I had deleted the dtscsi.sys driver file from the Windows\System32\drivers\ folder. I should have done it this way, but I may have just disabled the startup entry instead.

Eventually though, I was able to get the uninstaller working properly again, and removed D-Tools and my previous virtual device settings (apparently it cleared mounted file settings also, which is good).

From command prompt I ran sptdinst_x86.exe remove to uninstall the SPTD driver, and rebooted.

I ran the D-Tools installer once more (it asks to install the SPTD driver) and then rebooted Windows.

When Windows starts up the D-Tools installer automatically runs to complete the installation process. It asks to start D-Tools. I did, and it started without issue (no virtual device error this time).

Now for the test;
On D-Tools options menu, I disabled Automount and Autostart, mounted an image and rebooted.

Surprise! Windows boots up in normal mode with no black screen! Phew!!

Thanks for the tip Underheaven

[Underheaven]

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Hey don't thank me, you did all the work . Glad you got it working.