3 days of madness, only to find the culprit was...

[Album Sic]

... a Musiclab driver.

For those that may be driven mad in the future, and for anyone that goes looking for a remedy in the future via Google search.

Having fairly recently purchased and installed Real Strat when the (a) offer was on, I thought all was well with my system, which I'm very particular about, especially as regards backing up with 3rd party software that I've used for nigh on 9 years.

No one wants downtime, so having regular backups of the OS system parition of my DAW is paramount to my work stability. Having used Acronis successfully for a while, I was most surprised when all my recent backups were corrupted. I'm to blame for not having checked their validity at the time of creating them. However, that would have only started my 3 day trip of madness sooner.

What has this to do with Realstrat? Please read on.

When image software has a problem, making copies of disks and paritions, you're more often than not directed to "chkdsk" (for PCs) to ensure your hard drive and file/system/data integrity is fine. Well, that was my first port of call. However, I wasn't able to run checkdsk the normal way in windows as I received this message everytime:

"Cannot open volume for direct access. Autocheck cannot run due to an error caused by a recently installed software package. Use the system restore feature from the control panel to restore the system to a point prior to the recent software package installation.

An unspecified error occurred (766f6c756d652e63 3f1)"

Now, having Googled this error, most solutions involve removing your anti-virus, or taking the physical disk out of your machine and running chkdsk under another machine as a second disk in it. There are pages and pages of info of how to solve the issue. Except that NONE of them worked for me, and after two days, trust me, I tried all of them. Microsoft's System Restore wasn't possible as the drive was locked and inaccessible by chkdsk, so it was an endless loop of not getting anywhere.

I tried alternate imaging software as well as the inbuilt Windows 7 backup software, but none of them were able to make a copy of the C Drive parition due to whatever was locking the drive. I was left with no choice to start uninstalling everything to see whether there was a piece of software aside from an anti-virus that had caused this issue. Uninstalling every piece of software, VST instrument, FX...And on the third day, after trying everything recommended to me by Google, IT experts and MS themselves, I got to my VST instruments guitar folder, with Real Strat in. Oh, and what was that there, a 'Virtual Midi Driver' also. How did that get installed? Did I choose to install it? Perhaps I did. Was it in haste? What does it do? I wasn't sure, but I looked it up. Guitar hero????

Yes, you guessed it. I uninstalled this Virtual Midi driver, and low and behold, the problem that MS and IT experts couldn't help me solve, rectified itself. The musiclab Virtual Midi Driver locks the partition drive and stops chkdsk being able to run, and in my position, being able to back up my system.

Musiclab, I'm sure I can't be the only one this has happened to? 3 entire days wasted because of a needless driver. Yes, I shouldn't have installed it for I didn't need it, and I did so in haste without knowing its purpose. However, even if I DID want to use a toy with RealStrat, that does not mean my system should suffer because of it.

My system: Gigabyte GMA880-UD2H, Phenom II x6, 16Gb of RAM. 3 x SSDs, AHCI installation.

I hope this saves someone's time in the future.

Signing off, in much anger, an annoyed (fairly) new customer.

[MOL_Moderator]

Thank you for reporting the problem.
Unfortunately we could not reproduce the issue. But the issue may be investigated only being reproduced. Also by now we have only your report about the issue. Actually the issue may not have to do with the driver at all until we are able to reproduce it and determine that the issue is related to the driver.