Unable to read state file - help!

Ade 1

Hi there.

I've done some searching on the net but can't find anything relating to this problem I've just inherited on my Vista 32-bit machine (using SP1). After the windows loading screen (the one with the green thing moving left to right) and before the round icon appears in the middle of the screen, I'm getting a message saying "Unable to read state file. Exiting.....". It then proceeds and boots to desktop with no problems and everything is working as it should. What I've done prior to this happening was update Perfectdisk 2008 to the latest build 43 and also uninstall Eset Smart Security because I wanted to try out a trial of the new AVG IS 8. The message first appeared after uninstalling Smart Security and rebooting.

Anyone had this problem before? Know what's causing it/any solutions? I just run an in-depth chkdsk and no problems were found.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Andrés · 02-28-2008, 14:49 | posts: 4,286 | Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Did you try booting into safe mode (F8)?. If you can boot normally there, does Eset Security software still appear as installed?, try uninstalling it again if so.

Animatrix · 02-28-2008, 17:41 | posts: 6,852 | Location: Denmark

If you really think it's ESS then I would suggest to start by reinstalling and then uninstall. You might want to try, Windows Installer CleanUp Utility as well.

If it doesn't fix it and your in the dark about what is causing the message then i would run a boot trace with Process Monitor and look for reads that fail, see if you can identify the file being looked for.

Ade 1 · 02-28-2008, 21:24 | posts: 528 | Location: Safe House

Thanks for the replies. I'll give your suggestions a go and see what I find. It could even be to do with Perfectdisk and the new update. I shall dig deeper!

Ade 1 · 02-28-2008, 21:51 | posts: 528 | Location: Safe House

ok. For some reason I thought it was Perfectdisk causing the problem. The message mentioned previously wasn't like an 'official' Microsoft one and I know Perfectdisk runs a check at boot up to see if a boot time defrag has been scheduled. I thought that the 'state' file I mentioned earlier was perhaps something to do with that. So I uninstalled PD, rebooted and the message no longer shows. The initial build of 2008 (39) shows no problems like this - it can only have happened since updating to the new build 43. I'll contact their support and make them aware. Thanks for the advice anyway. (The message did not show when I booted in safe mode).

Animatrix · 02-28-2008, 22:03 | posts: 6,852 | Location: Denmark

Was 43 pushed through the update ? Last i checked it didn't find anything.

Ade 1 · 03-01-2008, 15:44 | posts: 528 | Location: Safe House

Quote:

Originally Posted by Animatrix

Was 43 pushed through the update ? Last i checked it didn't find anything.

Hi. Yes it was but since I reinstalled build 39 the problems gone away but like you no update is found as they pulled 43 for the bug I mentioned. Here's the reply I got from their support:-

'This message is due to a bug in Build 43 of PD2008 released yesterday.
We have since pulled that release and should have a new update available shortly that resolves.

Greg
Raxco Support'

Guess we'll just have to wait for them to fix and re-release.

Animatrix · 03-01-2008, 17:08 | posts: 6,852 | Location: Denmark

Thanks for the info, lets hope they fix it.

I have found PerfectDisk, for me at least, has a few small bugs on Vista (x64) it seems. It will sometimes hang when it is finished defragging, it also seems a bit slower and more CPU hungry. I did find that enabling the advanced performance on the drives helps and also just made file operations much smoother. Now i just hope i don't have a power out that causes damage as i have no UPS which you really should have when using the advanced performance.

Quote:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/...&thread.id=465
What it does:

With it disabled, the HDD operates in write-through cache mode, in which all data that gets written to the drive is immediately written to the disks and also stored in the cache. Writes are not cached, but reads are.

When the option is enabled, the HDD operates in write-back cache mode, in which all the data that gets written to the drive is first stored in the cache, and then later written to the disk. Both writes and reads are cached in this case.