Hi Sue (another long post warning),
You asked: "Could Returnil be responsible for the problems I am having?"
Yes, this is exactly what Returnil's protection feature is designed to do. Here is some background information and some suggestions on how you can make the changes you are looking to make:
1. Your husband's gaming experience:
Most western computers come with a single partition or a primary partition with a factory restore partition (partition simply means a portion of the entire hard disk drive. EX: Local Drives C:\ and D:\). This makes it more likely that you will only be using the C:\ drive which is called the System Partition or alternately, where your Operating System is installed. This also means that any programs you install will also be located on that partition.
Returnil is designed to protect this partition from malicious, unwanted, or unwise changes. When RVS protection is on, any changes you try to make to this partition only happen in the virtual system rather than to your real hard disk drive and as a result, will be lost at restart of the computer. This is where the Virtual Partition will come in handy.
Turn off RVS protection, dismount the VP if mounted, and then create a VP of about 10 GB. If you already have one, simply use the “Repair” option in the uninstaller to change the size of the one you have or alternately, to create one if you have not done so already (will require a reboot to complete). Next, mount the VP and then open your husband’s game so you can access the game’s preferences. Locate the option that details the path (EX: C:\program files\...) where the game saves it data and then change it to be inside the RVS Virtual Partition (EX: Z:\Husbands Game\). This should now allow him to save his game sessions while Returnil’s protection is on.
2. Uninstalling/Installing your target programs:
Simply turn RVS’s protection off, restart your computer, and then proceed with the uninstall as you normally would. This is also the same for installing new software.
3. Microsoft Updates and Antivirus/Antispyware/Antimalware program upgrades:
The current release generation of Returnil has limited ability to alter the Windows registry. As these types of upgrades often require a restart of the computer to complete, their installation will fail with Returnil’s protection on. This is where you should schedule a maintenance day where you turn RVS protection off and complete the upgrades as required. MS Updates usually come once a month or occasionally, twice a month with OOB.
4. Antivirus/Antispyware/Antimalware signature (or detection list) updates:
If you update your AV etc while RVS protection is on, it will work as expected. When you restart your computer however, those updates between the time when you turned the protection on and restarted your computer will be lost. There are some ways to deal with this:
a. Base signature approach: Turn RVS protection off once a week and update your security software. Now turn RVS protection on and then let the program work as it normally would. If you have automatic updating enabled for your AV etc, it will see that its signatures are old as soon as you restart your computer and will download the most recent update. As described above, all subsequent updates will be applied until you restart the computer. This also keeps your real signature version within a week of the current version at each restart.
b. Let the AV do the work: Rather than turning the protection off, simply allow the security program to update as required whenever the system is restarted and then do a more “permanent” update on your scheduled maintenance day as described above for MS Updates. The downside of this one is that the “base” signature can become many weeks old so is less secure than in “a”.
c. More advanced and not always possible: Change the default save location for your security program’s updates in the same way I described for your Husband’s game by changing the save location to the VP. If you do this however, you must ensure that the VP loads with Windows or the security program will display errors because it could not access its signatures. The reason this is not always possible is due to many of these programs saving their data and updates within the registry.
I hope this helps
Mike
