The “PHYLock is waiting…” Message Appears for an Extended Period of Time

Problem:

The PHYLock is waiting for drive writing to stop... message appears for an extended period of time.

Cause:

Some services that continually write to the hard drive are running, preventing PHYLock from being able to obtain a lock.

Solution:

Look for services such as Exchange Transport, Indexing Service, or Windows Search, and temporarily disable them using the Computer Management Console.You also can reduce Image for Windows' maximum wait time from the default of 10 minutes if you don't want to wait that long. This option is available when you click the Settings button on the opening screen of Image for Windows.

Another option is to use Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy service (VSS) instead of PHYLock. To do this, enable the Use VSS When Available option in Image for Windows (this doesn't require a reboot).