I am unable to mount images using AIMtk 20251022

[James Russell]

AIMtk installed cleanly as far as I could see, with all components selected and RAM disks work as expected, I have one running, but I am unable to mount a VMDK image using MountImg.

From what I could see, because it spawns quickly, MountImg calls aim_cli and aim_ll with command lines similar to these:

"C:\Program Files\AIM Toolkit\aim_cli.exe" --name=AIM99c4766dcc7 --filename="C:\Virtual Machines\Storage\Shared.vmdk"
"C:\Program Files\AIM Toolkit\aim_ll.exe" -a -t proxy -o shm,hd,rw,fix -f AIM99c4766dcc7

Running those manually in an elevated cmd I get the following error:

Opening image file 'C:\Virtual Machines\Storage\Shared.vmdk' with format provider 'DiscUtils'...
Waiting for incoming connection from Arsenal Image Mounter. Press Ctrl+C to exit.
Service stopped.
Service failed.

Cannot open '\\?\DevIoDrv\AIM99c4766dcc7'

The system cannot find the path specified (3)

That's when I noticed both the DevIO driver and service are set to demand start and stopped by default, which sounds reasonable since they aren't always used (perhaps the driver should be loaded before mounting though); but even when loading the driver manually and starting the service too just in case, I still didn't get MountImg to mount the image.

If ran manually, the aim_cli process would start and remain running when the driver is loaded, but running aim_ll in another elevated cmd I get another error:

Creating device...
Error creating virtual disk: The system cannot find the file specified.

Oddly enough, if I attempt to mount the image through Arsenal Image Mounter's GUI, it gets mounted, but I can see in its command line that it is interacting with the driver without aim_cli / aim_ll:

"C:\Stuff\AIM\ArsenalImageMounter.exe" --cli --name=420321490BA74C60 --provider=DiscUtils --readonly "--filename=C:\Virtual Machines\Storage\Shared.vmdk"

Could the problem lie in the CLI applications or the way they are called? I noticed the release notes for the 20251015 mention there were updates to the AIM drivers and CLI, but I tried with the CLI apps and API from the 20250818, also failing to mount the image. I have attached the diag log from one of the pinned discussions, in case it helps.

On a side note, the (un)installer may need to be tweaked a bit, uninstalling AIMtk didn't seem to uninstall the driver, I had to do it manually via pnputil or RAPR between tests.

[v77]

Yes thanks, there is an issue. I will dig into that.
It should be the update of aim_cli done in the version 20251015.

[v77]

For now, I changed the default download to the version 20250818.
I asked Olof about this issue, as I cannot find a quick fix.
I could also try to remove the use of aim_ll, but it would require more time.

[v77]

Thanks again. It is now fixed and should work like before.

aim_cli now uses by default the driver deviodrv instead of the shared memory method previously used, hence the bug.

For command line users, you have to either add --io=shm to aim_cli, or ensure that the driver deviodrv is started.

[James Russell]

No no, thank you! You identified the problem and corrected it in no time at all!