Augeas

If you Google semaphore timeout period you will get around 17,000 hits. A quick glance at a few shows that it appears to be kind of a generic error message, and is not specific to Recuva. Many of the hits refer to networking problems, which I don't think apply in your case, or very large files, which might apply. Have a look at this thread http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpo...3&siteid=17 for a start.

You could try running Recuva with the Scan for Non-Deleted Files option ticked, if you haven't done so already. I don't rate your chances too highly though. I don't think that the reformat was a good idea, but your most recent photos may have been lost already from what you've said. If you were taking photos and getting a card full error message then I guess the photos went into the ether.

Did you restore more than one registry backup? If so in which order? You only needed to restore the backup made before IE stopped working, which is I think the last large one.

On right click do you get Merge (or your language equivalent) as an option? It should be the first in bold type. If so choose the correct file to restore (maybe the last one in your list, dated 19/11?) and click Merge. It's a large file so maybe you have done some big changes to the registry. I have never actually restored the registry so I'm not familiar with what happens next, but it should be fool-proof. If you don't get Merge then possibly the extension isn't .reg. Rename and try Merge? Is the concensus that this is safe?

Can you post the exact contents of your include window, copy and paste or something similar?

If you made a registry backup before deleting the registry entries, then find it (usually in My Documents as cc_20080917_121924.reg or similar, chose the file with the latest date), right click on it and select Merge. If you didn't make a backup then there's not a lot you can do, you could try a system restore. Deleted data can't be undone by CC, but you could run Recuva to attempt to find and restore the most important files.

All you Yorkshire men seemed to have left the place.

Recuva does of course find files that have 'just been deleted by the operating system'. Some 20,000 in my case. I'm not sure what you're actually saying. Do you take a copy of your video file and then delete the original, or edit and overwrite the original? If the former, then perhaps holding on to the originals until the new versions are proved would help. If the latter then the file hasn't been deleted and Recuva won't be able to find the old version. Do you delete using the recycler? If so, are you Vista or XP? Deleted files (may) have their names changed using the recycler.

Try Help/About on the IE menu bar.

This has been discussed before (do a search for more info). In general there are (many) progs that do just this, and it isn't really what CC is trying to do. To each his own.

No. Search for lots of previous discussions on this topic.

Yes, that's weird.

Yep. Although I have used CC for years, and I like to keep my pc clean of too much junk, I have never noticed any speed-up after using CC at all. I don't think I am cute enough to notice any reduction in data access time because the read heads now travel 1/4 inch less than they did before. But it's good to keep a clean ship.

Not as I am aware.

This is the same question, non? No, or more properly, not as far as I know. The MFT never recovers the 'deleted' entries (according to Microsoft) so will never shrink in size. It does of course reuse them. I believe that disk washers merely 'clean' the MFT by filling up the deleted entries with some other filename entry. There may be something that hacks the MFT before Windows initialises (there are no Windows APIs for the MFT) but I wouldn't use it. They're only spots of magnetic flux, so don't worry so much.

Thanks everyone, but I want to play MP4. Nothing seems to like it (except VLC, which doesn't have alll good reports).

Hi video experts, Is there any way I can play MP4 videos on Realplayer? I have downloaded RP 11.06 and I'm sure MP4 modules flashed before my eyes during the install. In preferences there is an entry for MP4 in file associations. Yet whenever I try to open an MP4 vid it says Cannot Start Playback. There is no explanation for this message on RP's site, and Googling RP and MP4 is just plain confusing. Is MP4 possible in RP, or am I wasting my time?

Yup, his name is Peter Gutmann and he used to live at the Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland. I think he runs his own computer security business now. His paper was published at The Sixth USENIX Security Symposium, July 22?25, 1996, San Jose. Yes, he knows all about this and said as much at the time.

There's some option in the BIOS which I have long since forgotten (no flop any more) which stops this annoying rattling of the flop drive. I'll try to dig it out if you're interested.

Doesn't CC's registry backup just backup those 'bad' entries found in the scan? fi so then it isn't a full backup. You could run CC registry analyse, Select fix Issues, backup the registry, then quit, but I don't think it would be worth the effort.

You could try, but my guess is no. I think that CC uses normal Windows delete so there's no magic tricks to help.

This has been discussed many times before so a search will help you. In essence the deleted file names that Recuva returns cannot be removed or altered, they are entries in the MFT. They will be overwritten as new files are created, but I don't think that the MFT ever shrinks so you will always have a long list. You can sort the list by state, naem, date, path, etc.

I've had it ticked for years. If I right click on the entry and run Analyse it shows nothing to remove. What do you get?

Hi Gludion, CCleaner is intended to delete temporary or work files, etc, so it is not really the right tool to scrub your pc of all traces of your surfing. It does a good job with secure deletion, enough to deter the casual observer, but is is possible that there will be some traces left of your web activity which a techie could uncover. You could try a disk free-space washer such as Eraser (but I have had no practical experience of using these). In time your web activity will be overwritten, so I would surf some less harmful sites and don't run CC, in the hope that your disk will fill up with clean activity. I know no way of removing the pc on/off times. They are held in the event log and no doubt in other system files. Perhaps someone knows how to clean these logs, but I don't think it will be easy.

What's unnecessary?