writeaway

Anvir Task Manager Pro will soon be available at a discounted price on Bits du Jour. I'm thinking of downloading it for a spin but first I would like to hear from anyone who is using it or has used it in the past. I have Sysinternal's applications but have a difficult time understanding the information I see. Anvir's looks like it might be easier from me to grasp. Comments?? Thanks.

So - You remember Flip Wilson too. I never forget ERUNT. I may give Revo a try but I think I'll leave the more adventuresome stuff to Flip - for now. Thanks.

The devil made me do it What a great idea! I just happen to have Total Uninstall on my system with a shortcut to it on my desktop! (I acquired it some time after my experience with these old programs.) I will follow your suggestion. Thanks!

I am sure to get some interesting answers but at least I know you can't throw things. I was digging around in the registry yesterday - a thing I almost never do - and noticed quite a few folders with old software titles that have not been on my system for a long time. They were holding loads of stuff. Can I just delete them?

A little late for a reply I suppose BUT: On my system, XP SP2, sometimes this just happens. I don't understand why. Disabling add-ons fixes the crash problem. After doing that the first time, I enabled them one-by-one. Since then I have discovered that disabling only McAffee SiteAdvisor puts a stop to the crashes. I then try running it again every day until it works. Not very technical, I know.

Thanks for all the input. I reread the whole howtogeek page. I am pretty sure it must be AVG that is changing the last accessed date but whatever it is I wish it would stop. Using the tweak wouldn't really be of any use to me as I still wouldn't be able to determine when a file had been accessed. I'll have to chalk it up to a lost cause and one more useless Microsoft tool. Davey: Look what I found in a DonationCoder post: "I am not sure whether to mention this or not, but it seems to me that the wrapper system used by GAOTD is easily circumvented, since it unpacks the contents to a TEMPorary location. Keeping a local copy of the unpacked file would allow re-installation of the application in the future." My plan is to move these elsewhere before deleting anything. Whaddayathink?

That has happened to me also. It occurred periodically for a couple of weeks. Then I figured out Windows was trying to upgrade my system with SP3. I had to turn off automatic updates and that fixed my problem. Now I just go to the site 1X/mo and get the updates I need. Actually, I find I like that process better. I see that you already have SP3 but maybe MS is trying to "help you out" with some other wonderful upgrade.

Thanks again, Davey. There was indeed an Edit button and it showed just the information that it should. I will do as you suggest with the folder. It might take me a couple more days to work up the courage but I'll come to it. Just be warned, I'll be back if I run into trouble. YoKenny: I have loads of freeware but tend to combine freeware and shareware rather than always saying freeware and shareware. It saves energy and space. Once in a while I purchase some shareware that I absolutely (so I believe) need. When people ask me what I want for my b'day, I name some program I've been pining for. I make use of GOTD (a place I found reading one of your posts), Bits du Jour (might have found that the same way) and I used to check out Software Deal of the Day before it got stuck in the time warp.

I am very unsure here of what is needed. "Edit" them? I went to SystemProperties > Environment Variables. The box at the top, User variables for Owner shows this: TEMP C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Temp TMP C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Temp Is that what I was to "Edit" or check? Looking in Windows Explorer the Temp and Tmp folders are exactly where you stated. Do you agree that everything is as it should be, then? I don't understand "copy the whole Folder and then Delete everything in it." The Temp folder? Copy it why? Copy it to where? Name the copy something else? Scariest of all is the idea of deleting it. There are 308 objects there. It is full of folders - with stuff in them, Temporary Directories for programs I've downloaded, .dlls, .exes. Is that really what you mean I should do? Delete it?

Sorry - small financial crisis followed by small family crisis took me away for a couple of days - but nothing can keep me off the computer for long. I know indexing (sort of) after all, I just get to it a different way. Indexing is set to Manual. The Status column is blank. On my system the Status always shows either "Started" or it shows nothing. The back up application is Second Copy. It is set up to copy specific files throughout the day. I did notice that Macrium Reflect Image Mounting Service is set to Automatic and Started. Before answering your post, I opened Windows Explorer to check Accessed dates once more. In My Documents, all the folders show today's date and all the files have yesterday's date. I checked the back up program to see when the files in My Documents would have been copied last and that would have been yesterday at 7:00 p.m. but the Date Accessed is yesterday at 9:02 a.m. and other files in the system show the same date but with times shortly after 9:00 a.m. which leads me to believe that AVG is changing the dates when it scans. It is set to scan every a.m. at 9:00. Did we solve the mystery? I also ran CCleaner to check for temp files. It finds no temp files. Running Glary gets me a short list. Looking in C:\Documents and settings\Owner\LocalSettings\Temp, I see 12.6MB of stuff (for lack of a better word), .dat files, QuickFinder Information Files, and, of course, .tmp files. Also there are all the mysterious (to me) folders. Ooops! You told me to stay away from the temp files. I checked out the information on the site that Andavari provided. Interesting, but I know I didn't add a DWORD value to regedit and I am unlikely to do so. Well, not today anyway. Thanks for your help.

I only just realized this was an issue and I don't know when it began. I know that at one time the Date Accessed was (almost) always the same as Date Modified so I removed it from the Explorer display and only looked at it yesterday. I don't have security applications running in the background - I don't think: Here is my list of security apps: AVG Anti-Virus version 7.5.524 - It runs once a day. AVG Anti-Spyware - Run manually every other day (usually). Ad-Aware - Run only rarely. SUPERAntiSpyware - Run manually every other day (usually). SpywareBlaster That's it. I use a backup program that runs in the background but it doesn't access every file on my system every day. Please don't laugh but I don't THINK I use indexing. That's kind of like YoKenny's question, "For a whole lot more points what does Advanced permit you to do?" I opened Total Uninstall to see if I've installed anything in the last couple of months that might be the guilty party but I don't see anything. Is there a way to change the way that particular date is reported? Maybe I changed something myself that causes it to show Current Date? I guess this is taking us far from the TEMP file problem. Maybe I should post this in a separate thread -- or just live with it. Thanks for answering.

I don't know if Firefox is over rated or not. I like it because it's faster on my system than IE was and I like the add-ons. I am, however, sticking with my 2.0.0.16 version. Thanks for the "HowTo" page tip! As for the interpretation: Every file on my computer shows has TODAY'S date in the Accessed column. I promise you I have not opened but a few of them. If I move a file to another folder it also changes the modified date. You'd think that wouldn't matter much but I keep several similar documents and when I have occasion to move them, I lose track of which version I was last using (date created doesn't help) and finding out is a pain in the, uh, neck. OK, I give up, what does Advanced permit me to do? Is it something I want to do? Where do I find it? I could use the points!

I have a fairly new Brother MFC-240C all-in-one printer. Please understand that I have never owned a color printer before, I've always used (and still do) my trusty old (HP) laser printer. I like the new printer BUT it keeps telling me I am out of ink, that I am out of cyan and yellow and that I am almost out of red and black. I could not possibly be out of ink. Only on rare occasions do I use it to make color prints. I use it to make copies and I use it to scan. It tells me I am out of cyan and yellow and that I am almost out of red and black. My guess is that the ink is drying up for lack of use. Could that be it? What really irritates me is that it not only refuses to print but it refuses to copy which is what I depend on it for. Is there some way to override its stubbornness? Force it to produce a copy? If I want a lousy copy of something shouldn't I be able to get one? I still have black ink and all I want is a black and white copy. Is it normal for the @#!? thing to just quit whenever it wants? Any suggestions will be appreciated. HP Pavilion - Pentium® 4CPU 160GB HDD 512 MB RAM Windows XP SP2 Home

WOW! I have an HP PC. It came loaded with a huge amount of crap, including a plethora of things I would consider viruses and it would NOT allow me to delete or uninstall them. HP would NOT help me with the problems I was having. Finally, the tech admitted what I already knew. My problem was the OEM. I then purchased my own XP CD and paid a tech to wipe my hard drive and install it. NOW I have a nice system BUT I should not have had to go through all that trouble and the whopping extra expense. Two years later I bought an HP printer. It slowed my system to a crawl, hung up mid-print and sometimes simply could not be found. Calls to HP always resulted in the same answer: Re-install the setup again. I took the printer back to the store and got a refund. What you need to know about HP. GOOD Products. BAD software and BAD support. NOW I have a Brother MFC-240C printer (same as YoKenny's) It is pretty good BUT I have a question about to post elsewhere.

OK. Thanks guys - lots of answers. I have trouble w/the quote thingy so I will answer you this way. To YoKenny: Hey, I use Firefox. Is that my problem? I have oodles and oodles of temp files. I only clean them out (manually) about 1x/mo. - after trying both cleaners. To Humpty: When I first discovered the 100s of tmp files on my system, they were months, even years old. I don't have that option ticked anyway. To davey: The analysis listing tells me there are no tmp files. As for the shareware, I try, I try, but I have not yet been restored to sanity. I was glad to learn the "temp" files and Directories are only a "Quantum Physics" thing. I'm sure I will be able to handle that. It's the little things that trip me up. To Corona: Amen to that! I am always on the look out for some "Shareware" (hear that davey?) that will show me NOT the modified date, NOT the last accessed date (for the reason you described), NOT when it was created (though that comes in handy sometimes) but WHEN DID I LAST OPEN IT, MAKE A CHANGE TO IT AND SAVE IT? That's all I want to know but MS either isn't quite up to it or doesn't care what I want - Can you imagine that?

Not sure if I am posting in the right place but this is not an issue specific to CCleaner. 1) In my Temp Folder (C:\Documents and Setting\Owner\Local Settings\Temp) there is 11.8 MB of files and folders. CCleaner does not clean the *.tmp files when asked to but neither does Glary Utilities. Strange?? SO in order to lighten the load, I have to manually remove them. I am very cautious about what I delete and limit myself to the files with .tmp extensions. HOWEVER, I am then left with tons of .dat, .idx, .xml, and html files. Can I safely delete any of these? 2) Also in my Temp Folder are no less than 16 Folders called Temporary Directory 1 (or 2 or 3) for nameoftheprogram.zip. Inside the folders are a variety of files. Some are .txt files, some are .ico files some are .pdf files, then there are setup.exe files. I also have other Folders that have names that do not start w/Temporary Directory but have names like nsl172.tmp. Inside these folders are also a variety of files, .dlls, .bmp, .ini, etc., etc. (I won't even go into the ones with the long cryptic names.) Is this normal? Can I delete any of them? I download lots of shareware (OK, I'm a junkie) and most of the folders I can identify as belonging to those programs, but I download to a file called "Downloads" (original, huh?) and keep the setup files there - so I don't see why I can't delete the folders in the temp directory. What do you think? Thanks

I love this site BECAUSE it is simple, clear, easy to read, easy to understand and NOT exciting or distracting. I don't have to dig around looking for the right link and going from page to page to page and back again. Wouldn't it be great if every site offered us options for different versions, a pop up box that we could choose from. Please Choose a Style: Simple Classic, Aesthetically Beautiful, Exciting, Big and Boxy, Complex, Zingy, more options . . .

You can answer your own question. Download Recuva. Delete something with CCleaner. Use Recuva to try recovering it.

OK so why didn't the smileycons work? Or is that another thread?

Yo! Kenny! http://forum.piriform.com/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif Now that is a detailed and complete and perfectly satisfying answer! I knew you'd come through for me. We seem to agree on what is OK and not OK too (pretty much). Thank you VERY much. You not only answered my questions, you made me smile. Sorry about your clouds. Where I live, it is sunny and pleasant but that is because the smoke has finally cleared after wild fires burned for over a month and nearly destroyed our little town. We had to ask the Canadians for help. So - thanks for helping to save my house. Dennis, Thanks for the information. I'm going to try Flash Earth before hazarding Google Earth. I badly want to see the UK and Ireland. This is about the only way I ever will. http://forum.piriform.com/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif

Thanks, YoKenny, for answering but I still have (unanswered) questions and I don't need to FIND a place, I want to SEE places. Are you saying I can download Google Earth but still avoid getting the Norton Security Scan along with it? Or, are you saying it comes as part of the package but I would be able to get rid of it by using CCleaner? Can you tell me what the Google Pack is? Is there anything else out there similar to Google Earth that might serve as well? Thanks again.

I have finally moved from dial-up to DSL. I've always wanted to use Google Earth and NOW I can. However, when I was reading their EULA, I came across some confusing (to me) things and decided to check it out with you guys before I jump in and download something that may cause me grief. 1. What is Google Pack? 2. Why all the references to third party software, my biggest concern here is (Ahhhhhhhh!) Symantec Norton Security Scan software. This is (part of) what it says: "In the event that Norton Security Scan is removed from the Google Pack, Symantec may, at any point in time following six (6) months after such removal, at its discretion with or without notice to You, discontinue providing Content Updates and/or may terminate the Norton Security Scan software. Symantec may add, modify or remove features of the Norton Security Scan software at any time with or without notice to You." Do any of you use Google Earth? Do you have any problems with it? Do you know what they are talking about? Thanks. HP Pavilion - Pentium® 4CPU 160GB HDD 512 MB RAM Windows XP SP2 Home

Yep! It restarts the countdown every day. Nothing else changes at all. I just wondered if they were on vacation or if they've abandoned ship altogether. I haven't been able to find any information about their disappearance so I thought I'd ask here. Guess I'm the only one who has noticed their absence.

I have found some great websites and great shareware by reading posts in these forums. I have a little list of sites I check out every morning while downing my first cup of coffee. (I have other lists for the second and third cups.) Since July 11th Software Deal of the Day has been showing the same program and their other pages are also stuck in limbo. Anyone know if they are down for the count?

I had huge problems with a HP all-in-one printer. I purchased it figuring it would be the best option for my HP computer. It was a less than pleasant experience that sent me running back to the store for a refund. It slowed my computer to a crawl. 50% of the time it printed. The rest of the time it required multiple retries. The only solution HP was able to give was to reinstall the software. Why should I have to reinstall the software every day jut to make a few prints??? I now have a Brother. It gives me no grief - except for telling me I am out of ink when I'm not - I can live with that. My advice is, if it isn't too late, get a refund and find yourself something that works made by a company that offers real support. Good luck to you. HP Pavilion - Pentium® 4CPU 160GB HDD 512 MB RAM Windows XP SP2 Home