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mr don

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Everything posted by mr don

  1. Exactly. CCleaner isn't hard to run, so why is this necessary in Defraggler? Perhaps he wishes for an "all-in-one" that merges these products? But the downside of that would be the result that Windows 98 may get left out with CCleaner unless you use the older 1.41 version!
  2. I have 2 ideas I thought about for the new Defraggler: - Defraggler screensaver (to defrag during idle time) - Smarter file placement. Perhaps Defraggler can operate on one of 2 modes. By checking file attributes to determine the last accessed/changed in order to put the files that are never used or moved in, say, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, etc, (adjustable parameters) to the front of the drive. Then, all the fragmentation will happen closer to the free space part of the drive, so it will be easier to defrag & take less time (because the files that never get used are at the front, so they never get fragmented). Another option I thought about, was to scan file attributes & put system files at the front of the drive for faster access. This could be done 1 of 2 ways. Put all the system files at the front of the drive, or put all the system files at the front of the drive with support for scanning for files that are never used/moved & place those system files at the beginning first, followed by the next least used, etc, followed by regular files that are rarely used, followed by free space. The premise of these defragging filters is perhaps different from other suggestions. While there may be faster possible ways of doing things, mine is based more on reducing or eliminating as much fragmentation as possible, therebye extending drive life. In the advent of files that are fragmented most, by placing them closer to the freespace part of the drive, there is less file movement needed to defrag since they do not have to be moved as far. I have not seen a Defraggler Screensaver option, but I thought that would be a great way to use idle time on a computer. Really useful screensaver! Comments? Suggestions? Thanks!
  3. Try holding CTRL & selecting the drives you want. Defraggler will defrag them sequentially. If you have a lot of drives, click the first drive, then hold down Shift & click the last drive. Press CTRL + mouse click any drives you want excluded...
  4. Thanks for the wonderful replies. I already knew that there is no "speed difference" in reading files no matter where they are scattered on the drive. As long as they are contiguous. I had heard that heavy fragmentation causes severe slowdowns & other problems. This is the part I was concerned with, is NOT how fast it can write to totally blank, free space, but how it slows up when all or most of the drive is fragmented, so that it has to pause to calculate a good place to situate, slice up a file, find the best location to drop it, etc. Please read the following to understand what I am talking about so you can see what I meant. http://www.diskeeper.com/blog/post/2007/06/22/The-Impact-of-Fragmentation-on-Flash-Drives-%28iPods-Jump-Drives-etc%29.aspx http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-SSD-Reconditioning.html "Frequent write activity on a solid state drive (SSD) can severely degrade its write speed, and the effect is cumulative with ongoing use. However, the degraded write speed can be fully restored." Also, of interest to me ---> After the firwmare update, the X25M achieves a blistering-fast 263.1 MB/sec read speed on the DiskTester fill-volume test, abd 102.8MB/sec for writes. Those are great numbers, about 2.6X the read speed of the fastest laptop hard drive, and faster than any laptop 7200rpm hard drive. Read speed is much more important as it concerns boot time, application launch time, etc. I don't really know how much an SSD would help my system, because it already loads into windows in less than 30 seconds. Maybe 20 something, I believe. Perhaps it might shave a few seconds off. Will have to try it one day. What I am most interested in though, is not the "fresh & clean" performance of the drive, but the degradation of heavy fragmentation that I hear a lot of websites talk about. Anyone know if this is still a problem, or is it "fixed"?
  5. I figured the option to do so would at least be nice, however. Many people do not use their pc for much more than surfing the web, email, etc. I do a lot with mine. I test sometimes thousands of programs in a period of weeks. The fragmentation would be such that it would be almost unusable, especially with the way Windows 7 handles files. Definitely much different than Windows XP. In situations like this, an occasional defrag would yield a true performance boost if properly configured for SSD type drives. Additionally, I have seen some websites falsely state that "Windows 7 is moving to 4k drives, & XP cannot format in 4k... It is stuck at 512 kb sectors, so people will be forced to upgrade..." That is a bunch of FUD! I know under my XP SP2, if you right click My Computer, then choose Manage, then choose Disk Management tab... Select a drive that you can format. If the drive is large enough, XP does show the standard 512 kb format option, but it ALSO shows the 4K option. Leaving me to believe it was only a bunch of FUD that MS started, drivel if you will, to try to scare people into using Windows 7. I saw the same thing on a TV ad they had that advertised how "Look at this new feature in 7, you can stack windows side by side for ease of use!". Immediately after, a friend asked me about that, & I pointed out that you can just right click the taskbar in XP, choose tile Windows vertically for the same option. I guess they do what they think they need to to sell things! Anywho, my point is though, that if a magnetic drive lasts around 3 to 5 years on average, and we all know that defrag programs shorten the lifespan (ANYTHING that uses the drive does, because they have a MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure), then how much could it really hurt if a SSD drive is supposed to last 10 years to schedule a defrag, say, every month? Sure it won't be every day or week like on magnetic drives, but 12 times a year shouldn't take too much off a drive, should it? I was reading one article a while back where a user posted that even though SSD drives are suggested not to be defragged because of what you stated earlier, that he tried it & his friend did notice a substantial performance increase. Of course, turning off drive indexing/system restore/last file access time services on SSD can reduce wear leveling & increase lifespan as well. Just have a backup! *NOTE! I do not currently have an SSD drive to test. However, I am pleased with my Sata drive at the moment. If anyone can spare a SSD drive they are not using to test for us & see if after months of heavy use, if a defrag does or doesn't help, thanks! I would love to know if anyone has actually tested this to know for sure? Sometimes what someone says is a lot different from what things actually are. Meaning, if you really believe your fully patched system is "secure as fort knox" after MS declares it that way, you must be living under a rock... Thanks, & really hope someone will test! Helpful info will be after heavy use, show the: - Bootup time - Average program load time - Shutdown time - If you use Utherverse or some other heavy 3d online or offline game, the time it takes to load And then show after a defrag the performance results. I would be very interested!
  6. Amen. Microsoft will never be taken seriously about "security" on it's browser as long as Active-X remains wide open. It is like saying "HIT ME HERE!" Wide open door for malware. Which is why I use Firefox. I used to get calls about malware every other day, till I found out why... When I switched people to Firefox, the ONLY time I got calls after that, was usually sometimes 6 months or so later, & even then, not the fault of Firefox, but because of some smiley packs, freeze games, toolbars, etc. But educating them works great. Just takes time for them to understand why you tell them not to download questionable things like that. But they understand plenty fast when they get infected.
  7. List has been edited to be much more concise & easier to comprehend. Regards, Don
  8. - Redesign CCleaner tabs - Applications | Internet | Windows - Navigation is easier when -> Applications (3rd party apps) | Internet (all web browsers) | Windows (All Windows locations) - Collapsible menus - Currently, there is no way to collapse Firefox options, Internet Explorer options, Windows Explorer options. User sees all options instead of being able to collapse them. - Autosize windows - Automatically shrink CCleaner to fit the new collapsed icons. Hiding (collapsing) the options under Internet Explorer makes it take up far less space. Great for portable. - Startup Tab - Show icons of programs under Startup tab -> Make it easier to identify what to remove. - Startup Tab - Collapse startup results into groups -> Make it easier to identify what to remove. - Startup Tab - Include ALL startup locations -> BHO | Tasks Folder | User Run. Many newer programs abuse the tasks folder startup. - Hosts File - Include ability to delete any non-default hosts entry. Hosts file is no different from Startup locations needing cleaning. - Registry - Show icons of registry clean results -> Make it easier to identify what to remove. - Registry - Collapse registry clean results into groups -> Make it easier to identify what to remove. - Registry - Include a find as you type search feature that can show all items matching a search term. - Registry - Cleaner seems to miss a lot of files that no longer exist. It could be stronger in this area. - Registry - Many boards have users complaining of the dangers of allowing casual users to take out "Unused File Extensions" under registry cleaner. I agree. Take it out, please. - Custom Folders -> Include option to delete registry keys too - Custom Folders -> Include option to delete not just files in a folder, but folders too. Example: AVG folder is safe to remove. All options are accessible from tray icon, anyway. (Just protect the default system start menu items such as Startup/Accessories/Games + system folders like C:\Windows, C:\Windows\System32 etc.) - Include a Launch button next to Remove under System Restore control -> Make it easier to launch & run System Restore (run command restore/rstrui - Works all windows platforms) - Include option under advanced to turn off warning on first run that CCleaner deletes files permanently. I feel like a dummy having to checkmark it the first time I run it. - Checkmark the save to .Ini by default. Why write to the registry (by default)? - Include a "Default All" setting -> Sometimes users check a lot of things & forget the default settings. Make it easy, please. - Include right-click uninstall option to program shortcuts when CCleaner is open. CCleaner would remove these when closed (retain portability). - Include right-click option in uninstall tab to navigate to the file you have selected. Great for seeing what *strange file name* is. * CCleaner does NOT update the uninstall list automatically if you are running CCleaner while installing a program. I hate having to close, then open CCleaner to update... Comments welcome.
  9. Read this article to see what I mean: http://perfectdiskblog.typepad.com/perfectdisk_blog/2009/02/solid-state-drive-ssd-support-in-perfectdisk-standard.html In addition to that, a normal harddisk "wears" out in usually 1 to 10 years depending on how it is used. Sometimes it may be longer or shorter, but there you have it. Since you posted that a flash drive has a life of 25 years, I fail to see how a defraggler would be that bad, considering that every use is "shortening the 3 to 5 year average" lifespan of normal magnetic harddisks. Sure, all write cycles shorten life spans. It is well known that there are flash media that can last up to 1 million read cycles, but cannot handle as many write cycles, but if you never defrag, you INCREASE WRITE CYCLES SUBSTANTIALLY because there has to be many smaller writes to the drive because of fragmentation (Which will then shorten the life span because of increased writes.) I am aware that it shortens life, but an occasional defrag should not hurt. And if you read the website above, I believe that you can see what I mean more fully. I did read about things like you stated above, but also, please read the link I posted to see what I mean. Hope this helps! Thanks!
  10. Solid State drives come with wear leveling. Defragging takes away from their life span by using write cycles. Defragging takes away from the life span of normal magnetic hard drives as well, but no-one complains because the return benefit is that since the computer can access files faster, it "reduces" wear by being able to seek contiguous files instead of fragmented all over the place. SSD drives DO get fragmented, & they DO see a performance boost by defragging. Additionally, the cost of defragging (extra write cycles) is worth an occasional defrag simply because of the speed boost, & the REDUCED write activity to the drive due to fewer fragmented files. On a normal clean SSD install, write activity is great. But when it gets heavily defragged over time, then it isn't reading that slows, but the SSD has to use numerous write cycles to accomplish the job, increasing the time it takes to do the job by a considerable amount more than is necessary. These extra write cycles due to fragmentation as it attempts to fill in chunks where it can find unused spaces causes more stress on the wear leveling mechanisms in the drive. Admittedly, they may not need it as much, but would it really hurt to have a defraggler that could operate by 1 of these manners perhaps? - Restrict scheduled defrags to every month, as opposed to day or week - Restrict defrags to a certain percentage, say, drive must be over 10% fragmented to run I am sure something can be worked out, but let me know what you all think! + or - this idea, & add your thoughts so I can see what you are thinking. P.S. Microsoft wants to move away from XP, but with Solid State Drives prone to wear leveling, it makes no sense to move to Vista or 7 when they would quadruple the write cycles & reduce life expectancy of the drives by anywhere from 4 to 15 times more than XP would when you factor in other things such as the HUGE system restore points it creates in Vista or 7. Your thoughts? - Do you like this idea? - Do you agree that XP is better for SSD drives? - Do you like the idea of using an OS that kills your SSD drive 4 to 15 times or so faster than XP? Thanks! Edit: I'd love to see a Defraggler that can show a visual percent when minimized to the tray, kind of like it does in 7, but for XP. A progress bar, or minimize to the system tray altogether with the percent shown in numbers, IE 55% or something to the effect.
  11. I edited it out. My bad. I was sleepy. I think the downloaded installations directory should be safe, not the downloaded program files...
  12. In XP there are a few things that can be cleaned that I don't remember seeing in CCleaner, but show up under Disk Cleanup utility or appear to be directories safe to clean... - Downloaded Installations (C:\Windows\Downloaded Installations) (Can get pretty huge depending on how much you do on a computer.) - Catalog files for the Content Indexer (Files stored by the indexing service. These files are left over from a previous indexing operation & can be safely deleted.) Thanks for your views!
  13. Yes, but no matter what it is mapped by (disk controller, etc), it still has to be cycled through... It is better to be remapped direct drive than remapped in memory, because it would take a while just to load it all to mem, in addition to losing it all if the computer crashed. Low mem computers would suffer from "loss of ram". Trying to do this all in memory would cause more problems than it would solve. Of course, this is all hypothetically speaking, if mapping to mem were possible.
  14. I like your idea, so + 1 But I think that saying Fragmented, then Fragmented (Low Occupancy) is dreadfully confusing! How about Fully Fragmented blocks, then Partially fragmented instead?
  15. Instead of Rocket Dock, I use Object Dock to launch things. http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/ It also has a weather flyout, & I use the invisible or glass effects to hide the toolbar so only the icons I have loaded show. I like it better. Let me know if you try it. Download the free version, & it may solve your problem. Works for me!
  16. I think perhaps he is confusing the dialogue that states something to the effect that you must close Firefox/Opera/Internet Explorer before it can clean those directories. I assume that what he did was disable all startup items under startup. It is possible that one of them was a malware & that the malware was similar to AVE.exe that would disable the ability to run any EXE on removal. In this case, removing the startup entry could have caused the machine to not properly load due to backdoor/trojan/malware/virus/rootkit type activity.
  17. The general impression that noobies would get from your post, is just to fire up the run box, past in DIR \SYSTEM* /A /X, & voila! Unfortunately, it does not work this way. In the RUN box, type CMD & hit enter. Then type DIR \SYSTEM* /A /X since it cannot be pasted into it. Interesting, nonetheless...
  18. Could have been a refresh problem. Sometimes, when Windows runs low on physical ram & has to use the harddisk, it can cause problems with the auto-refresh. Log off & back on, or reboot can fix these type issues. It is possible for you to move a file & for it to remain "stuck" on the screen after you moved it when this happens. It is also possible for Windows to attribute the wrong icons to files/folders under similar conditions. This is not a CCleaner problem, but rather, a Windows problem. Thank you! Glad you "fixed" it. Hope your experience with CCleaner remains a positive one.
  19. I am running CCleaner 2.35. I tried to reproduce it, but my computer must be too fast. It cleaned it in 0.107 (1/10 of a second). I did not see any problems, but I guess it did not take long enough to clean to find a problem. Anyone else that can verify?
  20. This would be a dangerous idea. Sounds good, theoretically, but I know people who, all the time, seem to love hitting the power button to switch off the computer. Even laptop users do this, bringing the laptop into standby/hibernation/total shutdown depending on their setup of the power configuration. If data is moved to ram to be defragged, then back to the disk, I would prefer a little extra longer in defrag as a matter of safety, as opposed to a slight performance gain. The data would all have to be cycled through mem, anyway, so it would mitigate the speed increase gained. It would take a while for (fill in the blank # of MB/GB/TB) data to be cycled through mem, so may as well just let it direct access it instead.
  21. I reported this problem a while back, but it still seems to be present in the newest Defraggler. - Open Defraggler GUI & select file list tab. - Next to FileName, select all files to be defragged. - Click defrag checked Now, take the top bar of Defraggler that says Piriform Defraggler & select it with your mouse. Click & hold to move it across your screen. Presto! Your defrag/pause buttons fly across the screen, far into never never land. Gone! Gone! Gone like the freight train... That ain't never coming back, lol! Why did that make me think of that country song? Anyway, check it out! Your pause/stop buttons just disappear! Forever, until you stop defrag & reload Defraggler!
  22. Allan, if you are getting "update" messages concerning your bank account, it is where someone mass emailed a lot of people the same thing. They are hoping you click it, enter your information so that you can have your account emptied into theirs. DO NOT EVER click account details online. This trick relies on tricking the user into divulging details. This has nothing to do, however, with filehippo or other places. Personal email? Yes! People try to trick you into things all the time. Scammers/spammers. The key here is, to flag them as spam & delete them always.
  23. Unicows does not install on a regular install on my machine. I have not tried the installer on a win98 machine to see if it does extract it for W98. Unicows IS included on the portable versions of CCleaner by default. I use WinRar to max compress + solid CCleaner so that it is as small as possible, into a self extracting SFX file. I save usually 50%-75% this way on my flash drive space, in addition to unifying things into a single file. Additionally, if you do have Unicows in your program directory, it may appear that CCleaner is installing it each time you update because it will not overwrite/replace anything but the CCleaner files when updating from an installer.
  24. I see what you are saying. I tested it also in XP & the same problem occurred here. It appears to be across all platforms. Run Regedit. Highlight problems to fix & click fix. Items are fixed & removed, but the highlight remains & selects the same number of objects from the issues that still remain to be fixed. If you had 2 items highlighted, it highlights 2 of the items left to be fixed, & if you highlighted 30, it blankets 30 remaining items. Instead of simply disappearing. It is kinda weird. I agree.
  25. Willy, can you provide more info? What version of CCleaner are you using? What windows OS are you on? Thank you! P.S. Please elaborate more on your registry problem. Highlight 10 out of 20 errors found, the 1st 10 as you said, then user deleted 1 entry\line, or do you mean they delete the 1st 10 since they are highlighted? Could you post a screenshot of the "problem" & draw in mspaint what you perceive to be wrong? Your question seems a little open ended & up to a few different possibilities, so by knowing what version of CCleaner you are running & the OS you are using, it will help a lot. The screenshot will really help, as will elaborating slightly on the problem.
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