Olav the Viking
-
Posts
11 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Olav the Viking
-
-
I just stumbled upon this post while researching "Defraggler Slow" relating to the problems that appear to have surfaced since the release of Version 2.20. It's early in the morning, I've been up all night trying to get a PC out to my friend's grand kids, but I had to leave my 2 cents here as a comment before I hit the rack.
I agree with everyone who thinks that the new GUI draws a 46" vacuum! I cannot understand what caused the trend in recent years away from good looking, crisp, easy to use interfaces to the "new look" of fuzzy, bland pages that lack definitive borders, etc. I guess this is probably why they will pry Win 7 from my cold dead fingers since it appears that that is the last OS that supports the "classic" windows view with sharp borders and good usage of available real estate. As an old school engineer, my philosophy has always been: IF IT AIN'T BROKEN, DON'T FIX IT! My gut feeling is that every time the people who have put blood, sweat and tears into developing a product move up or out, some young wet-behind-the-ear interns come in with unrealistic, impractical ideas that they want to implement just to get their name on it. The best example I can give to illustrate this is the degression that occurred after the good old file manager Winfile.exe was replaced by "Explorer" which has subsequently taken a big step backwards with every subsequent OS release using it since 1995. Luckily, one guy has resurrected Winfile and kept it up to date thru Win 10, but I'm just using this as an example.
Enough said. Sad to say, I believe that the industry refuses to actually get out of their little cubicles and go out in the field and talk to the troops in the trenches who actually use their products, hoping that what they use will increase their productivity. Marketing says: "Make it easy for Sally the Secretary to use." Unfortunately, Sally doesn't use products like Defraggler, CCleaner, Speccy, etc.; they are used by those of us who fix and maintain Sally's equipment.
-
I started to do a post Win7 Pro installation defrag after I had just installed Defraggler 2.20. It ran extremely slow and it didn't appear to be defragmenting anything after a few hours. I uninstalled 2.20 and went back to 2.19; that one completed in short order. On another note, on my WinXP web server, 2.19 would not defrag; it kept doing the benchmark checks no matter what I did to the defrag settings. Since my settings are always in the ini file, I just uninstalled 2.19, went back to 2.18, which, I assume, used the same ini file settings since the same settings were still there when 2.18 started, and everything worked fine. On another XPPro machine, 2.19 is working fine, but I have never asked for a benchmark test. Just a guess on my part, but it almost appears that once you ask for a benchmark, it gets "stuck" in that mode (???). Don't hold me to that, but I've seen other forum comments with regards to the benchmark and no defragging and there may be some bones in the closet relating to initiation of benchmark testing . . . I will try going back to 2.19 on the web server machine and will check the (x) Disable Benchmark After Defrag option to see what that does. Stop VSS is always checked.
A possible suggestion for the benchmark check graphics display. I always optimize my Defraggler real estate by using Custom View, 4 x 4 Plain Blocks to get a large number of blocks of a viewable resolution. Once the defrag starts, I drag the lower statistics part of the screen display down as low as it will go WITHOUT losing the path of the current file being defragged. I have found, however, that if the benchmark check is done, that part of the display will not fit into the same vertical height. The drive bars auto adjust their vertical width dimension to fit inside this display area very well; one of my systems has 4 drives, and the bars all shrunk in width, which indicates a programmer who thought ahead
. If the data to the left of the bar graphs (Analyzed, Defrag Executions, Files Defragged, Fragments Reduced, Longest Defrag Execution and Last Defrag Execution) could be double line spaced instead of triple line spaced, we could gain enough real estate to not require resizing of the lower statistics part of the screen display. -
I have a Dell Latitude D830 with 2 batteries; the standard 9-cell battery plus a 2nd media bay battery that goes into the DVD drive slot when the drive is removed.
Both batteries are reported correctly on my desktop background with the Sysinternals BGInfo program:
• Battery Name(s): DELL 00
DELL 00
• Battery Charge(s): 100
105 %
The following tags are being used to report this data:
<Battery Name> WMI Query SELECT Name FROM Win32_Battery
<Battery Charge> WMI Query SELECT EstimatedChargeRemaining FROM Win32_Battery
Specy reports the battery data like this in the Operating System section:
Battery
AC line Online
Battery full time Unknown
Battery Charge % 100 %
Battery State High
Amount of time remaining (sec) Unknown
It should be a simple matter to incorporate the WMI Query into Speccy. Hope this info helps.
-
I attempted to upload both the unreadable and readable .Speccy files . . .
but the upload was unsuccessful if I use the .Speccy file type:
I renamed the xxxxxx.Speccy files xxxxxx.doc.
Rename them back to xxxxxx.Speccy after downloading them for testing . . .
DELL4600 20Nov2010 1715 1.07.205.doc
2005P4XP 20Nov2010 1544 1.02.156.doc
2005P4XP 20Nov2010 1548 1.06.191.doc
-
Speccy Forum 20Nov2010.txt - 20Nov2010 18:09
I have reported a similiar problem about the hard drive data stopping at the last (in my case 2nd) hard drive. See forum post My link
I then started to do some more troubleshooting/analysis . . .
With regards to using Speccy to view files from another PC, or earlier saved snapshots from the same PC, it appears that data from other PCs can be loaded and displayed with version 1.07.205 or 1.06.191 OK. I have found out, however, that 4 different releases of Speccy I tested (1.07.205, 1.06.191, 1.05.183, and 1.02.156) were NOT able to load ANY Speccy snapshot created by 1.07.205 or 1.06.191 from PCs that had more than one hard drive AND could not successfully save their complete data in text format (.txt). I know that sounds confusing, but I created a .Speccy snapshot on a Dell 2400 system with 2 hard drives and was able to load its snapshot OK. The same Dell 2400's text snapshot was complete; it showed both hard drive data and all subsequent data. The .Speccy snapshots created by 1.07.205 or 1.06.191 on both a Dell 4600 with 2 hard drives and a Home-Built P4 560J Intel Mobo PC that has 3 hard drives and a IDE ZIP were unreadable by Speccy, giving the error message:
"Error loading data: Incorrect Speccy data file"
With the Dell 4700, the text snapshot data was truncated in the middle of reporting the second hard drive's data:
WDC WD800BB-75CAA0
Manufacturer Western Digital
Form Factor GB/2.5-inch
Serial Number WD-WMA8E8746485
[NO MORE TEXT DATA REPORTED]
With the Home-Built P4 560J Intel Mobo PC, the text snapshot data was truncated in the middle of reporting the first hard drive, an IDE ZIP-100:
Hard Drives
IOMEGA ZIP 100
Manufacturer Unknown manufacturer
Serial Number
[NO MORE TEXT DATA REPORTED]
I don't know if this is related to the problem, but both the Dell 4600 and the Home-Built have multiple hard drives and dual monitors; the Dell 2400 that gave good text snapshots has 2 hard drives and a single monitor.
Another funny thing was seen in the first text snapshot that I did with 1.06.191 on the Home-Built PC, but not on the second snapshot with 1.06.191. The text snapshot (only) said the PC had 4 used memory slots but then continued to show only 3 ram modules:
RAM
Memory slots
Total memory slots 4
Used memory slots 4
Free memory slots 0
Memory
Type DDR2
Size 3072 MBytes
Channels # Dual
DRAM Frequency 280.9 MHz
CAS# Latency (CL) 4 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD) 4 clocks
RAS# Precharge (tRP) 4 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS) 12 clocks
SPD
Number Of SPD Modules 3
Note: There was no restart done between these two snapshots.
One feature of Speccy that really helped out while doing this troubleshooting:
THANK YOU
Speccy programmers for providing the label at the top of the snapshot display window giving the file name of a loaded snapshot and the label at the bottom of a saved snapshot giving the current Speccy revision level and the label (Snapshot created with x.xx.xxx). It would be nice if this same useful information could also be included in the saved snapshot text files.I tried to upload the .Speccy file, but got this error message:
Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file
Found a work-around - see post by me that follows below . . .
DELL4600 Speccy 20Nov2010 1715 1.07.205.txt
2005P4XP 20Nov2010 1548 1.06.191.txt
-
I have the same (or a similiar problem), Speccy 1.06.191.
I just added a 2nd monitor today. 1st monitor is a Dell 2007FP (1600x1200); 2nd monitor is a AOC (1024x768). Speccy reports the monitors like this:
Graphics Monitor Name DELL 2007FP on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Current Resolution 1600x1200 pixels Work Resolution 1600x1172 pixels State enabled, primary, output devices support Monitor Width 1600 Monitor Height 1200 Monitor BPP 32 bits per pixel Monitor Frequency 60 Hz Device \\.\DISPLAY1\Monitor0 Name DELL 2007FP on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 [color="#FF0000"]<===== NOT CORRECT[/color] Current Resolution 1024x768 pixels Work Resolution 1024x768 pixels State enabled, output devices support Monitor Width 1024 Monitor Height 768 Monitor BPP 32 bits per pixel Monitor Frequency 60 Hz Device \\.\DISPLAY2\Monitor0
Another Problem that has appeared (after I added the 2nd monitor and a 2nd hard drive) is the inability of Speccy to save the complete snapshot in text format. Three days ago, same revision level, Speccy 1.06.191, I saved the snapshot as text and all of the data was saved. Today, since adding the 2nd monitor and 2nd hard drive, I noticed that the size of the text snapshot decreased in size, which prompted me to look at it. I found that it stopped saving the data midway through the 2nd hard drive, skipping Optical Drives, Audio, Peripherals and Network.
The data in the text snapshot looks like this:
WDC WD800BB-75CAA0 Manufacturer Western Digital Form Factor GB/2.5-inch Serial Number WD-WMA8E8746485 (This is the last data shown)
I don't know if this published snapshot would be useful, but here it is:
http://speccy.piriform.com/results/RtmfN0v9QLNLHBcORFzTXFL
Here is the data for the 2nd hard drive from that published snapshot (carriage returns inserted for readability):
WDC WD800BB-75CAA0 Manufacturer: Western Digital Form Factor: GB/2.5-inch Serial Number: WD-WMA8E8746485 Interface: IDE Capacity: 78GB Real size: 80,000,000,000 bytes S.M.A.R.T 01 Read Error Rate: 200 (200 worst) Data 0000000000 03 Spin-Up Time: 109 (095) Data 0000000E10 04 Start/Stop Count: 099 (099) Data 00000005BB 05 Reallocated Sectors Count: 200 (200) Data 0000000000 07 Seek Error Rate: 200 (200) Data 0000000000 09 Power-On Hours (POH): 056 (056) Data 000000802B 0A Spin Retry Count: 100 (100) Data 0000000000 0B Recalibration Retries: 100 (100) Data 0000000000 0C Device Power Cycle Count: 099 (099) Data 00000005AD C4 Reallocation Event Count: 200 (200) Data 0000000000 C5 Current Pending Sector Count: 200 (200) Data 0000000000 C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count: 200 (200) Data 0000000000 C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count: 200 (253) Data 0000000000 C8 Write Error Rate / Multi-Zone Error Rate: 200 (200) Data 0000000000 Status: Good Partition 0 Partition ID: Disk #1, Partition #0 Disk Letter: D: File System: NTFS Volume Serial Number: 083DC27A Size: 74GB Used Space: 66MB (1%) Free Space: 74GB (99%)
Possible things to look for:
This 2nd hard drive is an older Western Digital IDE drive, and no temperature display shows up. It should not be reported as a 2.5-inch drive, it is really a 3.5-inch drive.
Hope all of this info helps . . .
-
Hi,
thanks for reporting the bug. We have successfully reproduced it. It is related to the non-standard DPI value on ypur system. It will be fixed within next releases
Best regards
Romanoff
Great Service! Keep up the good work Romanoff.
-
Defraggler Forum 20Jun2010.txt - 21Jun2010 11:59
I just downloaded and installed Defraggler version 1.20.201 today. I immediately saw that the last button of the Edit Drive Map Colors window [Green] is partly on top of the [save] button and the [save] button is on top of the "Files being written" text. I went to another system that still had version 1.19.193 on it to verify that the previous version was OK. It was. Both systems are running the same operating system with all MS updates installed (XP Pro SP3). It appears that the button spacing has been increased with version 20. It should be a simple fix to the source code.
Also, maybe this issue has been covered before, but why must all Piriform products that push the "Optional Yahoo Toolbar" have the default during program installation being having the box to install checked? This is annoying as hell and merely wastes time, particularly if you miss unchecking the box and have to uninstall the Yahoo toolbar, which I consider a virus. I have added an application block in my Kaspersky for all of our systems to block all Yahoo installations since Sun Java also trys to ram it down your throat and they actually try to download and execute a Yahoo file even if you do unselect its installation. Very RUDE, to say the least!
Attachment: Defraggler Edit Drive Map Colors v19 & v20.jpg
Update: I installed version 20 on another PC and it appears fine. Thought about differences in the PC's and remembered that the PC where it did not display correctly is my wife's 15" laptop with a WSXGA+ screen (1680x1050). I had to change the DPI to 110% of the normal 96 DPI (106 DPI) in order to satisfy her requirements to enlarge the icons and text on the desktop. Changing the DPI setting back to the standard 96 DPI fixed the problem with Defraggler's Edit Drive Map Colors, but in order to not receive any flak I'll have to live with the minor display problem and go back to what I originally had (106 DPI). Isn't it possible to write the code to account for changes in the DPI? I know that all of the other programs in the PC function OK with the 106 DPI setting.
-
Speccy shows the WiFi as "WiFi not enabled"
Speccy: 1.01.132
PC: Dell Latitude D830
CPU: Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T7100
Network
You are connected to the internet
Connected through Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN - Kaspersky Anti-Virus NDIS Miniport
IP Address 192.168.145.26
Adapter Type Ethernet
WinInet Info
LAN Connection
Local system uses a local area network to connect to the Internet
Local system has RAS to connect to the Internet
Wi-Fi Info
Wi-Fi not enabled
WinHTTPInfo
WinHTTPSessionProxyType No proxy
Session Proxy
Session Proxy Bypass
Connect Retries 5
Connect Timeout 60000
HTTP Version HTTP 1.1
Max Connects Per 1.0 Servers INFINITE
Max Connects Per Servers INFINITE
Max HTTP automatic redirects 10
Max HTTP status continue 10
Send Timeout 30000
IEProxy Auto Detect No
IEProxy Auto Config
IEProxy
IEProxy Bypass
Default Proxy Config Access Type No proxy
Default Config Proxy
Default Config Proxy Bypass
Obviously the WiFi IS enabled, since I was able to post this and I do not have a LAN cable plugged in. I ran Speccy on my big desktop last night, which does have WiFi, and it showed this status:
Network
You are connected to the internet
Connected through NETGEAR WN311T Wireless PCI Adapter - Kaspersky Anti-Virus NDIS Miniport
IP Address 192.168.xxx.2
Adapter Type Ethernet
WinInet Info
LAN Connection
Local system has a valid connection to the Internet, but it might or might not be currently connected
Local system uses a local area network to connect to the Internet
Local system has RAS to connect to the Internet
Wi-Fi Info
Using native Wi-Fi API version 1
Available access points count 1
Wi-Fi ()
SSID
Name
Signal Strength/Quality 78
Security Enabled
State The interface is connected to a network
Dot11 Type Infrastructure BSS network
Network Connectible
Network Flags There is a profile for this network
Cipher Algorithm to be used when joining this network AES-CCMP algorithm
Default Auth used to join this network for the first time 802.11i RSNA algorithm that uses PSK
-
This is the Registry File (Adobe Fix Acobat 7.0 Reader Icon.reg) I created to fix this problem for Adobe Reader 7.0:
1) Cut/Paste ALL the text BETWEEN the 2 lines to a text editor such as Notepad.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\acrobat\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\Program Files\\Adobe\\Acrobat 7.0\\Reader\\AcroRd32.exe"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) Edit as necessary ("Acrobat 7.0" must be edited if your version is different) and save it.
3) Double-click the file name it and the info will be added to the registry to correct/restore the bad/missing entry.
I created the "Adobe Fix Acobat 7.0 Reader Icon.reg" file because I had removed this entry from other PCs in the house and I needed an easy way to fix both them and other PCs I work on.
. If the data to the left of the bar graphs (Analyzed, Defrag Executions, Files Defragged, Fragments Reduced, Longest Defrag Execution and Last Defrag Execution) could be double line spaced instead of triple line spaced, we could gain enough real estate to not require resizing of the lower statistics part of the screen display.
Speccy programmers for providing the label at the top of the snapshot display window giving the file name of a loaded snapshot and the label at the bottom of a saved snapshot giving the current Speccy revision level and the label (Snapshot created with x.xx.xxx). It would be nice if this same useful information could also be included in the saved snapshot text files.
Give an option for the old GUI (this is the sole topic for requesting the old GUI)
in CCleaner Suggestions
Posted