Stokesson

I just installed the latest update of CCleaner and it shut down while cleaning, further tests revealed that it was only when cleaning Firefox and Kaspersky AV was running, so I am guessing that Kaspersky is to blame, but there was no log of the event. I am still running Windows 10 pro 1511.

I have been using CCleaner in scripts for several years to empty all the temporary files before a backup. However since I upgraded from XP to Windows 10 I find CCleaner is returning the 0 completion code immediately rather than when the program closes and so I cannot wait for cleaning completion. So could there be a command line variant of AUTO or AUTORB which does not return a status until the program closes? In a batch file "Start /Wait CCleaner.exe /AUTO" would then work. Or if I use a command window running CCleaner will not give me another prompt until it finishes. My main use is as a Run First item in 2BrightSparks SyncBack program.

I am using CCleaner within another application (std or 64 bit has the same error) and the "completed OK" status is returned on loading rather than on completion. Command line "C:\Program Files\CCleaner\CCleaner.exe" /auto I have been using CCleaner with SyncBackFree for several years in the run before mode where CCleaner cleans out temp files and caches before backing up the User files, however recently I noticed that the backup had started before CCleaner had finished. I didn't notice how many udates ago this happened. Using their "test" button CCleaner gives an OK response as the program loads, it used to wait until the program closed. I selected both CCleaner versions to check if was a recent upgrade of mine to Win8.1 64bit that was responsible. It has the same problem on my Windows 7 setups. It is always possible that SyncBack has changed and is asking for the loaded rather than the completion status, so I am going to mention this problem on their forum aswell. UPDATE: This bug reported on the SyncBack forum. Workaround tip is to put the program in a batch file and run that. The suggester indicated that another program worked OK. but not CCleaner. I have tried the workaround, but CCleaner is running so fast after several runs that I cannot tell for sure now - It will wait until later to be sure.

The direct answer is that on a good hard disk with large buffer and seek optimisation, the 4 tasks in parallel should complete in less time than the 4 tasks in series. It is no different than any multitasking use of the drive. However see below for what I actually meant to say. P.S. I have run multiple parallel defrags on a single hard disk, though I cannot remember which product allowed it, it was a trial and for other reasons I didn't buy it. As the feature is still not in 1.18.185 I will add. OOPS! Sorry I thought it was obvious that what I meant is what is in most of the commercial packages allow, to QUEUE the 4 requests so that when one finishes the next starts. Since my post I have played with the scheduler and set 4 schedules starting at 30 minute intervals, this seems to achieve the desired queue. However the one problem is that I cannot check what is happening until the logs appear. If this could be set in the GUI then turning the monitor on occasionally would allow me to check on progress. Additionally some of my partitions are on separate disks, why shouldn't I run all of these in parallel? Being able to run the GUI to check on the status of the scheduler would also help. Sorry I forgot to turn on e-mail notification and so missed this reply.

I am starting this as a new thread because although all the aspects are reported elsewhere my input does not appear to sit well in any other thread. Also it will be a long post. I hope that it proves of some use in solving the slow down mystery. I have just upgraded to 1.18.185 from a 1.16 version downloaded just under 4 months ago. When I used this version it defragmented in a time that I considered quite fast for the size of disk, file structure and amount of defragmentation. I have been using various defrag routines for about 25 years and have some "feel" for what is working well. I am aware that defrag tests require the use of cloned drives so that identical fragmented file structures are required for tests and the amount of free space on a drive can significantly affect defrag speed. I do not have results from cloned drives, but over the 7 partitions that I have defragged with Defraggler this last ten days I have made several observations which I hope will help the programmers spot where the problem arises. First I think that there are at least 2 new bugs since 1.16 and some problems may be the result of side effects of another bug. 1/ First the display bug, which I have contributed to elsewhere, where after a completed defrag the display does not match the state of the drive. Minor inconsistencies in display are not uncommon within programs and can be explained by the "averaging" that is used to display a square where the square is made up of several files. During defragging a program is trying to show change and may "bias" the display in order to do so and so by the time defragging is finished the display can misrepresent the true state, and an analyse step is required to stabilise it. However Defraggler is leaving the display in a state where this does not seem to be the case including Red that should be Blue and files where it should be White etc. 2/ Defrag of freespace. This no longer seems to work for me and the help page http://docs.piriform.com/defraggler/using-defraggler/defragmenting-free-space-on-a-drive is confusing where the first part of the explanation seems good and then "Defraggler will fill up freespace chunks with whole files only. If you select Defrag Freespace (Allow fragmentation), Defraggler will use file fragments to fill up freespace." just confuses the issue even though it is correct. I was reading this to check just what Defraggler was supposed to do, but I ended up confused as what was supposed to be the outcome rather than the process. Until now "defrag freespace" meant to me "consolidate freespace" that is move files in such a way that where possible (barring unmovable files) freespace ended up in 1 single uninterrupted chunk. The two options being A/ move files such that the files end up defragmented or B/ allow the moved files to be fragmented. Indeed with many of the older defrag programs this was step 1 in defragmenting a drive. I have noticed that on several of my partitions the freespace is dotted with small files and neither of the defrag freespace options move them. This problem may also be affecting the overall program in that A/ there is no freespace fragment large enough to relocate some of my larger files which try to be moved and fail and B/ with the move to end option selected (my default) that any small file in the way is not removed first and so the moved file becomes fragmented. 3/ Defrag algorithm. A couple of my partitions did defrag quite quickly, however I noticed a higher level of CPU activity that I remembered from before. I am guessing that the speed ups that have been applied do this by doing a little more thinking (computation) and then making a more optimised set of moves to achieve the result. However there may be certain situations in which the computation screws up and the time taken exponentially expands. One aspect of this is that originally and with all other defrag routines, the one given is that the disk drive never stops transferring data from one point to another. Now there are VERY LONG time periods with no disk activity just CPU. The S: drive of this machine is currently defragging (S: is used for long term storage of software images - installation disks), no other program should be accessing it as restore is Off for this drive and Indexing is inhibited. The drive is 35GB and 17% free space (5.87GB) the fragmentation report is 10 files 104 fragments 10% fragmentation. Task manager reports DF.EXE has been running for 20:50:05 and has had 6.2G "I/O other" and 6.3TB "I/O other bytes) though this huge I/O were not disk movements. Using full screen and looking at the device map initially the main observation was that freespace is fragmented such that the larger files cannot be defragmented. I am guessing again that the algorithm is failing to find a strategy within a reasonable - keep the heads moving - time period. The present disk map is showing far more Red than it should in that most of the files moved are now fragmented and the summary is 9 files with 735 fragments 39% complete. Stopping and analysing now shows 44 files with 843 fragments. This disk I would have expected to take between 30mins and 1 hour which is consistent with the last time it was defragged - there has since been significant rearrangement. S: contains installation files and so they range from 0 bytes to several MB, plus 5 files 3.5Gb to 6.5GB Probably a good time to stop and list my hardware. Machine 1. XP on an Athlon 3000+ 2GHz, 2GB RAM. C:30GB 36% free, D:39.1GB 38% free M:39.1GB 38% free, S:35.3GB 17% free, X:42.9GB 37% free. D: is a backup of M: using SyncBack Machine 2. Windows 7 Intel Core 2Duo 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM. C:200GB 50% free, W:1TB 11% free I have been running Defraggler for a week so far due to the slow speed. Only the two C: drives are being indexed and have Restore switched on. Strangely both C: drives defragmented in the shortest times, both well up on expectation but under 2 hours each. W: I hand defragmented in the end by using File list and choosing carefully which order to defragment individual files so that large white space was created for the next defrag. Finally I ran Defraggler normally and 20 minutes later I had a well laid out drive map. The last time I used Defraggler on this drive (1TB) it ran nearly 24H but almost continuous disk movement and perfect result without help. This time I let it run 3 days with little disk movement and then I gave up and hand held it. W: is my TV archive and backup drive for C: and so has a majority of files about 1GB in size the bulk being <4GB but the largest is 10GB X: I also gave up and hand held it, but achieved a 0% fragmentation but a messy looking disk map. I cannot get consolidated freespace, visually there are about 20 fragments. Not good because this drive has backup files written to it which are then copied to another backup drive. Initially some of the files had over a thousand fragments, but there are only a few hundred files on the disk. X: contains about 10 >1GB files M: and D: are the most interesting as one is a copy of the other. M: is my MAIN drive (data) and is backed up (synced) every day to D: M: also contains backups from C: which are more frequent. Before the use of Defraggler this week, the only difference between the drives was the layout of the files, otherwise they were identical size and content. However Defraggler ran on one and completed in 4 hours (very slow - expected < 1H) and the other didn't finish after 4 days!!! Again some help got the result I needed, but still fragmented freespace. All the problem drives have files >1GB (but so do the non problem drives). 100% CPU and NO disk activity is a common factor as is fragmented freespace. I followed a link from one thread to an NTFS which suggested that consolidating freespace in NTFS was impossible using the API!! I hope not as moving small files is key to achieving a good result. On a positive note. I have lost no data and despite the slow downs have finished my task. Defraggler is basically a sound product and I look forward to the updates. As an embedded programmer and electronic design engineer I appreciate the complexities that lead to unexpected faults and the difficulty in tracking them down. Congratulations to those of you who give your time to bringing us such a useful free product.

Just a note to add. SSD's do not have heads, they are truly near instant random access (similar to RAM or ROM) and so do not need defragging to get "physical" performance improvements. Writing to them uses "Life" so avoiding unnecessary writes is important - another reason not to defrag. There is theoretically, depending upon the file system, reduced performance due to fragmentation - e.g. FAT or FAT32 but considerably less so if NTFS or one of the Linux EXT formats is used. However to save the tiny delay which would normally be << 1% (considerably less than) would require knowledge of the actual detailed internal design which varies from SSD to SSD model. That is assuming this wasn't already optimised within the SSD.

I saw this and used "Analyse" again, the display cleared up to match the results.

I have just updated to the latest version 1.18.185 and noticed that at the end of defragging the disk map is BOGUS. Just Analyse again and the true status is revealed, all the Red disappears!! This is one of two bugs I have noticed so far. I am running on Windows 7 and XP, the XP defrag routine also has this bug where an analyse step is required to get a correct picture. The Windows 7 program doesn't even show a map.

Hi. This is an interesting topic. Unfortunately I do not have an answer about Defraggler, but a few thoughts which may help the discussion along. Though I have seen the odd "Shut down when complete" tick box, maybe only in the scheduler. In XP and earlier sleep is purely determined from an activity level:- Primary activity - user input, mouse or keyboard etc. - restarts any timers Background activity - CPU usage may determine trigger point, i.e. less than 10% means inactive. Individual program may request sleep, power off etc. and seem to be obeyed even if another task is running. No allowance for multiple tasks - that is shut down/sleep when ALL tasks are complete. Overall results poor and may require extensive user tuning to get acceptable results. Vista significantly improved this but there were flaws - it would even shut down while I was typing into a Word document!! (O.K. I had set the sleep option to its most aggressive). At the rate of upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista is it worth worrying about? Windows 7 is much improved and seems to have better stay awake until task is completed even if the CPU usage is low. It even refuses to shut down if busy (or recording) from my TV remote (but does obey a direct keyboard request) which I find marvellous - as I do not know how busy it is from inside Media Centre. However watching TV or a recording in Media Centre NOT set to full screen does not count as a stay awake task and will shut down!! - sensible really. I would therefore suggest any effort to improve Defraggler in this respect be targeted at Windows 7, and I say this even though 6 of my 8 PC's are still running XP!. Secondly because Defraggler runs well as a background task the PC does not need to be left running and so will be much Greener if shut-down when not in use for user interaction (or other essential timed tasks such as PVR use). I have Defraggler currently running in the background and it is not affecting my normal use, it is less obtrusive than most anti-virus software. Anyway that's my six penerth StokersSon

This is a feature request (Unless of course there is already a way of achieving it that searching the help hasn't found). After using CCleaner for several years I tentatively tried Defraggler on secondary machine (just in case) before moving to my main machine which still on XP and newly re-installed desperately needed de-fragmenting (the inbuilt defrag is so poor). However my 200 GB drive is split into 5 partitions and Defraggler has no way yet to run the GUI on multiple partitions. The suggestion in the post "leave Defraggler de-fragmenting 4 partitions when I am sleeping" is exactly what's needed. However I worked out that the scheduled option would probably have some method of coping with multiple partitions and so set up multiple scheduled tasks to carry out the process. I set these up as run full de-fragmentation once and delete (I set them up and then edited the scheduler). Then came my next problem. 12 hours later all four schedules were shown as still running and I could not run the GUI as the GF.EXE task was still running. So I could not get a status of the four defrag tasks and get an idea of how much longer. As I type the last task is still running 32 hours later. The drives have a huge number of files and folders and so the long times are not unexpected. When using some earlier programs I have tuned them to only de-fragment files and improve free space (not fully de-fragment it) as it is the attempt to optimise that uses all the time which defeats the object of de-fragmenting in the first place - saving time. So my request, if it isn't obvious already, is to be able to connect to the background scheduled task and display the status in the GUI. While not trivial this is not an impossible task, firewall and anti-virus programs do this as a matter of course - they run from SYSTEM but have a GUI in user space. Just how much information and interaction I leave as an exercise for the programmers, but would as a minimum request :- Percentage of task completed / Status Any time estimates and elapsed time access to the fragmentation analysis [Footnote: 32 hours 15 minutes and it finished, finally I can look see]

You are not showing "Tasks from all Users". The scheduled Defraggler task DF.EXE is run by SYSTEM and only shows after clicking the "All users". The Defraggler Gui will not run while the scheduled task is running. This point is the subject of a post that I am in the process of editing "Obtaining status of scheduled or background Defraggler tasks". Regards Stokersson

I agree with the suggestion and had the same problem to solve. My solution however was to set up 4 scheduled tasks to start at 1 hour intervals to run once only. The tasks have to be in the future AND Defraggler must not be running, so I started the first ten minutes later to give time to set up all four and exit. What happened was that Defraggler started all four tasks and now 30 hours later only 1 is still running - that is the subject of another question which if I cannot find another post I will be posting (Obtaining status of scheduled or background Defraggler tasks). So this may be an interim solution for others. Regards Stokersson