niski

Andavari, Thanks for the link. Long ago I may have corrupted some critical sectors on a 40 GB Maxtor with bad software and no documentation. I learned my lesson. Cheers

marmite, Thanks for the reply. Care will be taken. I think I erred in another sense by offering advice about using GP when my experience with it is limited to interface tweaks and a few IP restrictions. Apologies to seasoned members who roll their eyes at newbie enthusiasm. One should refrain from offering advice that isn't based on direct personal experience, no matter what the source. Re: Avira I'm switching back to Avast! Avira seems to be jumping the rail with the latest release. Too many unresolved critical problems, and dubious avnotify.exe behavior. Re: CCleaner I've been using it for years without major issues. The HD wipe and MFT defrag is working fine. How boring. I'm going to try Defraggler tonight. MyDefrag is my preference but Defraggler seems to be firmly based on safe Windows defrag method. Having a GUI for selective defrag is very nice. Best Reguards, niski

hazelnut, Thanks for the warning wrapped in irony:) I'll be more careful about posting links and ask first if I'm not sure. Seems this registry entry is getting good play over at Avira. CCleaner is right in the mix. The Group Policy rule really does work. No more pop-up ad. I guess this trick has been known for some time. Good news for the pop-up but I'm not convinced the registry entry should be taken as lightly. Ye olde Prussian arrogance seems to flash at times over there. These next few days I'll have more time to swim through Piriform forum and others to see if this thing is as critical as it seems. My anti-virus protection is currently: AVZ Antiviral Toolkit & ClamWin. AVZ is not very well known to some users but it's a comprehensive no BS system tool with access to all important Windows systems. It was recomended to me by a trusted tech and in his words "She isn't pretty but she can dance." ClamWin has very accurate detection with a minimum of false positives. Cheers

Hey folks, I'm a Pirform newbie. I wanted to post this quickly because I have to finish my laundry. I'll provide some personal info later. Re: HKCR\{80b8c23c-16e0-4cd8-bbc3-cecec9a78b79}. It looks like the topic is alive over at Avira forum: http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?langid=1 Check out the Avira Personal for Windows thread posts for this week. I have the same problem. Avira seems a little shy about discussing it. Forgive me if the above - and the following - are redundant: If you have XP Pro here's a link to learn how to disable the Avira pop-up window we all love using the Group Policy Editor in XP Pro:**link to site removed by moderator **I don't know if it can be done on XP Home. I don't love Microsoft but I'm Glad I upgraded to Pro before my head exploded. I followed the instructions and it works. I think I'll make some more rules in there while I'm at it, but take heed: The wise-ones caution us that the Group Policy Editor must be respected, so be careful P.S.: Love the quick edit! Very clean and fast forum interface. Nice work. C ya

Redhawk, Temporarily disabling the "Enhanced" USB controller did the trick. I'm on an HP Vectra 800 running XP-SP2 with an upgraded USB card. Transfere rates are as expected but it's always been too slow formatting large volumes. Now I know how to work around that lag thanks to you're good advice. I'll download the trail version of "Flash Memory Tool Kit" for some diagnostics. Thanks for the concise and timely reply, Richard. My first Piriform post leaves me with a smile:) niski

Hi, I recently put an Ubuntu.iso on a Seagate 5.0 GB Pocket USB for transport (not for booting) and the file would not copy onto Windows. The USB drive was not recognized by Windows (but it was formated in Windows) and an attempt at file rescue with an old copy of FileScavanger threw a lot of sector errors so I wiped the drive with HDD FreeWipe Tool and reformatted to FAT32 with HP USB Disk Storage Tool (because Windows format froze) and it still won't accept any file into the volume. I scanned with Recuva and I find 224384 zero-byte files all listed as ??9. Are these remnants of a botched format or perhaps a corrupted Ubuntu.iso? Any opinions will be appreciated. Included is a snap of Recuva showing ??9. Thanks for your time, and thanks to Piriform for the opportunity to join this forum. niski