Defraggler was working and my PC became unresponsive

[robbio]

Hi all,

 

I was running Defraggler on an external hard disk.

After some minutes of working my PC became blocked, no mouse moving, no ctrl+alt+delete response.

 

I'm not sure if Defraggler caused the blocking situation.

 

Is there a way to know if Defraggler encountered problems during its work?

Does Defraggler have some sort of log file where it writes exception events?

Does Defraggler have a "start in debug mode" feature?

 

Thanks

 

PC: Windows7(64bit), 4GB ram, several internal and external hard disks.

Defraggler v: 2.09.391(64bit)

 

I'm a (win32) software developer if this can help you.

[Todeskuh]

I've go the same problem on both my desktop machine and my notebook. After a short while, maybe 2 to 10 minutes, the system will become unresponsive, ALT+TAB or CTRL+ALT+DEL won't help, only turning power off and on again. The problem was introduced with Defraggler 2.09.391 (64 bit).

 

PC: Win7 64-bit, 4 GB ram, two SSD and one conventional drive

Notebook: Win7 64-bit, 2 GB ram, one conventional drive, no recent hardware changes.

[Alan_B]

Once a CPU HOG is in control it can be extremely difficult to launch Task Manager.

In such cases I first launch Task manager and I get to see what goes wrong.

 

Especially relevant to your situation,

A right click on the CPU HOG process gives the context menu and then the priority can be reduced so that other things, especially the Task Manager GUI,

do NOT get starved of CPU Cycles when the CPU HOG goes ballistic.

[robbio]

Hi Alan_B,

 

what does "HOG" mean?

 

I'm not sure I've understood what you said.

If you're suggesting that in such situations my PC could be unresponsive because Defraggler (and other running programs) are heavily

using my PC then I can assure you my PC was blocked. I have many years of devloping on windows so I know when it is blocked and when is not.

 

Are you a Drafraggler developer?

 

Thanks

[Super Fast]

To my knowledge, although I could be wrong, I believe Alan has worked in various software types, but is not associated with developing Defraggler.

What Alan means, is that sometimes a process will hog most of your CPU time, or "starve" the other processes till the system slows to a crawl.

 

It would really help, I think, if you also listed your CPU specs + RAM. Example: P4 3.2 GHZ DUAL Core Processor with 4 GB Ram. 2 GB used, 2 GB free.

Please do tell how much ram is free & used as well as if you have a single/dual/quad core processor.

 

Also, how big are your drives, & how big are the files you are moving vs how much free space you have?

[robbio]

Hi SuperFast,

 

so I got it right.

Ok, no problem about the help of Alan_B. As I said I'm absolutely sure my PC wasn't HOG or starved, instead it was completely blocked.

I'm not sure the issue was caused by Defraggler and this is why I asked those questions before. Probably it's my hard disk but I'm not sure too.

However I cannot see the 'health' tab of my hard sik from Defraggler main window, probably because that hard disk doesn't support some interfaces (i can see the 'health' tab from my internal hard disk).

The external hard disk I was defragmenting is 400 GB (on the box there is written PackardBell but I'm not sure this was the manufacturer of the hard disk). It was 82% used. The files it has have a different size, large small etc.

 

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (i think two core)

RAM: 4GB Single channel DDR2 # 334MHz

MB: ASUSTek M4A79 Deluxe.

 

I don't know how much ram was free and how much was used at the time of blocking, however I don't think too much used.

After reastarted my PC I ran again Defraggler and all was fine, no problem and the hd had a good defragmenting.

I said I was a developer just to let you know I'm accustomed to the "first line" of attempt in those case.

I've been using Piriform products for many years or so.

 

Anyway, with Speecy I can create a snapshot of my hardware if you need to.

 

Thank you,

[hazelnut]

Any chance of debug logs robbio for the devs to look at please?

 

http://www.piriform.com/docs/defraggler/troubleshooting/running-defraggler-in-debug-mode

[robbio]

this is what I was looking for.

Thank you,

[Alan_B]

I can assure you my PC was blocked. I have many years of devloping on windows so I know when it is blocked and when is not.

 

Are you a Drafraggler developer?

 

Thanks

Superfast is right - I am not a Defraggler developer.

 

My career for the last few decades was developing real-time software for 8 bit and 16 bit processors,

with little interest in Windows till retirement 5 years ago.

Since then I have taken a real interest in beating Windows into submission.

 

I have suffered a total "block" when some process took "all" available CPU cycles,

and nothing I did had any effect - not even a right click on the Task Bar or a Ctrl/Alt/Del to launch Windows Task manager.-

UNLESS I was VERRYY SSLLOWW with at least 10 seconds freeze after holding down Ctrl before I also held down Alt and both held for another 10 seconds before hold DEL and waiting.

 

In such a situation, once Task Manager is launched it can still be sluggish in response to commands unless the guilty process is running with a lower priority.

 

I would be interested in learning how you can distinguish between Windows being blocked as opposed to some application consuming all available CPU cycles.

[robbio]

Hi Alan_B,

 

I know what you'are talking about!!! :-)

 

I can assure you it was blocked, 'there was no tick from the heart'. I waited for about an hour.

After many years of developing on windows families (I started on Win95/ME) you acquire some sort of 'sixth sense' about

the behaviour of these OSs. That is a working in progress knowledge you learn beating your head against your PC day by day.

 

It's the same when you understand that a loop in your code is running for ever when you are debugging your app,

after many non terminating loop you acquire a 'feel' about those loops.

 

Thank you anyway for your help.