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Hi Carol,

Sandboxie sets up a folder under your user account (default is c:\programs and settings\username\application data\sandboxie). ANYTHING that is written to disk, either by a sandboxed application or by a process/application launched by that sandboxed app (this extends to opening Windows Explorer, launching WMP, etc.), is written to that folder. How this works is that your system's folder structure is replicated within the sandbox (that folder). The programme also creates a virtual registry within the sandbox to which all changes to your registry are written. Once you're done surfing the net or testing an application or opening a file with a sandboxed copy of word, you simply empty the sandbox and your system has not been altered in any way. I'm running XP Sp-2 and this works brilliantly for me - no trouble so far. It's in ongoing development and has an active forum on which bugs and requests are discussed extensively. The author (tzuk) is an active participant and responds to criticisms/problems/requests well (i.e. doesn't get in a strop about it!). The problems that I have had with it relate to past versions not running maxthon properly (fixed in 2.3.1) and in having sandboxed apps still running when I try to empty the sandbox. There's no real problem with this as the context menu includes the option to "terminate all sandboxed processes"; it's just alarming to see how integrated everything is in windows (ie how many processes are spawned by any given running application)! I haven't experienced any problems running sandboxed and non-sandboxed applications together. The sandbox keeps the apps running within it well quarantined.

As such, the sandboxed folder is a legititimate folder under windows that keeps apps running within it from reaching out and affecting your system. You can, however, explore its contents and move them out of the sandbox AND apps running outside of it can reach into and modify/manipulate/move files there. An example would be an anti-virus or anti-spyware app moving infected files into quarantine or an equivalent...

I'm going to check out some of the other suggestions here over the weekend as I haven't tried any of the alternatives to sandboxie. The attraction of sandboxie is that it is essentially free and in my experience works so I haven't been motivated to look further afield.

Ashampoo (http://www.ashampoo.com/f...angid=2&idstring=0038) has a suite called Office 2005 that I've not tried. At $70, it's pretty expensive, given the cost of other alternatives (ie FREE!), but is worth a look. There is also Ragtime (http://www.ragtime-online.com/ - version 6 is in beta) which is free for home use but it's a bit bloated too, I think. I've done some minimal "playing" with it and it imports and exports word and excel files well but is a bit annoying in that it does so a bit slowly. This may be because it is in beta... I didn't keep the latest official release of 5 loaded long enough to remark on how quickly it does the same thing.

Looks like the suggestions from lanux are the way to go, though! I'll be checking those out myself...

Sandboxie www.sandboxie.com allows you to install and run applications sandboxed and works really well... It will also run any installed application sandboxed, including web browsers (hence the name sandboxIE) and this feature works well as well. The hit on performance is minimal and using sandboxie, and any app that is running within its virtual environment, couldn't be simpler. Finally, there is an active forum devoted to driving development of it http://sandboxie.com/phpbb/.

There are both freeware and shareware versions of it available. The differences are:

"In the registered version, Sandboxie can be configured to issue a warning whenever a particular program is launched outside the sandbox. You can also configure Sandboxie to automatically sandbox particular programs, even when they are not launched through the Sandboxie front end tool."

I wound up missing the original donationcoder discount on Beyond Compare but purchased it anyway. I contacted the author and was informed that it's all good... anyone buying v.2 gets a free upgrade to v.3.

Hi all - I have had TWO hard drives in two different notebooks fail over the past two weeks. Frankly, I'm fed up with notebooks in general and notebook drives in particular. I have had 4 fail while in use as the primary drive and two others (pulled when I upgraded) develop errors while in use as USB external backup drives. That makes 6 total in about two years in use in three different notebooks. Pathetic. Anyway, back on topic, I am posting because neither of the recent failures that I experienced gave any advance warning at all.

As soon as I have a bit of cash burning a hole in my pocket (should be around 2015 at the rate I'm going), I'm buying a desktop!

Hmmm.... I've been running SpinRite on a test drive for over a week! For about three days I thought nothing was happening, but it seems to be going painfully slowly through the sectors, bit by bit. I'll let you all know how it turns out. It's a trashed notebook drive - 40 GB TravelStar. I'm beginning to suspect the fodder is on to something, though...

As for Superboyac's problem, I note this from the GetDataBack website: "Recover even when Windows doesn't recognize the drive - GetDataBack can even recover your data when the drive is no longer recognized by Windows. It can likewise be used even if all directory information - not just the root directory- is missing."

Looks like it would be worth a closer look.

OK, first my spelling is atrocious -it's Trininaut. Second, I think I just set a record. I downloaded and started up trininaut (no installation, just unzip the files into a folder and run the exec) and let it index my 80GB harddrive. Pros: indexing was quick. Cons: everything else... It will launch executables but evidently not open files or folders. As I COULD NOT get to the settings dialog and as I had to kill the process via Task Manager - not being able to use the method described on the app's homepage, I've already given up and deleted it. When running, it uses about 17 MB of RAM.

I'll drop the author a note outlining my experience but this is far, far, far from being in F&RR's league!

YMMV,

Mike

Triniault, yet another app that I am debating trying at: http://trininaut.sourceforge.net/. It's in beta and is written as a Quicksilver (Mac app with a fanatical following) analog for Windows, though the author admits to not having used Quicksilver. There's a user forum here http://trininaut.sourceforge.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=d18950d892d6fbf6d765b6833d587754 that's been live for about 5 days and so far has 3 postings, all from the author!

Triniault appears to differ from F&RR in that it indexes the user's hard drive when first run and then updates itself periodically after that. Looks like I'm going to have to download and try if I am to make any sort of a meaningful comment on it.

Downloading now...

HD Tune http://www.hdtune.com/ is a freeware app that also allows you to view the temperature in the sys tray and provides easily accesible detail about the health of the drive...

I agree with you about precaching - Adobe's service is one of the reasons I gave up on AR 7. No matter how many times I disabled it, it just kept coming back, like the Energizer bunny! The other reason, had to do with using AR 7 as the default in-line reader is both Firefox and Maxthon and its instability. Foxit is much more stable in my usage.

With reference to Adobe precaching, I DID find, that with the service running load times were very quick, hence my decision to ditch AR Speed-up. You're right, though, in that the two approaches are very different.

Regarding PDF Speedup, there's a another freeware app out there called Adobe Reader Speed-Up, which I always had good luck with. It can be found here: http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/index.php. Note, though, that I no longer have Adobe Reader installed, having made the switch to Fox-It. Given the fact that AR 7 installs its own launcher speed up service (can't remember the name of it), I'm not sure how much of a difference these utilities will make (NOTE: I've never used either of them with AR 7 for the reasons outlined above). I do note, though, that the authors of each claim that their solutions do speedup AR 7 launches nonetheless...

Maxthon will also allow you to select "view" and then your choice of cascade, tile vertically, tile horizontally, etc. I just gave it a go and it works fine.

Yup... I initially posted in a different thread, asking what all the fuss is about with PS TrayFactory and apps of its ilk and then downloaded and installed it. I purchased a full copy before the end of the day...

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Wow! Excellent job, moerl. I'm going to go back and read it again - there's so much there that I'm sure I missed some key points.

What I like about it is that it is solid when used as the default reader in your webbrowser. Acrobat Reader 7 locks up often when used to view pdfs on-line.... I haven't encountered this problem in a month of using FR, and I frequent a lot of academic journals on-line and read the content from within my browser.

THAT is interesting (and very worrisome), Zaine. Which companies have treated you like this? If you'd prefer to answer off the forum, I understand, but I am very interested as I am likely going to be moving house and ISP in the near future.

Nice to see you back at DC!

OK, you got through the fog with that one Carol! Sorry to have been so dim, I clearly missed your point the first couple of times around (couldn't see the trees for the forest, or was it the forest for the trees?). BTW how close are you to Kirkbymoorside/Pickering?

Carol - are you responding to me, or to Moerl? At any rate, perhaps what you point out above is why I kept having problems with the Ashampoo Uninstall Suite... I suppose my usage of it was about the same as the average user's use of a registry cleaner - I just want to hit uninstall and forget about it, but really, one must pore over the log files identifying what stays and what goes.

Excellent post as well Moerl! You've said in a single sentence what I fumbled and fussed around trying to say about Ashampoo Uninstaller over three or four paragraphs: "...you have to make sure nothing else is running during installation, for if anything but the setup of the application you are installing is running and is writing anything to disk or the registry, TU will catch that and if you ever decide to remove the monitored application, you will remove with it all those entries created by the programs that were running during the setup." I haven't had it installed in so long that I don't remember if it has the exclude feature or not... but I got bitten by this many times over the course of using it!

I agree with Carol. I used to be really keen on registry cleaning and have current licenses for both Registry First Aid (www.rosecitysoftware.com/Reg1Aid/) and Registry Medic (www.iomatic.com/products/product.asp?ProductID=registrymedic). However, in use two issues arise: on the initial run, the cleaners invariably return a MIND NUMBING number of registry problems and, related to the first issue, using the default settings and simply selecting "clean" at the end of the process can OFTEN render either your system unstable or one or more applications unusable or both... The only way to avoid this is to check each problem to verify that it is indeed a problem. With RFA returning over 2500 and Registry Medic over 650 problems on my system (clean install of WinXP about a month ago, with all my software reinstalled BEFORE installing either registry cleaner) - who has time to check each key! From past experience, the only way around the amazing number of problems reported is to install the cleaner over a fresh Windows install and check the errors reported (there will probably be around 80 or so) and then run it after every software installation/uninstallation.

FWIW, Registry First Aid identifies the most problems and also searches for "fixes" to them which are turned on by default. This is pointless as many of those fixes are completely incorrect, so if you simply run RFA and hit the clean button, you're just adding more useless junk to your registry and possibly mucking it up to boot. Regisry Medic returns fewer problems, also suggests corrections, but leaves doesn't enable those suggestions by default, leaving it up to the user to check them, so if you run a sweep and then hit clean its default setting is to either delete or leave alone the problem keys found. This seems to be a bit safer in the long run but it can knock out applications nonetheless. The safest registry cleaner I've ever used is EasyCleaner by Toniarts (http://www.toniarts.com/p...476c38303a4105173aebaaf08). It's freeware. However, as noted below, I've never seen a noticeable difference in system performance/stability after having run any registry cleaner.

Ultimately, I restored an image of a "pre-registry scrubbed" C: drive, and don't have a registry cleaner installed. I don't miss them one bit! In over five years of using ANY reg cleaner - Registry Medic, Registry First Aid, RegSeeker, EasyCleaner, and jv16tools I can't really say, on reflection, that I ever noticed a positive change to my system. Ditto for the registry compacting apps that I have run - Registry Compactor, Registry Compressor (both at www.rosecitysoftware.com), and NTREGOPT
(http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/).

The app that I now run instead is Your Uninstaller 2006 (www.ursoftware.com). This sweeps the registry for keys that are known to be added by various installer programs after first having run the application's uninstaller. This then gives the user the option to delete the keys. In over a year of use I've yet to encounter any difficutly in removing all of YU 2006's suggestions. Many people swear by Total Uninstall or Ashampoo's Uninstaller, both of which take snapshots of your system before and after the installation of software. I own the Ashampoo suite but don't have it installed and passed on the opportunity to purchase the new version (Platinum 2) at a 60% discount. This is because I find this approach cumbersome and, if I am not very careful in ensuring that there is ABSOLUTELY no other app running when I install/uninstall new packages, the effects of uninstalling with Uninstaller are about the same as careless use of a registry cleaner. This is probably more a reflection on my impatience than on shortcomings with the app - I'm just too careless too often to make effective use of the power that this approach offers.

Just my two bits, for what they're worth. YMMV.

Sadly, I've spent a FORTUNE over the years on various applications that claim to do either of two things: clean my registry or optimize my RAM. I don't run any of them anymore. I've been uninstalling fluff from my systems and am in the ongoing process of carefully evaluating what I have running/installed. Part of that process includes thinking hard about the real benefits that I have seen from using the application. With both classes of applications I can't think of any! In the case of registry optimizers, the only effects that I remember are those times when I had to run system restore/restore a disk image because the registry cleaner was overzealous in scrubbing my registry and renedered my system unstable or knocked out an application. I certainly can think of no time when performance was noticeably improved following a registry clean and reboot.

With RAM optimizers, I've come to realise that I became addicted to the little graph/numerical display in my system tray telling me how much RAM I had free and the "thrill" of seeing the amount of free RAM increase. I guess it gave me a sense of control over my system. That's about it, though. Thinking hard about the benefits - the improvements in performance - I just can remember any. Before uninstalling the latest of the RAM optimizer I spent a week experimenting with running it or not and finally came to conclusion that really the only thing that it did for me is to make me fixate on how much RAM I have free! Whether I have 600 MB or 250 MB free doesn't seem to make any difference in performance and I don't miss running an optimizer at all. In fact, I feel released from the constant visual report about the state of my RAM. Never think about it now...

My final point isn't really a point. Here's a link to what Fred Langa has to say on the subject of memory optimization:

http://www.langa.com/news...ers/2004/2004-12-16.htm#2

and a teaser for Mark Russinovich's opinion here (unless you have a subscription to windowsitpro):

http://www.windowsitpro.c...?ArticleID=41095&pg=2

Brilliant! I''l bet Tuttle, OK runs like a well oiled machine... Cripes! Remind me to give it a W-I-D-E berth if I am ever in the area!

I may upgrade to Vista sooner than I thought: my primary notebook is getting on for three years old and they've just delayed Vista's release again. I have a feeling that I'll be looking for a new notebook this time next year, which seems to be about when Vista will be out so I'll likely wind up with it installed by the manufacturer... Unless, of course I go full hog down the OS-X route. That's doubtful as I already have an older iBook running Jaguar and while I *like* it, I don't see anything compelling enough to make me want to make the shift away from Windows. It's likely my greater familiarity with Windows, but I STILL feel that I am more in control of my machine and "user experience" under Windows than I am using OS-X (or 9.22, which I have runing on an old iMac). I am in the minority camp that can see the strengths and weaknesses of both OS's, rather than ranting and raving about the inherent superiority of one over the other (in the wild there seem to be more raving Mac fanatics... than raving Windows lunatics ).

From what I've seen and read in reviews on the web, the three main "imrovements" are new file formats based on xml, pdf support, and the replacement of the menu/toolbar with 'ribbons' that change content/format contextually. As I already have full pdf support courtesy of Nuance PDF Converter Pro (and have an old copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro 5 kicking around to boot) I don't see much that would compel me to upgrade, either. Don't get me wrong; I'd *like* to upgrade because I'm addicted to having the latest, greatest version of each package on my machine, but having just splashed out for Office 2003 Pro I can't justify more money anytime soon. The UI for 2003 is sufficiently different from that for 2000 that it's still "novel" (though I don't notice much difference in comparison to 2000).

I suppose the impetus to upgrade will come from the new file formats - if I find that *everyone* is using them, I may be forced to upgrade. Somehow, though, I think that they'll be putting out Office 14+ before this really becomes an issue. If it happens before then, there is always Open/StarOffice, which I am sure will support the new formats very quickly after Office 12 is released into the wild...

Just my 2-bits.