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Last post Author Topic: SnapSuite program family/Free online computer help  (Read 344277 times)

Curt

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #100 on: July 27, 2007, 12:45 PM »
A clean house is a happy house, as they say.
-wreckedcarzz (July 27, 2007, 12:36 PM)

  :Thmbsup:  - indeed they do! The first placed it was said, though, was in the church, and the subject was not buildings or their environmental, but humans...  ;)

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #101 on: July 27, 2007, 01:02 PM »
I did it with an old Gateway desktop (used to be primary computer)- don't do it ;D
The dust bunnies have long, sharp, gouging teeth :P

tomos

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #102 on: July 27, 2007, 02:12 PM »
I was told if you dont do any cleaning (of houses) for 5 yrs things get no worse, a worthwhile research project i think, wonder if this holds for computers?  ;D

hey Grorgy at what stage do houses get no worse -
does it take the full 5 years :huh: before they stabilise?!  :tellme:

I dont really want to, but I seem to be going down the road of testing out your theory -
no - not really that bad but boy does the dirt build up after a couple of weeks  :-[

@Brandon - you keep bringing out new updates before I get a chance to try it out ...
Tom

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #103 on: July 27, 2007, 02:24 PM »
@Brandon - you keep bringing out new updates before I get a chance to try it out ...

Nothing new really, as long as you have the tabbed version, you have the latest "major" update. I update things as fast as I can, as the side effects of that one bad situation (wrong program, wrong time, something else interferes...) could be devastating. Nothing that bad has been found, though (as long as nothing else is running) :)

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #104 on: July 27, 2007, 11:10 PM »
OK, well due to lack of things to do, I am going over the code AGAIN, because I simply have nothing to do...
I have fixed another spelling error, and I expect to find 1 or 2 more. I won't upload it just yet, though.

I did a spell check on the code, and read it as I went along, and no problems at all :D Hooray!!! :P
« Last Edit: July 27, 2007, 11:24 PM by wreckedcarzz »

Curt

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #105 on: July 28, 2007, 10:19 AM »
With nothing to do (on a vacation !!!!) you might have a look at the GUI. To my middleaged eyes and closed mind it is too compact; too narrow - I would like to have more S P A C E , if you know what I mean, please!

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #106 on: July 28, 2007, 01:00 PM »
 ;D
Ok, I'll see what I'll see what I can do about S P A C E. :P

Curt

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #107 on: July 30, 2007, 09:26 AM »
 :) thanks!

And while we are at it: should 'we' look for a another reg cleaner? I am not too sure Eusing will think it is a mighty good idea to auto-close their nag screen:

eusingregister.gif


eusinglicense.gif

- Edit: - or maybe add option to "Navigate to reg cleaner of your choice"

« Last Edit: July 30, 2007, 09:30 AM by Curt »

app103

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #108 on: July 30, 2007, 11:39 AM »
I found a link to an article, in my collection of bookmarks, that may be of interest, concerning registry cleaners and how some performed, and why some of them may not be very good.

And the results of a test performed with 10 different cleaning tools.

Yes, this article is a bit older, but if you pay careful attention to the first page and what he had to say about some cleaners inflating the number of errors they found on repeated runs, it will give you something to think about in terms of what makes a good cleaner.

Seriously, if a cleaner is good, it should find all errors on the first run, right? And if you reboot and run it again, it shouldn't a bunch more. If it does, it is either bad at finding real errors, bad at fixing them, deliberately creating errors for it to find next time (something unethical), reporting errors that don't exist just to make it seem like it is doing something (also unethical).

http://www.informati...?articleID=171203805



Now...a bit from personal experience and 'crap cleaning' on pc's...

I have a 9x machine (WinME) that I installed Windows on over 5 years ago. It has not been formatted in that time. I have had to do one 'repair install' which involved reinstalling Windows over the existing copy without formatting first, which basically just refreshes & replaces system files. This was to fix a problem caused by a bad Windows update for IE 6 and the only way to fix it was to reinstall Windows to get back 5.5 and upgrade to 6 again.

I have never defragged the C drive. I have had some bad experiences in the past with WinME and defragging the OS drive and I'd rather not go through it again. (it was the cause of a few format/reinstall incidents on another WinME machine, where the OS wouldn't boot again after the defragging)

I have installed a lot of software, uninstalled plenty too.

The only cleaning that has been done on that system is the cleaning of the Windows temp folder, the automatic clearing of the IE cache when the browser is closed, the clearing of the AOL .art db when IE refuses to allow me to save images as anything other than .bmp, and clearing out System Restore (if you don't do it about once a year, it can take up about 2 gigs, which is half of the C drive on that pc), and manually deleting some stuff laying around that I know I didn't need.

And I only did this when I remembered to do it, which wasn't very often.

Despite the very conservative cleaning, and supposed 'neglect' of normal maintenance, it is a quite stable machine that rarely ever gives me any troubles. And it is no slower today than it was 5 years ago when I first installed Windows (as a matter of fact, I believe it is faster now.)

Now you would think that there would be tons of crap in the registry that needed cleaning after all that time of running (and it was a heavily used pc)

So I ran what was the best, safest free registry cleaner at the time...EasyCleaner (after making a full backup, just in case). It found 174 errors on the first run...nothing on a second run.

I thought this was pretty good considering how long I 'neglected' it. I let it fix all the errors it considered 'safe' to fix.

Big mistake.

I ended up with a slower machine that took longer to boot up and was quite unstable, and some serious probs with a number of applications.

So I restored the registry from the backup I had made before cleaning and the machine was stable once again. (not trusting the backup made by the application that caused the damage)

I will never clean the 'crap' out of a machine again, other than what I had been doing in the first place.

On another note: that machine once ran Win98, set up by my dad, with MS RegClean running as an automated scheduled task about once a week. I truly believe it was a contributing factor to how unstable it used to be, before I wiped it and started fresh with WinME.

The only crap cleaning I do is not for increasing speed or stability of Windows. I do it to free up wasted hard drive space.

And except for defragging the OS drive, I maintain my XP machine the same way, as far as cleaning crap goes.

I was told if you dont do any cleaning (of houses) for 5 yrs things get no worse, a worthwhile research project i think, wonder if this holds for computers?  ;D

Do the dishes, wipe the tables & counters, keep the fridge clean, keep the bathroom sparkling, mop the floors, vacuum the rugs, do the laundry, dust every once in awhile, take out the trash, and put things away where they belong...that is all that is really needed.

It doesn't matter if you don't move the furniture and clean the dust bunnies from behind the couch or under the bed. They won't attack you or your house guests if you leave them alone. But if you bother them, you could tear holes in your carpet and vinyl flooring when moving things, or you and your guests could end up with a bad rash, coughing, sneezing, and wheezing if you are allergic and stir them up into the air you breathe.

tomos

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #109 on: July 30, 2007, 11:52 AM »
And except for defragging the OS drive, I maintain my XP machine the same way, as far as cleaning crap goes.

App, just to clarify :)
- you are saying that defragging XP-drive/partition is helpful ?
Tom

app103

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #110 on: July 30, 2007, 11:56 AM »
And except for defragging the OS drive, I maintain my XP machine the same way, as far as cleaning crap goes.

App, just to clarify :)
- you are saying that defragging XP-drive/partition is helpful ?

Honestly, I don't know. I have only done it once in the 1.5 yrs I have owned this pc, and it didn't have any kind of slowness problem to begin with when I did it. And I didn't see any difference when it was done.

I did hold my breath the whole time, though, hoping it wouldn't kill XP like it did to ME.

It didn't.

So in conclusion, it didn't hurt. Can't say it helped either, though.

Curt

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #111 on: July 30, 2007, 12:09 PM »
Interesting experience (with the ME), app. Mine is however somewhat different. Yesterday it was the third day since I last cleansed my reg', so I ran Eusing RegCleaner again. It found 1137 errors (because a lot of programs will leave all sorts behind when they are "uninstalled" - I will not think too hard about how many errors the reg' would have, did I not clean it regularly). Eusing did not and has not 'ever' caused any kind of mis-behaviour to my XP.

Edit: I remember several times when "cleaning" the reg'   using other "cleaners"   actually did cause harm - this post was merely to recommend the Eusing cleaner.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2007, 12:17 PM by Curt »

steeladept

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #112 on: July 30, 2007, 12:26 PM »
All I can say is from my experiences at work, but from what I have seen, registry cleaners don't really help much except maybe during startup.  When you have tons of dead links because the software did not uninstall everything (including registry files) the registry tries to find those links.  It takes a while for it to time out and go on, so if you have lots, it takes that much longer.  Short of that, I have never seen a need to clean the registry.

That said, I do so on an infrequent basis and can not remember it ever causing trouble, even with the defaults that so many people seem to have issue with.  The only time I ever have caused myself grief during this is when I told it to clean files it didn't consider safe or was unable to determine.  Safe files have never caused issue for me.

Defragmenting, on the other hand, has caused a wide range of issues, and has solved many problems.  My main experience has been that it is good because it speeds seek times significantly.  I even had a few machines (Win2K if it matters) that were over 98% fragmented when I got them because they would not start up.  After troubleshooting and booting to as a slave, we found them so fragmented that we thought, why not - try defragging them.  We did that and it brought them back to life.  I have heard MANY people say it is a waste of time and that it doesn't do anything, but my experiences tell me otherwise; though it needs to be REALLY bad before it is a problem.

Issues that have come from defragmenting almost always arise from one of two issues.  Either the drive is failing and the sector can not be read, or the defragmenter was stopped in the middle of the process and lost the file links.  Either way the links get lost and everything goes to pot.  However, these issues tend to be rare, and you may be able to recover the data before it is lost permanently if you recognize the problem and deal with it immediately before the data gets overwritten.

My last statement has to do with what constitutes a truly fragmented drive.  I have seen many defragmenters deal with organization in different ways.  What one defragmenter considers defragmented another will consider seriously fragmented.  I don't know which one is correct, and my suspicion is both are, they are just organized differently; but in the end, I think it matters more that the files are organized, and not HOW they are organized.  So to be "badly fragmented", IMO, means that most or all data is unorganized creating excessive reads to the hard drive because it is constantly searching for the next block in an area completely different from the last block.  My guess is that most hard drives rarely get that bad.

Could it be something else that explains my experiences?  Certainly.  However, I have not heard a good explaination of why these occur and what my actions did that could have been done differently to the same effect.

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #113 on: July 30, 2007, 10:24 PM »
AHH! I just booted up my house (YAY) computer and am reading all the posts...*eyes spin*

5 years with no work on it isn't all that bad, but EasyCleaner shouldn't make problems...try the beta :-\

As far as I can tell, defragging does help (XP and Vista)

Eusing seems to run really well, although the nag screen thing has been bothering me from the start- not sure what to do though :huh:

Yea, the registry cleaning is mainly for old program links/extensions and such, but I think its necessary just to keep it as clean as possible. (I am picky about that :P)

-End Summarized Answers-

Anyone know of a different reg cleaner then, as that has been bugging me and its obviously doing the same to others. I will search for some and see if I can get a list, but at the moment I am working on my desktop, my dad's desktop, my dad's laptop, unpacking and so forth... :o

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #114 on: July 31, 2007, 09:28 PM »
Update: I will release the EasyControl w/ DelEmpty in the next couple days in the latest build I have. I fixed a couple bugs (don't really remember what they were) but the addition of DelEmpty is a large boost (IMO).

@Skrommel: I will remove DelEmpty on request if you wish.

Also: I am removing the old downloads, as I forgot and people are getting wierd versions left and right. All users just download the new file coming and everything will be good. :Thmbsup:

Curt

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #115 on: August 01, 2007, 07:32 AM »
... just download the new file coming and everything will be good. :Thmbsup:
-wreckedcarzz (July 31, 2007, 09:28 PM)

Wow; what a promise!!   :up:  :up:  :up:
 :D

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #116 on: August 02, 2007, 07:53 PM »
POST NO LONGER NEEDED, SEE BELOW FOR NEW VERSION
« Last Edit: August 07, 2007, 01:49 PM by wreckedcarzz »

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #117 on: August 05, 2007, 06:21 PM »
A bit off-topic (well...yea...off-topic ;D):

I am also hosting other apps similar to this one on my website (click the little earth below my name, or click here http://www.incredisims.com)

Back on topic:

I have found a new function I have been DYING to add in (finally!) to all my programs, being the AMAZING (*coughs* not *coughs again*) ability to actually close when you hit the X (it usually drops to the tray, becoming useless). (Now works normally, right click and open YAY ;D)

To do list for EasyControl (and, eventually, all programs):

I am going to (try) add the ability to restore itself from the tray when double clicked, so I can make it like it should have been in the first place.
Make the tabs not look like crap!
Add pictures into the buttons (maybe next release, *sigh*)
Make it more user friendly, most people I have talked to say they get lost trying to set it up  :tellme: :o :tellme:
Fix the friggen problem with the AutoInstall of the optimization programs. I still have yet to exactly find out what the heck is going on, but I think it is still there >:(
Make a status bar/progress bar to show how much has been done (I was able to get a WINDOW, but no progress bar :'()
Make a help file!
Make a cleaner interface

There - this is kind of a request for some help, if anyone has the time. (Everyone who helps gets their name in the top of the script that can't be read :P, although i might make a little place in the About tab...)

Oh well, off to do my to-do list...*sigh*

-Brandon
« Last Edit: August 06, 2007, 10:24 PM by wreckedcarzz »

tomos

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #118 on: August 05, 2007, 07:25 PM »
I am going to (try) add the ability to restore itself from the tray when double clicked, so I can make it like it should have been in the first place.
-
make it restore on single click! (campaign for single clicks)

sounds like you're onto the slog part of things...
Tom

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #119 on: August 05, 2007, 07:26 PM »
Be sure to refresh, I have already got most of them! :D

Single click? hmm...
Ill see what I can do :)

It takes 2 clicks, but they are both just 1 click :)

EDIT: Figured I would remove this cause there is no point in continuing to edit this post endlessly with what I just did :P

I won't upload yet, gonna take a stab at a couple more things on my list ^ first.

 :)

-Brandon

EDIT (again): I am going to run testing on this before uploading it to make sure everything is working properly. It appears that the installation problem is fixed, I am not certain though.

There *might* be picture buttons in this release, but don't expect them. I will work on making it bigger and less repetitive, though. DONE!

EDIT 2: :o --- I am lucky enough to have a friend who is an artist and is fluent with Photoshop CS2, and there is now a MUCH BETTER slash screen!!! :D No more Microsoft Paint!
« Last Edit: August 06, 2007, 10:58 PM by wreckedcarzz »

wreckedcarzz

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New Version :D
« Reply #120 on: August 07, 2007, 01:49 PM »
OK, here it is. And here is the list of changes:

-New splash screen
-More open interface
-Changed tabs to buttons
-Added pictures to top of tabs (not the tabs themselves, but the body of the tab where the buttons and things are)
-Added a tray menu
-Added the ability to close and re-open via tray menu
-Fixed installation bug of AutoOptimize programs
-Added tray bubble slogan
-Added About ASCII Art (see Tray Menu > About)
-Made interface more organized
-Added setup wizard
-Combined features
-SpywareBlaster & Spyware Terminator support postponed
-Fixed bug with Shutdown/Reboot (would run maintenance and then not shutdown/reboot)
-Changed version to 3.0
-other fixes

This is a big update, and everyone should get it. It simplifies several things and fixes a few things, so get it as soon as you can.
(Uninstall, then Install :Thmbsup:)

EDIT: I am running an update of the program now, see the below 2 posts.

New version here now!

EDIT: Please see page 6 post...4 I believe for latest version.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2007, 05:53 PM by wreckedcarzz »

Curt

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #121 on: August 07, 2007, 05:15 PM »
Please, add a "Close" or "Exit" button!

At the end of the major "Setup Wizard" procedure  there is a box saying "Please be sure to open all the programs you just installed before running any automatic maintenance. Click OK to re-start CompuTech EasyInstall" (with no other option than OK) - but that is a little too soon to click OK, isn't it (or a little too late to tell), as there has not yet been any chance to run all the new programs?? The info should be given sooner, or there should *preferably* be a "Close / Exit" button as well, I think, beside the final "OK" button.

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #122 on: August 07, 2007, 07:47 PM »
Yes, you just restart EasyControl. Thats it. You then just wait for it to boot back up, then you can run the programs at your convenience. :)

A couple people have been confused about that, but it means exactly what it says. It will NOT do anything unless you tell it to. :)

EDIT: And it is a lot easier to just click OK and have it close all the windows for you, then to have to do it manually isn't it? :-\

EDIT 2: OK, I clarified it in the program itself, in bold (people tend to read larger font, instead of one long paragraph of the same font clashing into itself).

@Curt: Although you don't need it, you can download the new version now (above, same place) if you want. Just uninstall then install (again). :(
« Last Edit: August 07, 2007, 07:54 PM by wreckedcarzz »

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #123 on: August 08, 2007, 04:52 PM »
Off the topic of software, does anyone need actual help with anything? (Software or hardware)? :tellme:

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)
« Reply #124 on: August 08, 2007, 08:31 PM »
Here we go, this will be bundled with the next release, but here it is if your having trouble.

Feedback PLEASE (my first attempt at a FAQ/Help file combo) :)