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901

General Software Discussion / Re: Should I get my new laptop with hard drive partitioned?

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 05, 2009, 03:09 PM »

Hi Kartal,

  Understood.  However that is very different than partitions within XP.   To get a dual-boot or a tri-boot system is kewl.  However would you then take the XP partition and divide it up into 3, ending with 5 partitions? Likely not. 

  That is one of my concerns, it can easily be an either-or situation.  If I am gonna set up a Linux partition, perhaps I should simply deep-six the XP-divvy partitions.  Why set up too many levels of complication ?  (Thinking out loud.)

  Or (other than laptops) should I simply put Linux and any other OS on its own box, and put aside the dual-boot possibility.  This is what I am considering.  My workplace just gave me a decent 3 to 5 yr-old Windows box, find a spot for it and let it do Linux ?  Such hardware is $25-100 even if not free, however not as quick as my main sys.  Of course it is safer and easier, at least the first time, to put a new OS on a otherwise-not-used box.  From what I read in the grapevine, folks may cause themselves problems by chewing off too much.

  Your laptop situation of course is kewl and different.  You work with one laptop, so you want to have multi-boot on the system, your not gonna carry around 2 or 3 laptops .

Shalom,
Steven Avery

902

General Software Discussion / Re: Should I get my new laptop with hard drive partitioned?

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 05, 2009, 02:45 PM »

Hi Folks,

  Reading the new thread :

https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=17737.0
OS Re-install Tips?

and this one again. I think I will moderate the above some.  I had not considered a couple of the possible usages and advantages of multiple partitions. The new thread jarred me a bit, helping to understand (e.g. imaging, recovery, test environments, support of frequently wiped puters).

 Overall, there are variables in the system that have to be considered.  Here are some.

Multiple drives or one  (dual drives)
Disk Space pct - light or heavy
Is any planned OS dual booting planned (other than divvying up XP or Vista or 7)
 
==============================================

Special Cases may strongly support multiple partitions.

"Recovery partition" creation (some mfg even put in hidden recovery partitions for the OS)
"Pen drive" mirror partitions (no registry, ergo, less concern for cross-drive mixing)

There are also the speed considerations (see discussions above on swap file, mulitple disks, etc). Minor compared to the other considerations.  However if you have multiple drives it may be more natural to think about this.

=============================================

  So there is the issue mentioned in the new thread of quick redeployment. Types of usage that move toward frequent OS wipes, where multiple partitions by design simplify daily support.  Two are:

Computer support, corporate -- laptop deployment, high personal turnover, security wipes

Test environments.

===============================

  All these issues will have a lot to do with whether multiple partitions make sense. For some, a waste of time, for others, close to essential. Now the basic problem always exists in Windows (the lack of a clearly defined OS) -- this is why I was so dismissive before.  And so many programs can be unruly in trying to make absolutely clear distinctions.  You cannot easily fully differentiate partitions (OS, App Sys, Data).  Apps throw program files in the System folder, data is put here, there and everywhere, and it is a chore to check every program, in some cases it is hard to find. 

 "It is 10:PM . Do you know where your log file is tonight"

  Two areas that even the simple home enthusiast may see obvious benefit.

A) Setting up very special partitions (recovery, pen drive) that will fulfill their function 100% and can be tested.  (And this overlaps the next, you want a recovery partition light.)  A pen drive is by nature a bootable independent drive, separate from everything and a recovery partition similarly has to be 100% independent.

B)  Offload a lot of data from the system partition (eg. gigabytes of mail) so that OS partition mirror is simple and clean. You may still have minor data and config vestiges on the OS partition, but the great bulk will be off, making it lighter.  Cleaner for imaging and restoring.

Many of us have 100Gb simply free.  So a 25-50 Gb partition holding data from some programs (that know how to cross-drive) may make a lot of sense.   This is due to the popularity of imaging for quick backup and restore .. in the file-by-file backup you would simply exclude a folder in one backup - it was all in the design. 

This is what I did not consider above, how those in quick-support realms design for imaging and restore possibilities. (I've always been skeptical of disk image backup but in some environments it is the norm.) In such a case, massive data removed from the source takes away a very cumbersome element. 

On my home PC, I am considering beginning the project with a 25 Gb data partition, and then testing, one-by-one, moving program data over, and seeing how it fits my usage. This would be the simplest startup of multi-partition, and does not require being done at format time.  This would go hand-in-hand with one other "recovery partition" that would then match the much-smaller main partition.   That could come later, even if I set-aside the partition now.  (Well, I could always use it for Linux, except Linux might want multiple partitions .. is that physical or can that be done logically within one partition - experts ?)

One thing to be aware of.  If your disk space is tight, then dividing up into partitions is likely to cause more space problems.  Similar to how two-way streets will move slower than one-way streets.  You are creating 2 or 3 or 4 crunch points, and the lighter loads are not balancing the heavier load.   A disk that is 70% full that is divided up into 3 partitions is likely to have one unacceptably too full too quickly, even if no new major data, like a recovery partition, is added.  Also, you have a bit more maintenance to be concerned with, whatever you do on one drive, now you have to consider for more than one, defrag, cleaning, etc.

So I am now listening to the partition experts here.  I still think it is at times grossly overdone, however I can see how in some cases it is an excellent idea. As some of our posters have shared from their own experiences, especially in PC-support.

Your thoughts ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery

903

Living Room / false positive mishegas

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 04, 2009, 06:53 AM »

Hi Folks,

  In notice there is another recent thread about false positives, and it has really jumped to the forefront of difficulties.  I recently ran the A-squared free scanner and Malwarebytes, and had with A2 a rather interesting false positive situation.

(My Malwarebytes and Avira are pretty happy with my system, this was my first attempt with Malwarebytes and A2 - Malwarebytes lived up to promise, Wilder's folks generally speak quite highly of the scan, and MB's findings were neatly confirmed by Avira, which popped up when MB hit its files .. I barely knew I had memory-resident scanning on from Avira.)

  All the information (which you might find boring or interesting) can be found through this thread on EMSI, which links to my earlier thread on Gladiator, which is simply 3 posts of mine.

http://forum.emsisof...p;m=28183&#28183
Trace.File.SpyPc 8.0 - Trace.Registry.SpyPc 8.0 (look like false positives)

  There seems to be a type of institutional ossification so that these companies - even the better ones like Emsi - do not know how to get false positives out of their system on the less-publicized cases. They look at each file in an atomistic analysis level, not caring about where it came from, how it is used, the history etc.  Not thinking it through.

   Incidentally I had to develop my technique for finding the source of the file, which some here might find interesting.  Using file properties, you find when it was installed on your system, then searching (I searched folder creation dates in Total Commander) you can often find out when and where a file came on your system.  It might be nice to have a  program that helps with such issues more directly (if you use a snapshot installer it might be a start) but in the real-world my method probably will work in many cases.  I never did check if registry entries are similar date-stamped.

   Oh, I had to puzzle around a little bit on how to search, it seems like the search programs often do not work files based on placed-on-system date (whatever they call it, it is not the file creation date). That is why I switched to folder searching, then looked at individual files .. while I would have preferred a file search.

   Incidentally, all this does not mean that we are unaware about problems like .dll-injection - you can't always tell just by the name of a file, one reason the executable protector programs are an interesting realm of protection .. most of all,  know your own system reasonably well.

  Oh, another point of special interest.  After I traced down the file origin (totally legitimate) I found a McAfee (!) confirmation that this program installs this file.

http://www.siteadvis...m/downloads/8652414/
PC Inspector task manager 3.00.000 (pci_uk_taskmanager.exe)

  Which makes me want to look around at the McAfee logs of programs I am thinking of installing. In general, if they have done this for the program. Do others do similar logs ? Dunno.
 
Shalom,
Steven Avery

904

ProcessTamer / Re: taming ink-jet printing and email download

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 04, 2009, 05:17 AM »

Hi,

Use Process Tamer daily, for programs like Linkman where I may wait a couple of seconds on the search (high) and search programs that I may leave running in the background (low) and to kick up foreground processing.  Helps a lot, great program !  (Yes, I should of made that clear.)  I have not yet done a wide-range consideration of how it can help, reading the various threads .. however those two questions above are my daily occasional pesks that may be a challenge in taming.

Looking at the threads, the email one at least may be related to the issues discussed in the thread:
"Taming disk accesses"

Email is working hard with CPU, memory utilization and disk access and TCP/IP all at the same time.

Shalom,
Steven

905

ProcessTamer / taming ink-jet printing and email download

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 03, 2009, 03:48 PM »

Hi Folks,

  Can Process Tamer help me with either of these ?

  Ink-jet printing hogs the XP .. I could print to another PC on a network, to a laser or maybe a smart printer, the laser definitely helps.  Can I do anything when it is a local ink-jet ?  This may be tuff because it could be embedded in those nebulous OpSys functions.

  Email download takes a lot of resources too (lots of email forum stuff, most of it totally unread)  .. can last a few minutes, I have it done every two hours.  So here is a multi-thread example .. Eudora is also used for composing mail, so when that is happening then a foreground priority bump comes to play (however I an avoid doing that during the download) .. overall I want the download to use the least resources possible, even if takes a bit longer.
 
  Suggestions ?

Shalom,
Steven

906

General Software Discussion / accurate log file of uptime - even if power turned off

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 03, 2009, 02:52 PM »

Hi Folks,

  Most up-time measurement tools are for screen display, or for a network monitoring.  If you try to measure uptime on a local puter and put the info to a log file you have the problem of a BSOD or power-off that is a disorderly shutdown of the program.   They will have a start time but no end time, thus no total time.

  Thus one design would be to have a polling and update the end time every interval (e.g. a minute) and update the end time so that even in a power off .. the info is there -- "The puter was up from 12:00 to 5:00".  It would be nice if the report knew whether a Windows orderly shutdown was in process at the final polling, and marked the distinction, however that is a nicety. 

  An alternative would be to have the polling done by another puter on the network (e.g. a home computer shared behind the router) which presumably is on 24/7.

   My puter that is having the BSOD would use this, I would like to know how long it stays up (it can BSOD even when nothing is apparently happening, or it can stay happy through hard work).

   Do you know anything that exists for an accurate log of uptime -- that works even if the power is turned off ?

   If the log includes other information about activity, so much the better, however I am wondering if there is a program that covers the simple thing first.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

 

907

General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 03, 2009, 07:12 AM »

Hi Folks,

I actually realized, I have a classic BSOD on a system that was sitting for a year and now I am refiring up.  It is sporadic, can happen after some hours of usage.

driver_irql_not_less_or_equal is the most common message and
usbehci.sys was the driver when it just happenned
There may be some variation, but I think that is the usual message.

Turns out this is rather common and I remember when I searched for this I found about 5-10 totally different discussions and ideas, with little solid.  This is on a PowerSpec that had been well-behaved for a couple years before this happened.  I did some searching this AM and all sorts of ideas came up.

So I may do the Windows Update route to SP3, delete/rename the driver and replace (after searching for another copy),  take out the USB backup when not in use, check the driver updates,  add memory if I have it handy (which I think I planned anyway), and do a few other things .. and then format and reinstall XP if nothing works (I may I have a disk, and PowerSpec gives reasonable overview discussion support even if warranty is finito in my experience).  It is a nice little system otherwise. 

Hmm.. if I do a OS (XP) reinstall (which I have done on various systems maybe twice) -- it would be nice to have the procedures in order ahead of time.  Things like saving the Sysinfo and serial#, having a Bart-PE type of disk, give Microsoft a call about verification issues and read the articles about saving that, driver backups, checking ahead for the XP disk (if not, use another ?).  Of course this varies a lot between systems (how they vary with their CDs and their hidden partitions and this and that).  Wonder if we have a thread on that stuff.

Shalom,
Steven

908

General Software Discussion / KA Firetask from konradp

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 03, 2009, 06:55 AM »

Hi Folks,

While Splinterware is excellent and remains my usage choice so far for strong and solid scheduling (ie. replacing the Windows scheduler) -- here is another freeware that comes from a programmer with good stuff.

http://www.konradp.c...m/products/firetask/
Ka Firetask (freeware) - konradp.com (Konrad Papala)
Freeware, easy to use task automation for Windows.

Supporting DNM Scripts - which is Konrad's own little scripting thing. 
Updated 03/2009

Lifehacker writeup
http://lifehacker.co...ules-automated-tasks
Firetask Schedules Automated Tasks - 10/2008

This may bridge the gap a bit between the crons and the more easy-use schedulers.  If anyone has used this, give a holla, also the DNM scripting stuff from Konrad in general. (Presumably it is pretty standard stuff for scripting.)

It would be fairly easy to look at the basic features (outside the scripting) and compare the two. If anybody has done that, let us know what you find, I may do it later.

============================

A discussion that went into some programming nuances (sleeps, networks) in
http://www.randomtre...ndclass-citizen.html
The Windows Task Scheduler Is Not a Second-Class Citizen

=========

Keep in mind that the Windows scheduler is a malware point of attack.  WinPatrol and some others let you know of any changes there. You don't have such monitoring of third party schedulers, on the other hand these are highly unlikely to ever be noted as attack points. 

=====================================

A little side-note, if you get involved in scheduling a network, and want visibility, ease-of-use and power-flexibility, this may be good, at a price ($200 or so).

http://www.visualcron.com/
VisualCron

I may compare this with some others for where I work.  If anybody has good experience with such a program, we could start another thread.

Shalom,
Steven

909

General Software Discussion / Re: Uninstaller Roundup - Revo - Total - ZSoft & the less magnificent seven

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 02, 2009, 04:58 PM »

Hi Folks,

  Mouser, I just couldn't get myself to include the Ashampoo products .  Sometimes they are technically good, but you never really now what version is what, what will be tomorrow, where is the support.  I used their defrag tool for awhile, which had a minor name change ($10 program at the time) -- it was funny, like Magic to Magical -- and the defragger was helpful at the time, about 4 years back.   However in most cases I can't take them too seriously, in the Roundups.  Avanquest is similar, and maybe I am confusing the two.

   You just never really know the personality of what you have

   To be fair some of their software might be really good, might be decent value, and it will likely not be the registry and spyware scare-scam-sham-ware with recurring billing and 1000 tricks. 

   These companies are in the middle area of trying to be a mass marketeer of decent software at a low price, (which they may pick up from here or there, or develop) -- the problem is that for the really informed folks here, they will tend to be a notch or two below the programs where we really have developers who discuss and assist, the programs  that are really class and in many cases are continuing under more solid development, like the roundup leaders.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

910

General Software Discussion / Uninstaller Roundup - Revo - Total - ZSoft & the less magnificent seven

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 02, 2009, 12:13 PM »

Hi Folks,

On "System Restore Cleanup" cyberdiva is trying to avoid too many system restores ! .
So that leads to this uninstaller roundup, with the emphasis on 3 solid in-depth programs.

Revo Uninstaller, Total Uninstaller and ZSoft Uninstaller.

And 7 more down below.  Half of the 10 are freeware.  Ok, on recount there are 11, 6 free, but we can consider FARR a special case. From the System Restore thread :

Revo Uninstaller
http://www.revouninstaller.com/  (no forum)

is very good, far, far better than Windows Add/Remove (its a shell around Add/Remove, giving additional features and better searching.) And it is what I use, although I rarely uninstall.

If you ever need to have "closest to 100%" uninstallation then you go to :

Total Uninstall - powerful installation monitor and advanced uninstaller - $30
http://www.martau.com/tu.php
Forum
http://www.martau.com/forums/
Last Freeware Version
http://www.aplusfree...ies/util/uninst.html

And the third major player.

ZSoft - freeware
http://www.zsoft.dk/...x/software_details/4
Forum
http://forum.zsoft.dk/
Zsoft Uninstaller  (10/2007)
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=10333.0

Here are solid discussions of the three, with some other mentions.

http://forum.pirifor....php?showtopic=15858
Total Uninstall or Revo Uninstaller, Which is best (which should i keep) (Piriform Forums)

http://www.techsuppo...ram-un-installer.htm
Best Free Program Un-installer - Gizmo

http://www.lifehacke...ws_systems_on_the_g/
Clean Windows Systems on the Go with Revo Uninstaller Portable

http://www.lifehacke...ware_from_your_pc-2/
ZSoft Uninstaller Removes Crapware from Your PC

(Note the developer's informative comments at bottom, acknowledging lacks as well as new features. I'll chop 'em up.)

"Total Uninstall ... takes snapshots before and after ...the best way ... ZSoft Uninstaller can do this too ... Revo searches for leftovers .. the current version of ZSoft Uninstaller doesn't do this ...the newest beta ... does have this feature - search the desktop, start-menu, send-to menu, application data folder, 'application main folder', and registry for leftovers (if you tell it to)"

The problem with Total Uninstall (which I used awhile) and any before-and-after-snapshot style is that it can make the installation far more cumbersome.  Who wants to do that for anything but the most complicated installs ? (Maybe some sort of Visual Studio or Dreamweaver or a complicated virtual sandbox pseudo-defense system.)  Or an install that you really have doubts about.  (Does TU work very well in a simple no-snapshot mode ?  Dunno, there are a couple of reviews on onsite and here and there.) With Revo and ZSoft around for free .. most don't want to purchase a program that is only marginally better.  However, since you may only want a Total in specialty cases, the humoungous installs,  it might be good to at least have the last freeware Total version ready, or use ZSoft snapshot.

Note that ZSoft is used in both modes, so if he is truly enhancing his "clean-up after" mode, as in the comments above, ZSoft becomes a very interesting freeware alternative.  I haven't checked for any comparisons after his new release went the post-remove cleanup route.  Maybe in his forum there are some discussions.

In here I have included most of the dedicated Donationcoder uninstaller threads for a couple of years, but there are some goodies around 2005-2006, especially about Total Uninstaller.

Seven more with solid reps:

farruninstall - FarrUninstall plugin for Find and Run Robot
http://code.google.com/p/farruninstall/
FARR Uninstall Plug
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=9246.0

MyUninstaller - Nirsoft (freeware)
http://www.nirsoft.n.../utils/myuninst.html
My Uninstaller - Donationcoder 2008/02
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=12406.0    
Remove Item In "Add/Remove Programs" 03/2009
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=17637.0

Absolute Uninstaller - Glarysoft - freeware
http://www.glarysoft...bsolute-uninstaller/

Safarp - Open Source - Freeware (2005) - lite, fast
http://wistinga.online.fr/safarp/
Forum - http://wistinga.sourceforge.net/forums/  some activity 2007-2008

Advanced Uninstaller Pro - $40
http://www.innovativ...ninstaller/index.htm
Forum
http://www.innovativ...7f4f&showforum=4

Your Uninstaller - $40 (bundle deal some like)
http://www.ursoftwar...product/uninstaller/
Your Unistaller 2008 just released.
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=11254.0

Uninstall Tool - $25
http://www.crystalid..._page&name=utool

Smarty Uninstaller - $20
http://www.winnertweak.com/uninstaller/

================================================================

As I rethought this, I made my own decision (sort of a recommendation).  Everyone should consider having two programs handy.  One like Revo for the basic uninstall situation.  Revo is the unqualified leader, ZSoft is just trying now to be right there in the mix, and a bunch of others are definitely very good, with their own style and advantages, if you are using them and happy -- clap your hands. You can stick with them fine.  Even Windows Add/Remove alone is .. usually .. sometimes .. ok.  Most of this is not mission critical.

And in the back holster we have the snapshot program. 
Which generally is either :
 
  Total Uninstall $30
  Total Uninstall Last Free Version
  ZSoft

(Putting aside some possible techie possibilities that are less automated like RegShot, that might be helpful, at least for visibility.  And  probably for some people the two programs will be one.  ZSoft being the only one, perhaps, with both snapshot for the toughies .. and post-dinner cleanup for the regular .. a feature which many like .. and also free.)

You may use this snapshot install-uninstall once every few months, or never, but when you get that humoungous program that you are taking on a demo, or that problematic program that you want to try out .. the one that is known to leave hundreds of registry entries and little .dlls everywhere .. then you load up TU or ZSoft !

So we have successfully bifurcated the uninstalling suggestions !

Shalom,
Steven Avery

911

General Software Discussion / corralling the underlying url and redirection history (blocking google spam ads)

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 02, 2009, 04:15 AM »

Hi Folks,

  I'm involved in a little project to see to what extent scamware google ads "clean your registry now, or your vegetable soup will boil over" can be blocked.  mozillaZine has an interest in that and one of the Firefox extension folks who carries the ads is helping.  Remember overseas the ads are different and apparently ad-carrying folks have Google TOS that limit how aggressively they can review and initiate actions, thus they rely on outside assistance (please block A,B,C). However they can block resulting domains, theoretically, on a block list. (Perhaps this was first set up so a person did not have to see a competitors ads on their page, it can be used for all-purpose integrity reasons.)  Once a solid list is set up, it is easy to pass it around or even post it on a web-page. 

   For legal niceties you might want to be a bit less aggressive in the wording of a public page (that excellent rogueware spyware site http://www.spywarewa...gue_anti-spyware.htm had to tiptoe at times) however there should be no difficulties simply setting up a list saying "we find these ads dubious".

   Incidentally using WOT (web of trust) which has a Firefox extension is of some corroborative help -- they miss a lot, however in this type of software sale site false positives seem to be very few.  (Perhaps some freeware/shareware sites get blocked that are actually reasonable, but vendor-sale ad sites that are blocked seem to always be real scamware, shamware, rogueware.  I don't use them as a primary source, that is always my own checking .. there are families of sham and scam products ..  but as occasional corroboration.  To be clear though I have not seen any Snapfiles or FreewareGenius types of sites given WOT disapproval).

   Most companies fall pretty clearly on one side of the good/bad equation but of course there are a few exceptions, and you have to wonder if you should be concerned much outside software shams.

  Now, the issue.

  There seems to be a few that get around the block, perhaps by a redirection scheme, or there could be other reasons. So the first thought I had was to look more closely at the long googleclick URL that is directly on the page, also perhaps the resulting redirections. 

  For the first, what is the best method to get that underlying URL to the clipboard (simplest to use). Or if there is any difficulty there, it would show up in the other attempt .. following the full redirection history after the click with some sort of logging history file created by a monitor program.

  Any tool recommendations ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery

912

General Software Discussion / Re: System Restore Cleanup

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 02, 2009, 03:36 AM »

Hi Folks,

That is pretty amazing about the recycle bin / system restore Microsoft blunder (any other way to put it ?).  Even after the bad design, they could have simply added a "empty recycle bin before new Restore Point is created option (recommended) " to the settings and put in a simple hook, at least in a service pack.  Since you often do not know when the system will do a System Restore point the problem is really huge, and it would be difficult to force that into a full-orbed System Restore shell program, only for the restore points that you initiate.

I read that each Restore point is an increment of the earliest (one reason why it doesn't allow selective deletions, only a "delete all but one" option in settings).

Ultimately I gained 2.5 gigabytes, maybe a bit less, not my expected 10-15.  Thus, I probably would have ended up with far more than my ninety days (strangely, right at the beginning of the year) -- little to some unanswered questions.   It might be good to look at the size of a few system restore files later to see if this "incremental" thing makes sense.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

913

General Software Discussion / Re: Someone MUST make a new PowerMarks program.

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 01, 2009, 06:42 PM »

Hi Folks,

... Linkman seems very good compared to the numerous bookmark managers I have tried over the years.

-rgdot

True.  Earlier, there was no comparison between Powermarks and the bunch, and now Linkman has changed the landscape and added many new versatilities (e.g. User Defined fields, printing formats and maybe 5-10 or more others) that we are just working with now.  Since you learn how to pull up data quickly in Linkman, you begin to use it as your PIM (at least I do) .. the big problem with PIMs was .. combining one with bookmarks !

There may be some folks who don't tailor to Linkman well, and one or two other programs mentioned look like good, solid bookmark programs.  (To be fair to the others, e.g miTaggedMarks seems to be a worthy program, many/most bookmark programs though are just light nothings.) However with bookmarks as our central net-thought-repository, a sharp bookmark sword is very fine and so we like to really learn how to use the program.  Thus the discussions here.

On top of all that we have the programmer's responsiveness and willing to mix it up with folks in thoughtful dialog (both on forum and private) and then bring new ideas to fruition.  Very sweet, and builds a lot of confidence.  A lot of the recent features relate directly to discussions with DC folks.  And real substantive enhancements, such as the word-search toggle alternative mentioned here.

Oh, thanks for the kind words above, guys.  I really appreciate the thoughtfulness on DonationCoder, like folks want to use their puters like art and music and song .. humming nicely .. as well as simply solid good tools, wrenches and engines.  This neat tude makes it worthwhile to think through the posts and to read carefully.

Oh, I started to use Linkman for the Windows functions (remember I asked about the internal urls, which it turns out were already a feature).  System Restore and System Info and such.  A minor thing, and I still like XP Syspad which I sometimes keep open, and most of that stuff is not toooo hard to find. I would use Linkman as a launcher, a pseudo-Start-Menu except I have that well organized to my specs already. (e.g Start-->Utilities-->File Managers--> TotalCommander).

The internal feature is more for .html and .pdf and .jpg and .dbf and other files that you have on your disk for which you want to have quick recall, in the long run I could see some moderately heavy usage, perhaps in tandem with one of the net-notes type programs (Canaware, Surfalator,  Scrapbook or Zotero if they save to your disk would be the internal function, if to the net the normal URL bookmark function).  Anybody who forges ahead in those realms of net-note / bookmark combining, share away !

Shalom,
Steven 

914

General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 01, 2009, 06:22 PM »

Hi Folks,

My XP puters have been very stable, last BSOD probably years ago, maybe one or two of minor ones I forget months ago.  As I said in the CleanMem thread, I could get a resource slowdown and lockup on occasion (which I consider different than  BSOD even if it is mandatory reboot, because it is not from system items slashing one another to smithareens) -- and not since some changes and none planned for the future.

Shalom,
Steven

915

General Software Discussion / Re: System Restore Cleanup

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 01, 2009, 06:01 PM »

Hi Folks,

Haven't rebooted yet. Since I have cleanmem and a couple of other changes the need is reduced . RSN (real soon now).

I tend to downplay System Restore, to be avoided and no panacea and often used dubiously, although once a couple of years ago it helped me quite a bit (don't remember much of the specifics).  However, since my backups are a little lite and I have plenty of space I see it as a good safety alternative, to be used sparingly, if at all.  And since I just did a bit of a security check it is a nice time to lean down the restores to a small finger-count.  As long as you don't get sucked into using it unnecessarily why not have a couple on the disk, unless it conflicts with your defrag or a virtual machine or something.

And I realize Auslogics is defrag lite. (Very easy and convenient and simple and neat and responsible defrag lite.)  However I have plenty of disk, and I tend to doubt that the most optimum disk placement or the longest-lasting defrag will make much difference, since the disk ain't a-churning. I used to get a laugh when Windows would leave so many chkdsk unidentified flying fragments, orphans, and people would accept that as normal.  Like a toy operating system.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

916

General Software Discussion / System Restore Cleanup

« Last post by Steven Avery on April 01, 2009, 08:15 AM »

Hi Folks,

As this informed community knows, one of the biggest wastes of space is a gazillion system restore points, whether done as the almost-daily "System Checkpoint" , or special points set up by install programs, so you often end up with 2-3 or more a day.

Even though my 140Gb disk is only 40% used, I figgered it was time to clean up, I knew the trick of reducing the % allocation.  Looking at the XP stuff I got a couple of surprises.  Before I reduced the 12% (18Gb..ugh) I noticed that was 90 days, maybe 150 restore points !   And I only want a couple.  Normally I had heard of reducing to 5% or so, but it was clear that 1% should be a good try.  And even that .. left about 20 days of restores ! .  What was perplexing was that 0% , the 200 mb minimum, resulted in the same number of points, none were taken away !? ... hmmmm

Anyway, then I wanted the 15+ Gibabytes to show up .. somewhere.  I tried Auslogics Disk Defrag, but the numbers were unchanged. Same with WinDirStat, and their numbers agree with XP Computer Management.  So either .. the Restore Points were not picked up as disk space, or it needs a reboot to wake up the numbers.  That is where I am now.  I'll report back after the reboot, it would seem strange that these programs would not consider System Restore space as used space, if that is the case.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

917

General Software Discussion / Re: Someone MUST make a new PowerMarks program.

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 31, 2009, 05:25 AM »

Hi Folks,

I agree that this does not seem like a reasonable way for the software to behave.  I wonder whether it was just a glitch rather than Outertech's intended policy.  They've seemed so sensible about most things.... 

-cyberdiva

My theory - there was an historical dynamic in the bifurcation of the two programs-- free and pro -- and the dialectic resulted in the synthesis of the aberrant behaviour.

While the "Replace feature" is not on the list of differences at the Linkman site om 12/2008 (and the replace and edit features seem to work fine in Lite).

-Steven Avery

Additional info. Outertech tells me there is is a search and replace feature in pro, a nice feature that you might use occasionally.  e.g. to combine two similar words to eliminate the Boolean need, similarly a bad speller might clean up that way or, to shorten a long name, or to give a common two-word phrase a unique name so they don't show up in the individual words.  Clearly not a necessity but a nice feature to know it is there.

For me, the URL validation is so good and so useful that I'd buy the Pro version just to be able to get that. 

-cyberdiva

Good to know.  I still wonder if they search the domain for the updated page, or what.

And I agree with you about metatag retrieval.  In fact, when I started using Linkman last spring, I quickly turned off metatag retrieval for both keywords and description.

-cyberdiva

Yeah, I am doing that now, at least definitely keywords.  Is there another setting in Pro for the metatags ?

Linkman tells me about the pro:

"You can e.g. extract the "Language" meta tag from webpages and put it to say the User Defined field 2."

So you have a bit of lite programmability. Not sure how I would use that (although the multi-lingual possibility is one valid usage for those with a lot of diverse language usage).

Perhaps some day I'll want to use Linkman in a USB installation, but not at present.  I did eventually buy a second license so I could put Linkman Pro on my laptop as well as my desktop ...Though now that Outertech has offered a substantial discount, perhaps the best thing would be for Trialpay and RingCentral to continue to ignore you 

-cyberdiva

Right.  They have a day or two to figger it out.  And the biggest Linkman new discount (tanx, Outertech !) is through the 4th.  So assuming Trialpay and RingCentral remain obtuse, the big question is which Pro license to buy.  The discount is a good incentive to go for the 2-license, the second license then is under $10.  The 5-license is probably overkill for me, the 1-license a bit sketchy, considering the heavy usage on a couple of computers.

Now I am playing with priorities a little.  Outertech and I had some discussion about response time under various circumstances, now I have Process Tamer to "Force High" which seems to help quite a bit  (I had similarly put Powermarks on "Force Above Normal".)  The idea is that there is quick processing post-keyboard-hitting (unlike a browser which is doing and waiting for online stuff or an email program which could slow you down for five minutes while downloading) and the differences can be large.  When you hit a query you want the puter to drop pretty much everything and read your words and start to process. Since Linkman is not doing much other than the couple of seconds of a search or link addition (and the auto-save which I have at 15 minutes) I believe it is a natural for the high priority, without hurting other programs.

Shalom,
Steven

918

General Software Discussion / Re: KeyNote NF (New Features) - a "successor" to Tranglos Keynote

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 30, 2009, 02:36 PM »

Hi Folks,

Just want to say how pleased I am to see and use Keynote-NF.  Very glad that the programmer kept right to the Keynote style. Earlier  I never found a satisfactory replacement for Keynote, free or paid, and stopped using it more for psyche reasons (no ongoing development) than any problems.

I did not stretch the features though, so I cannot give templates or fancy uses.  Keynote and now Keynote-NF for me just has been an excellent quick and solid all-purpose note repository, combining hierarchy with fast free-form searching.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

919

General Software Discussion / Re: Someone MUST make a new PowerMarks program.

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 30, 2009, 10:36 AM »

Hi Folks,

  It does so VERY fast, and it can sometimes also update the link's URL. 

-cyberdiva

Hmm. That should be interesting to try.  Does it give you a yes/no option ? Does it look like it uses content matching under the domain ?  From above it looks like a Pro-only feature, since validation is part of the differences. If so, it is a nice plus for pro.

Ok, I am happily using Lite for now.  No difficulties on the reinstall. 

What irked me so much before was that Linkman could give the user the impression of adding and updating (and it would keep the new adds and updates visible for the session in memory) and that the additions would vanish on closing.  This I believe is improper.  If something is not going to be saved it should not give the appearance of being accepted.

Checking to see what is in the Pro that I need or will use some.  I can definitely see a single-license for a separate USB installation.  The other pro-feature aspects above are bit deep for me right now (each one is a paragraph discussion with its own research. I think the Pro version metatag feature may, by default, bring in too many metatags, who wants dozens ?).  While the "Replace feature" is not on the list of differences at the Linkman site om 12/2008 (and the replace and edit features seem to work fine in Lite).

The USB is the main one I can see for an immediate one-license purchase, since Linkman is my PIM and more -- the USB is kewl when I go to libraries and other systems.  The validation dead link sometimes-updating might be nice, too.

Meanwhile I took Jing pics as well to send to Trialpay and RingCentral, asking why they do not give proper response and honor the offer.  Lots of runaround. Outertech says their experience with Trialpay has been good unraveling offer difficulties.

Note: Outertech had the wrong price up on the Trialpay offer, now corrected.  When I did it it said $39 which looked like the 2-puter license,  Actually it was the 1-license earlier price, now reduced to $25.

So I plan to use Lite, and then buy a single-user Pro at leisure, either the Trialpay try in process or a straight purchase.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

920

General Software Discussion / making bookmarks pointing to your disc files

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 30, 2009, 08:45 AM »

Hi Folks,

This may be a simple, trivial question.

Some programs give you this format in the web browser, pointing to your disk file.
Belarc ends up giving you an entry like this (and you can change the target folder in config).

file:///C:/Program%20Files/Belarc/Advisor/System/tmp/(Precision380).html

Which can then be immediately bookmarked for future local reference.  What if you have a folder with a bunch of files and you want to 'convert' them to this format.  You could get the path to the clipboard, and then add "file:///" to the front but that would be a bit cumbersome.  Or, conceivably, you could have your file manager like Total Commander try to open all the .jpg and .gif and such in the browser, temporarily, rather than IrfanView, so they could be bookmarked from there.  And maybe Total Commander or Dopus or this and that have a feature or plug-in to accomplish this.

What method do you find the best to bookmark multiple disc files?

I just started using Jing to make simple pics quickly accessible here or on other web forums or to friends, the pic can also be Linkman-bookmarked right away and I am quite satisfied with that for new captures.  (99% of the time I simply want to specify the window-size and have the ability to add my own text and choose the file type.)

How about disc files in general ?
What method is best for bookmarking for easy bookmark-browser access ?

(e.g. Once bookmarked, you have the keywords to find, then Firefox can open up an extension or Irfanview or whatever to view the .jpg and .gif and .bmp.  Html is of course natural. And more.)

Shalom,
Steven Avery

921

General Software Discussion / Linkman Pro 30-day unusable finesse, Trialpay-RingCentral bureaucracy

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 29, 2009, 11:43 AM »

Hi Folks,

A little note for those using Linkman Pro.  After the 30 days the programs becomes essentially unusable (no saving of new data) other than for inquiry.  There is a warning about save functions being disabled, however all the alternatives given are to buy.  To keep the program going otherwise I found out, after some emails, you download the Linkman Lite. Which I discovered after a few days of no-saves on one puter, fortunately not mission-critical research bookmarks. It was hard for me to quickly tell what was happening especially because of the extra aspect of Dropbox sync and a second puter.  And you never expect a Pro version to become unusable, yet look usable.  (ie. I think it takes the new links during the session .. just loses them when the session closes.. ugh .. better would be to not take them during the session, a new idea that I will mention to Outertech, trying to get them to improve the situation.).  Linkman is reluctant to change the current situation, such as by giving info that you can download Linkman Lite to continue functioning (with the save disabled warning). Since the ignorance of the whole process acts as leverage to encourage a purchase ($ or Trialpay).

In the meanwhile I tried the Trialpay-RingCentral purchase of Linkman Pro method, and so far have found that they do not do what they promise (a registration that begins on a proper trial with credit card info given, within 24 hours of trial beginning).  About four days have gone by on what is supposed to be a one-day process without getting a straight answer from RingCentral telephone support (knew nothing), RingCentral email support (wanted to know if I wanted to start accepting billing early.  In fact I would do that for $15, the first month, viewing it as a longer trial, except for the ethical problem that they did not live up to their promise so far) or Trialpay (they have a form for this, and claimed an answer within 24-48 hours, I am about 48 now).  Some of the other Trialpay things are immediate, so if you are under any concern of quick registration, keep that in mind .. one day may not be one day, or even one week. I tried RingCentral because I am really interested in their service anyway, which I learned about through TP and researched, comparing it to my Grand Central experience.

And I strongly hesitate to use any Trialpay service as a lark .. to simply get good software.  Without being seriously interested in the service.  Just doesn't seem right, I would rather purchase.  I do not mind using Trialpay if I know both sides are real to me.  Overall, my Trialpay objections, on another thread, are not to the concept (which is neat in a way) but to their unconcern about partnering with potentially rogue software. 

Now on to my loading Linkman Lite, due to the double whammy above.  Hopefully Outertech will consider a DonationCoder and/or Bits Du Jour discount experience.  Either would have been my real preference.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

922

General Software Discussion / Re: Rambooster. Junk?

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 28, 2009, 05:09 AM »

Hi Folks,

I don't believe it would be fair to call it a ram booster, cause it's not. More like a little extra management.

-cmpm

Agreed.  Management doing preemptively, casually in the background, a helpful function that XP does very late in the day of crises, after slowdowns, while you are waiting, and not fully.

How to avoid slowdowns, and slowdowns unto lockups.

1) Maximize the memory (my plan tomorrow)
2) Close and reopen the worst recidivist offenders. (Firefox, Eudora, others)
3) Reboot when you are taking a break.  (Walk away from puter, do not touch the keyboard).
   Start re-browsing with new tabs.
4) Run CleanMem to complement #2 and #3 if memory is not totally sufficient and you experience any pagefile-style slowdowns.  CleanMem will make closing some programs (e.g. Eudora) unnecessary, while others, like Firefox, still cry for attention.

And upgrade to a hotter system and use the less-memory, slower one as a dedicated Linux box for a light XP usage (e.g. voice and telephone chat) on your home network.

In the old days I only really did #3.  And not often enough.  With Firefox Session Manager being very strong now, that takes care of a lot of force-reboot concerns.  I would like to add a method of making sure my email is not downloading when I force a reboot, possibly through requesting first an orderly close of Eudora.  That I have to try out.  I have it set to automatic download every two hours but I can miss the fact that it is downloading when I call for a reboot.  (This is one thing to note .. folks have lots of reasons why they would prefer not to reboot, they may consider a force reboot dangerous and a hand-close-reboot slow and annoying.)

It's the only memory program I would recommend at this time, if asked. And I've tried a few.

-cmpm

I am curious if you ran MiniMem.  It may be redundant at this point but if  you did a comparison share away. It was the one other one I found of some additional interest when reading.  I actually did not intend to use anything, being a bit intimidated by the nattering nabobs of memory negativity .  I started this discussion with memory tools being in my mind only a step above registry cleaning as a nothing sideshow, potentially dangerous.

Shalom,
Steven

923

General Software Discussion / Re: Rambooster. Junk?

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 28, 2009, 04:24 AM »

Hi Folks,

Sounds like your system is seriously messed up

-f0dder

Actually it is quite good, significantly better with CleanMem, most significantly better after a reboot, especially one where I restart (clear) the Firefox tabs ...  Every system is different.   I'm sure others could tell you how .. under heavy usage .. their system slows and, if not addressed preemptively, tends, after a few hours or a day or more, towards a click and stop and lockup. The fact that you had a particular installation or two with heavy usage and specific software means next to nothing. I have another system at work with 2 Gigabyte and a faster processor and without Eudora and with less loaded and it is generally much lighter and faster.  Absolutely no need for CleanMem there.  I have another XP system that is older and less memory and was more of a problem. There are always a huge number of variables.

Why don't you take a single processor CPU with 1 Gigabyte and download a few thousand emails from Eudora (which works its mail through an Inbox that is in memory) and open a few dozen Firefox tabs and a few other browsers and have a couple of dozen programs open and then report back.   If on your system you have a well-behaved game or graphics or web-dev program .. what difference does it make ?

You seem to live in a fantasy world where every system is more like my work system, XP is working fine under little stress, no pagefile back and forth, churning, like I described above.  You refuse to understand that a marginal memory usage system can use a preemptive cleaning out to avoid the pagefile churning that is the Windows XP rattle. That preemptive efforts slow you down not at all, and greatly reduce the later difficulties. 

When you work on a PC only a small pct of the time is really waiting for CPU response, the problem is that XP is set up so that it churns under memory stress, precisely when you are waiting, it does not prepare preemptively.

What surprises me in your approach is how you don't even address the timing issue.  That for Windows XP to do "stuff" (and likely the wrong stuff) late .. after your keystroke creates a crises .. is doofus memory management.  XP should be prepared for the next need with CPU and memory attuned and ready to go.  This idea that you wait a long time while XP tries to clear out space is simply an operating system weakness. And one that CleanMem helps address.

=========================

There is an irony that you mention Visual Studio as the major memory-CPU part of your earlier system. I would assume that VS uses the .Net function that encouraged CleanMem that is largely ignored elsewhere.  Thus keeping a light footprint.

And you say you disabled the Pagefile and ran with 1 Gigabyte.  I am not sure how that works, I read a bit about that way of running and decided against it, I think I remember warnings that it would not work well if at all, perhaps you have different ideas to share.  Clearly the moment you disable the pagefile you have a radically different system, making any comparison one of apples and kumquats. 

Here is a sample discussion of the ins and outs.  With a number of warnings about potential "out of memory" errors.

http://www.codinghor...archives/000422.html
Running XP with the pagefile disabled

Note specifically the point about a lot of memory released that does not go to the pagefile.  From Ian Griffith beginning "I'm unconvinced by the points regarding the way Windows pages out applications that are idle.".  It seems that this bears directly on the issues involved with CleanMem as well.

Shalom,
Steven

924

General Software Discussion / Re: Rambooster. Junk?

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 28, 2009, 04:13 AM »

Hi Folks,

My sincere apologies for being tired and confusing the numbers before.

If I gain 200,000 KB -- 20,000 KB on ten programs average -- that is 2 GB.  I was very tired earlier.   Why f0dder thinks the cleaning reduction is only 2 MB is my question. That is only  2,000 KB, a trivial amount. Even the smaller programs, a dozen or two of them, likely have reductions more than that individually.  When I have a little time, I will shut off CleanMem for hand action only (out of the scheduler) and do a before-and-after.

Normally I am reasonably sharp, I was just very tired and not thinking at the time.

As for the rest of that paragraph, huh? If you get into a situation where you need a hardboot, something is wrong.

-f0dder

Yes, XP memory management is wrong, it is grossly deficient when you are running a dozen or two programs and it has 1 GB to work with, the OS using about 1/2. That is what is wrong.  Especially if some programs are like Eudora and Firefox.

This occurs on any system.  You probably avoid it by watching memory and closing programs and such.  I've seen it on puter after puter.  XP will choke very easily, even to forcing a hard boot.  (slow, slow, click..boot).

In most usage, since nothing is lost in a hard boot, nobody really cares. Everything recovers.  The problem is that in the 30 minutes leading up to the big problems the system is running a lot slower.  A lot of times of course you could open and close instead, or reboot yourself.  The problem is that you are simply trying to look at one more email, or one more web-page or enter one more note.  You don't want to get diverted with being a system operator. 

Now I wasn't getting a lot of cold, forced reboots, maybe once a week or two, but the slowdown mentality comes all the time. 

Now much less, or not at all, when I have the immediately available RAM that CleanMem gives, combined with ProcessTamer to help with priorities. Thus the system is now preemptively prevented from choking on CPU or memory.  It is not perfect, but very good. It should be a lot better when I expand to 5Gb, with the 3.5-4 usable.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

925

General Software Discussion / Re: Rambooster. Junk?

« Last post by Steven Avery on March 27, 2009, 06:29 PM »

Hi Folks,

For the rest of your post... the maximum memory saving you got was 100kb? Waaauw. Even if you had 20 processes that were trimmed like that, you'd save a whopping 2MB of memory.

-f0dder

Which is quite a bit on my current 1MB system (twice the total memory !) and will be quite a bit on any XP sytem, where the max usable for programs is about 3.5 MB.  Why you think 2MB is twiddles is a real puzzle, I think you have too much emotionally invested in your view.

Add to that that you risk paging out a crapload to the pagefile (SLOW!),

-f0dder

However there was no slowdown of any note, since it happened in a few seconds when the system was crisp and I was thinking (if anything went to the pagefile, which I doubt very much, although I will leave the final analysis to more exact tech) ... and the real slowdowns ... when XP would do the load to the pagefile in a moment of crisis and angst after my mouse-click or key-click .. have been basically reduced -- or eliminated.  This is my simple experience to date, and I am quite aware of how my system responds.  I am painfully aware of what happens to XP when it is allowed to get close to a lockup and it goes pagefile-crazy.  The point of Cleanmem is that it seems to do an awful lot to avoid that crises every even occurring.

Anybody who wants to see how dumb Windows XP is in crises mode .. you need to watch the pagefile adjustments when XP gets panicky.  They make no sense, increases and decreases galore (I saw that with MJ Registry Watcher, which reports pagefile changes).  That is the root of the problem , Windows XP's vaunted memory management is not preemptive and it is dog-dumb (apologies to dog-lovers) in trying to pull out of situations.  That is why you sometimes end up hearing little clicks after waiting a few minutes, you are not sure if the system is still alive, and you reboot.  Sorry, XP defenders, for XP to get that place simply because of a little memory-desire from some programs means that it still a bit of a kludge-memory-operating system (apparently it is not even first doing the .Net - CleanMem type of basics even then) even thought it is fantabulous compared to 95, 98 etc.  Folks who know memory management on good mini-computers may appreciate my point here .. how difficult it has been to ever, ever bomb out a System 36, or an AS/400 etc, even if you load up 500 programs.   Linux and Unix and the various Apple and other folks can speak for those operating systems, I simply dunno.

For fun, I closed FF, saving tabs, then re-launched it, and waited for the youtube video I had open to buffer fully. The result is the following screenshot... ~210MB saved. Have I made my point yet?

-f0dder

 
Not really, since I probably have 5-10 programs that I will have to do that with .. sporadically .. to make the same type of difference, while watching the whole kaboodle to see who is ill-behaved today.

And it simply is nobodies style to stop work and close and restart Firefox, close and restart Eudora, close and restart Opera, close and restart Xinorbis, close and restart the AV program, etc.  That is why most of us resort to a reboot in the pre-XP-memory-crises situations (once the crises occurs often the only reboot is turning off and on the power) .. unless we are using CleanMem, where we can far more likely avoid the crises altogether.  The key issue is the preemptive action to avoid the crises and so far it seems that this is accomplished quite well with CleanMem.  Nobody really cares if in the middle of a casual second Firefox goes down and most of the way back up. It gains some -- with no pain.  The key issue is avoiding the huge pain of the XP crises state.  (I do not think the critics understand this -- perhaps it is too simple for the ultra-techie.)

To be clear, I think that CleanMem is helping response time some in general, but the key issue is avoiding the crises.  "In general" I could close and open, etc. but the crises is a super-drag.  I also may find a CleanMem unnecessary, or much less important, when I max out the memory on this puter in the next day or two. However that is then, this is now.

Shalom,
Steven Avery