Diskeeper question for all the smart people out there

[CDC Mail Guy]

What does the area circled in the screencap mean, and how can I fix it?

http://star.walagata.com/w/gon.../diskdefranwarning.JPG

 

[Nothinman]

It means the Master File Table is 94% full which will require the NTFS driver to expand it and possibly cause fragmentation. It's just a big scary warning to make you feel like Diskeeper is protecting you from terrible things when in reality the system will cope just fine and you'll never even notice if there is a bit of MFT fragmentation.

 

[Tarrant64]

:thumbsup:

Originally posted by: Nothinman
It means the Master File Table is 94% full which will require the NTFS driver to expand it and possibly cause fragmentation. It's just a big scary warning to make you feel like Diskeeper is protecting you from terrible things when in reality the system will cope just fine and you'll never even notice if there is a bit of MFT fragmentation.

 

[bruceb]

What was said is correct .. However, Diskeeper can easily expand the size of the MFT with absolutely
no problems at all. It is a matter of wether you want to do it or wait until the OS decides to do it.

 

[Rottie]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
It means the Master File Table is 94% full which will require the NTFS driver to expand it and possibly cause fragmentation. It's just a big scary warning to make you feel like Diskeeper is protecting you from terrible things when in reality the system will cope just fine and you'll never even notice if there is a bit of MFT fragmentation.

I am impressed you still help people with defrag problems even though you never used defrag or registry cleaner?

 

[Nothinman]

I am impressed you still help people with defrag problems even though you never used defrag or registry cleaner?

One has to understand the procedure in order to understand why it's worthless.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I am impressed you still help people with defrag problems even though you never used defrag or registry cleaner?

One has to understand the procedure in order to understand why it's worthless.

It can't be that worthless if MS decided it was a good idea to put diskeeper in Vista. I mean that in a sense that Vista automatically defrags (XP had to be manually scheduled), and the software was written by the company that makes Diskeeper. Go to the console and type "defrag"; notice how it says "Executive Software International". When you install Diskeeper, it always installs itself in a folder called Executive Software, and it creates an Executive Software start menu entry. I laugh at people who buy Diskeeper since it came preloaded with Windows, but that doesn't automatically make it useless.

Aren't registry cleaners supposed to get rid of dead links left behind in the registry? If you delete a folder rather than uninstalling something (such as iTunes which absolutely will not uninstall on any of my computers), it leaves junk behind in the registry. The files may be gone, but the system is still trying to load itunes and ipodhelper and all of those other fun programs that had to be deleted in safe mode because they were being used by the system. A cleaner won't make the system any faster, but it sure gets rid of errors saying things could not be loaded for <reason> and file is missing from <location> please go to <website>. Features like this were also added to Vista, and it was clearly added for a reason.

 

[Nothinman]

It can't be that worthless if MS decided it was a good idea to put diskeeper in Vista. I mean that in a sense that Vista automatically defrags (XP had to be manually scheduled), and the software was written by the company that makes Diskeeper. Go to the console and type "defrag"; notice how it says "Executive Software International". When you install Diskeeper, it always installs itself in a folder called Executive Software, and it creates an Executive Software start menu entry. I laugh at people who buy Diskeeper since it came preloaded with Windows, but that doesn't automatically make it useless.

Sure it can, Windows ships with all kinds of things that I consider worthless. But no, it's not 100%, completely worthless although the performance difference is barely appreciable in the majority of cases. You may notice a few ms here and there with large sequential reads, i.e. game loading, but most data is paged in as necessary and pretty erratically so you only get large enough reads to see a difference when you're doing something niche like game loading, A/V editing, etc.

Aren't registry cleaners supposed to get rid of dead links left behind in the registry? If you delete a folder rather than uninstalling something (such as iTunes which absolutely will not uninstall on any of my computers), it leaves junk behind in the registry. The files may be gone, but the system is still trying to load itunes and ipodhelper and all of those other fun programs that had to be deleted in safe mode because they were being used by the system. A cleaner won't make the system any faster, but it sure gets rid of errors saying things could not be loaded for <reason> and file is missing from <location> please go to <website>. Features like this were also added to Vista, and it was clearly added for a reason.

I don't think Vista does any registry pruning on it's own, please link to a MS article saying that it does. And if you do something stupid like delete a directory instead of uninstalling a program just use whatever that startup editor MS finally ships with Windows to remove the dead startup entries. It's not rocket science.

 

[ShawnD1]

If I did that for every program with a broken uninstaller, the startup list would have literally hundreds of items with an empty checkbox. Programs like iTunes install themselves as system services, and they can't be stopped. It will give an error about lacking permission (even though UAC is off and no other service has this problem). The only thing left is to safe mode it and delete the files manually. Before you ask if it was really that important to uninstall it, yes it was. It raped a windows service called "dcomlaunch" and made the system run at 100% all the time for no reason (http://www.google.ca/search?q=...&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a)
Another one that tries to start itself after you've uninstalled it is AdVantage (comes with bsplayer). I think Gator in Kazaa did it too.

edit: fixed broken google link

 

[Nothinman]

So don't use crap software? Crap software will always be able to screw-up your system and bandaids like defragging and registry "optimization" won't help with most of them.

 

[ShawnD1]

How are you supposed to know it's crap software without trying it? I installed iTunes because quite a few people, including Anandtech members, said it was good software. BSPlayer was at one time the best media player out there since it would rmember how I liked to watch movies - on the second monitor in full screen (every other media player starts on the primary monitor). Morpheus/Kazaa was at one time the best P2P program.

We can't retreat to our bubbles of low-functionality just because there are a lot of broken installers out there. Doing that would be comparable to not getting a job or dating because there's always the chance you could be hit by a car when you leave the house.

 

[Nothinman]

I only run questionable things in VMWare and if it sucks or I'm not sure about it I roll back the snapshot and move on.

Doing that would be comparable to not getting a job or dating because there's always the chance you could be hit by a car when you leave the house.

It's only remotely analogous if you can't see the traffic coming and if you're pulling out of a blind intersection you sure as hell proceed cautiously.

 

[ShawnD1]

That presents another problem. To run Windows inside of VMWare means I need to buy another Windows license. I don't think you're allowed to install the same OEM license twice, even if it is on the same computer, but I would need to check up on that.

edit: and you're right, it probably is a good idea to run P2P stuff in VMWare.

 

[Nothinman]

That presents another problem. To run Windows inside of VMWare means I need to buy another Windows license.

And? So the solution to your problem needs to be free as well?

edit: and you're right, it probably is a good idea to run P2P stuff in VMWare.

Not just P2P software but anything you're not sure about the quality or intentions. Or just anything that you want to run inconspicuously and/or with no saved history.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

That presents another problem. To run Windows inside of VMWare means I need to buy another Windows license.

And? So the solution to your problem needs to be free as well?

Yes. Would anybody use Linux if the OS itself was free, but having it work properly cost an extra $200? Probably not, so why should Windows be held to a different standard? This is especially true when the OS alone is $200, and you start talking about a second $200 to make it work at an acceptable level.

 

[Nothinman]

Would anybody use Linux if the OS itself was free, but having it work properly cost an extra $200?

People pay RH thousands of dollars for support even though the software is all GPL'd, so I've venture to say yes.

 

[Scyon]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
How are you supposed to know it's crap software without trying it? I installed iTunes because quite a few people, including Anandtech members, said it was good software. BSPlayer was at one time the best media player out there since it would rmember how I liked to watch movies - on the second monitor in full screen (every other media player starts on the primary monitor). Morpheus/Kazaa was at one time the best P2P program.

We can't retreat to our bubbles of low-functionality just because there are a lot of broken installers out there. Doing that would be comparable to not getting a job or dating because there's always the chance you could be hit by a car when you leave the house.

Unfortunately, the best way to keep your computer stable is to use a configuration that does not change, outside of security patches and anti-virus updates.

If you don't want to plunk down the money for VMWare and another windows license (which is understandable), get Norton Ghost instead (or some other system imaging utility). Create an image of your OS partition (which should be separate from your data) when you have a stable setup and reimage when needed.

If you need to add an app, install it and see if it works. If it doesn't (or you just don't want to use it), roll back to your image rather than uninstalling.

When things go wrong on your computer, this can save you hours of troubleshooting. Trying to fix one problem at a time is much easier than fixing multiple things that may or may not be working.

Sam L.
Customer Service
Solid Documents, LLC
saml@soliddocuments.com
http://www.soliddocuments.com