Everything is GONE

Discussion in 'ProcessGuard' started by Dazed_and_Confused, Jun 10, 2004.

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  1. Rodehard

    Rodehard Registered Member

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    Good morning Jason. Sorry for the confusion, I tend to be too brief and therefor not always clear. The error was cant find, not cant access. I saw a screen shot of it in one post about the same problem and it was during the uninstall/install process. That and each time I tried to install PG either a dll or dat file would not be written to disk and cause the "Make sure PG is properly installed" MSG. To be honest I cant recall if it was a system MSG or PG but I would get the cant find file MSG when I knew the file existed. This is what caused me to suspect the issue was my PC and not PG. The much needed fragmentation of my HD cured all this behavior and PG now works flawlessly as before.
     
  2. Mr.Blaze

    Mr.Blaze The Newbie Welcome Wagon

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    :D it strange how you can learn so much by reading other peoples posts perty handy stuff to know
     
  3. Tassie_Devils

    Tassie_Devils Global Moderator

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    Whoa, no wonder it fixed some probs. :D

    Worst I have ever been was about 9%.

    Here is my current analysis... :)

    TAS
     

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  4. Rodehard

    Rodehard Registered Member

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    Yeah, I usually get about 7 to 9% myself and have never seen it at 45% before. I can only assume it was the heavy graphic work with the topographical maps that caused this kind of fragmentation in such a short time. My habit is to defrag at least once a week. Oh well, live and learn. Haven't heard if defragging has helped anyone else yet but the symptoms were so identical to mine that I suspect it will.
     
  5. Tassie_Devils

    Tassie_Devils Global Moderator

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    Do a bit of GFX hey Rode? :eek: Same here. Yep, GFX sure does fragment especially when saving/deleting large PSD files.

    Regarding Defrag, more than likely it will be so Rodehard. Good tip, ;) just have to wait and see if anyone can duplicate the success you had. Fortunately I have not had any probs so far like that.

    The only thing odd I noticed was a few times I went to "Save Protection List", and the window come up to type a file name in it, and *immediately* I hit a single letter, the whole program disappeared, shut down. It's done this about 3-4 times over the last few months I've had it, but always comes back up fine.

    Cheers, TAS
     
  6. Rodehard

    Rodehard Registered Member

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    Ya, one of these days I will start a BLOG on where to off road and camp on your ATV and provide maps.
    Haven't experienced that particular glitch, in fact, that was about the only thing I was able to do successfully during my issues. I will watch for it now though. :)
     
  7. nick s

    nick s Registered Member

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    I was playing around with Sysinternals' Contig (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/contig.shtml), which is able to analyze and/or defragment single files, and got this output when I checked pghash.dat and pguard.dat:

    C:\WINDOWS\system32>contig -v -a pghash.dat

    Contig v1.43 - Makes files contiguous
    Copyright (C) 1998-2004 Mark Russinovich
    Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

    ------------------------
    Failed to open pghash.dat: The parameter is incorrect.


    No files found that match pghash.dat

    C:\WINDOWS\system32>contig -v -a pguard.dat

    Contig v1.43 - Makes files contiguous
    Copyright (C) 1998-2004 Mark Russinovich
    Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

    ------------------------
    Failed to open pguard.dat: The parameter is incorrect.


    No files found that match pguard.dat



    Next I disabled PG and got this output:

    C:\WINDOWS\system32>contig -v -a pghash.dat

    Contig v1.43 - Makes files contiguous
    Copyright (C) 1998-2004 Mark Russinovich
    Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

    ------------------------
    Processing pghash.dat:
    Scanning file...
    File size: 100740 bytes
    pghash.dat is in 23 fragments

    C:\WINDOWS\system32>contig -v -a pguard.dat

    Contig v1.43 - Makes files contiguous
    Copyright (C) 1998-2004 Mark Russinovich
    Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

    ------------------------
    Processing pguard.dat:
    Scanning file...
    File size: 27468 bytes
    pguard.dat is in 6 fragments



    With PG enabled, I then defragmented with XP's defragmenter, with this result:

    File fragmentation
    Total files = 83,941
    Average file size = 112 KB
    Total fragmented files = 2
    Total excess fragments = 27
    Average fragments per file = 1.00

    Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
    6 27 KB \WINDOWS\system32\pguard.dat
    23 98 KB \WINDOWS\system32\pghash.dat


    I also defragged with DIRMS (http://www.dirms.com/), which is what I normally use, and O&O Defrag 4. All with the same result that pghash.dat and pguard.dat will not defragment with PG enabled. After defragging with PG disabled, Contig shows:

    C:\WINDOWS\system32>contig -v -a pghash.dat

    Contig v1.43 - Makes files contiguous
    Copyright (C) 1998-2004 Mark Russinovich
    Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

    ------------------------
    Processing pghash.dat:
    Scanning file...
    File size: 101470 bytes
    pghash.dat is in 1 fragment

    C:\WINDOWS\system32>contig -v -a pguard.dat

    Contig v1.43 - Makes files contiguous
    Copyright (C) 1998-2004 Mark Russinovich
    Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

    ------------------------
    Processing pguard.dat:
    Scanning file...
    File size: 27468 bytes
    pguard.dat is in 1 fragment



    My guess (I'm no expert) is that pghash.dat and pguard.dat have a tendency to become corrupt, sooner or later, because of increasing defragmentation and because they can't be defragmented while in use. But it is clear that you have to disable PG in order to defragment them.

    Nick
     
  8. hojtsy

    hojtsy Registered Member

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    Of course you can not defargment pghash.dat and pguard.dat, because they are protected from any file operation whatsoever by the kernel driver which you can not go around.
    BUT fragmentation does not cause corruption! Where did you get that idea from? Fragmentation only causes some speed decrease in accessing the contents of the file. That is true even if the file is in a zillion fragments. If your winchester tends to have hardware errors causing random bad sectors or bit errors, that could corrupt a fragmented or a solid file all the same.
    Ahh, fragmentation. One might as well blame his monitor or USB cable for PG errors.
    -hojtsy-
     
  9. Rodehard

    Rodehard Registered Member

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    Hojtsy....I was getting the same "The parameter is incorrect" window. This always followed the install error "driver failed to install" and then, in my case, one of the two dat files would not be found in the sys32 Dir. Or, if those two files made it then the sys file would not be in the Drivers directory. It seemed as if something was randomly choosing one of the files to not install each time. Believe me I followed instructions and then some at least a dozen times to remove and then install. I understand what you are saying about the fragmented file not being corrupted but when I was a newbie systems admin working desktop support (groan) more than one case of odd software behavior was solved by a defrag. It gets deeper than my skill level but maybe a critical fragmentation is reached where a time out occurs because the file cant be read in timeo_O How instant does PG have to be to screen and react to processes? All I know is it worked for me but I have still not heard anyone else claim the same. Theres always the possibility that some other action actually made the fix and I didn't catch it. Had the symptoms complained of by D&C and others not been identical to mine I would have been embarrassed to bring up the defrag magic cure but hey, computers are magic.
    Nick - great web site, I have been using their Page Defrag tool for a couple of years. Lots of new stuff to check out.
     
  10. nick s

    nick s Registered Member

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    Replying to -hojtsy-,

    As I said, in case you missed it, I am not an expert on defragmentation and its impact on file integrity. I was posting in the context of this thread, where others are looking at defragmentation as a possible solution to the problems they are having with PG.

    As far as your question "Where did you get that idea from?", I could quote Executive Software's white paper
    Identifying Common Reliability/Stability Problems Caused by File Fragmentation: "File corruption and data loss are both immediately traceable to fragmentation."

    Nick
     
    Last edited: Jun 15, 2004
  11. Dazed_and_Confused

    Dazed_and_Confused Registered Member

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    Fragmenation was not the cause in my case. My fragmentation level was only 6%.

    "Normal access"? After PG's crash, when I went to restore these .dat files, disabling protection did NOT give me sufficient access to replace the files. But I guess it's possible that even though PG told me protection was disabled, it may have been lying (still have been enabled). After all, it was obviously not working correctly. :doubt:
     
  12. Minix

    Minix Registered Member

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    May 27, 2004
    Posts:
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    It happened again to me.

    After a reboot everything was normal again.

    And no fragmentation causes this (only 3%).

    I think some approvements have to be done before PG reaches a really stable state.

    Regards
     
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