Slowww down Jason........

Discussion in 'Other Ghost Security Software' started by Plavi, Apr 14, 2004.

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  1. Plavi

    Plavi Registered Member

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    Dear Jason,

    It is clear that you and the team are doing a rediculous amount of work and man hours to the glee of all. This includes me as paying member of all diamond CS products. With CS, however, i would think that a tool that combines complex algorithms, mathemetics and safegaurd coding requires a hugh amounts of patience and meticulousness - vitamins and early nights. After all, the integrity of the data you are out to protect is the whole point of the tool. But i find CS a bit wobbly and inconsistent.

    Athough not serious there are three key oddities that you havent resolved. Or i have botched up my installation / incompatibilities etc:

    1) When attempting to archive files, either to an existing archive or a new one, through the shell extention, the selected file may or may not end up being selected and highlighted in the bottom list of the encrypt tab. i.e. CS starts up but the file is not there.

    2) When Checksumming the same seems to happen with this. When attemting to checksum through the shell extention, CS is opened and nothing is indicated in the dialog box

    3) When an archive contain multiple folders and you delete some of these files, either through highlighting and pressing the delete button, or higlighting and pressing the CS delete button- the file may or may not be deleted, mostly not if a multiple selection. i.e. you have to close and reopen the archive and redelete file on successive reopenings. Whether the delete was successful or not this can be seen from the file size in Windows Explorer. If eg. 2*2 mg files are selected and deleted, and the total volume only decreases by a mb then although the file selected in CS dissapears, upon closing and then reopening one of the files reappears - as also indicated through the archive resizing

    I dont mean to be moany but over 3 releases these issues remain. If the next release comes out with lots of funky new material (which we'ed all love) but these issues remain one would assume for the moment you're after quantity rather than cryptographic integrity.

    Dont forget, outside of a team of loyal followers and extremely competent Beta testers this software hasnt been peer reviewed by any well known cryptographers or your source code posted for scrutiny.

    Most will slate PGP, the conspiracy theories are truely wicked but lets not forget that their source code is still open to all, and it is continually peer reviewed but either senior, well known cryptographers or its outputs used in cryptoanalysis experiments in many tech universities around the world. This is not to say it also doesnt have faults - can be a nightmare, especially their mounted discs in the 8.xxx series.

    Keep up the good work. But, whilst funkifying your products for all of us dont forget to keep this tool ironcast.

    No karma cookie for uncle Plavi!

    Best wishes DCS team + apologies if all this has been said in other threads
     
  2. Plavi

    Plavi Registered Member

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    Jason,

    Two more things which are also playing up:

    1) When adding updated files to an archive, somewhat randomly, CS asks whether you want to update the existing file (with the same file name), or it just adds it. When updating folders there can be quite a few duplicates - when deleting you can have the same deleting error described above. Even single files with identical names (e.g. updated MS Word Report)will be duplicated with no prompt from CS.

    2) Probably my computer, but when creating large archives (600 mb+)...not defragmenting the computer, and directly opening the newly created large archive the hard drive goes a bit loopy trying to work out the full file (?) - often causing the computer to crash, its a bit like doing a search in XP explorer for *.* files and running a remote sensing package (giffs) at the same time - i.e. overdrive. However, using other encryption software and creating huge equivalent backups and reopening the same encrypted archive (of the other softwares) has no problems at all.

    hope this helps

    Cheers

    P
     
  3. Jason_R0

    Jason_R0 Developer

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    Australia
    Hi Plavi, thanks for mentioning those issues you found. I havn't been able to reproduce the shell extension ones, they always add the files for me but I will have a look at it anyhow. As for deleting files from archives (or do you mean deleting files in the encrypt tab?) I will also have a look at that too.

    As for the "Duplicate" issue, are you sure you are adding them in the same fashion? For instance CryptoSuite records the directory level you are at when you add them, so if you were in

    c:\temp_folder\
    and wanted to add a folder
    c:\temp_folder\files\

    Then CryptoSuite would record this as
    \files\filenames.extensions
    Hence you would need to add the same directories from the same level if you wanted to be asked to overwrite them or not. If you then later added c:\temp_folder\ to the archive they will have different directory levels, ie
    \temp_folder\files\filenames.extensions

    Regardless though I will also double check this area to make sure there are no problems. I have already rewritten a lot of core encryption code for the next release so these issues might already be fixed.

    -Jason-
     
  4. Mr.Blaze

    Mr.Blaze The Newbie Welcome Wagon

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    have they really been that busy?

    i know jason has been kinda but the other guys?

    other then there awsome tds almost daily update i havent seen anything that sop me in my tracks

    jason see more active and that was awhile algo.

    i think

    i love you guys you know that but lately its been a long grueling process and i know your work it isnt easy so i kept that in mind.

    still something knew no matter how minor would be nice.
     
  5. Plavi

    Plavi Registered Member

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    Posts:
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    Jason,

    Ya the shell extention adding is definetaly there, and on two different computers, one main (Pentium III with a whole lot of programs on it and the other fairly empty (less chance of compatability issues) and Pentium IV. Happens with both. But randomly. This is consistant becuase i use CS daily many times a day.

    By delete i mean in the decrypt tab, once the password has been entered and file names are listed then highlighting and deleting single (having tested last night) and multiple highlights the delete prompt comes up, if yes, the file dissappears. when i close the archive, reopen, some of those selected and deleted from the archive reappear. Whether successful or not this can be monitored in the overal kb size of the archive.

    Re file duplication: im not sure i understand, but imagine i have a word document in MyArchive.cse located in My Documents folder, i extract this file for editing to the desktop, rather than My Documents for editing and re-add then the file can be duplicated regardless of the file name. If this duplication is the result of adding a single file (as opposed to a folder from a different location) i.e. the "in folder" column in the decrypt tab is empty then shouldnt CS prompt? i.e. you are selecting a single (unreferenced) updated file for entry into an archive from a location different to that than an older update of the same file - you should differentiate this no?

    One other issue that i forgot to mention last night is a minimising oddity that has also played up in all three issues. When you open an archive (displayed in the decrypt tab) and then you minimise without closing the archive to the system tray the icon will dissapear. i.e. one would think CS has shut down. I cant bring up CS again through the system tray, so i start CS again. Enter the password for the same archive that was just opened and minimised and i get the "wrong password' prompt. this will happen continuously until i restart the computer and restart the whole process. At first i thought i was entering the wrong password but redid the whole process with a simple one word password. it happened again. When CS is minimised and dissappears it cannot be seen in the the CTR ALT DEL window? What might be interesting is to see if it is in the process list (function in TDS). The other problem with this is it is also a bit random. Doesnt always happen which presumably make the issue less locatable.

    With all this you may ask what condition is this guys computer in to have all these random events occuring, but i am very diligent an patient and rarely have any problems. e.g. i am religious in shuting all software down before installation etc. With TDS, Port explorer, and PG i almost never get any issues. so i dont thing its through bad practice.

    Just to add this minimising anomaly is also there with Port Explorer, i.e. when minimused to the sys tray she sometimes dissapears, when you try to reload PE your error caption "PE is already loaded" comes up. Only in this case you can see PE in the task manager window.

    ps dont bow to everyone demands :). Although MS office 2003 is not that different in functionality to their previous 2 versions, it is stable for a change, i now concider this their most marketable feature.

    Cheers mate and please dont take the above wrongly, i love all the tools i find in my own work that constructive criutisism and problem solving is more beneficial than continuous praising.
    Plavi
     
  6. Mr.Blaze

    Mr.Blaze The Newbie Welcome Wagon

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    on the sofa
    only bow to my demands lol me me me me me mine lol
     
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