O&O defrag issue. anyone seen this??

i have been running O&O defrag for about a week version 17. i had some external drives that get written to very often so i wanted to check them to see how badly fragmented they were, so i set O&O to check for removable drives/devices. once i do this i can no longer read any mushkin branded usb stick at all. not to try to defrag they simply cant open cant be read and cause windows explorer to crash if i try ti read them. even if O&O defrag is not open they crash windows explorer if that setting it turned on. whats weird is all my other (probably 50 or more) usb sticks from any other brand all work perfectly just the mushkin brand that has this issue. i turn off that setting and they work fine.

i sent them a support email but im just curious if anyone here runs O&O that has ever had a issue like this regardless of brand of usb sticks?

thanks

 

I know that O&O Defrag, during install, tried to replace the default Windows Defragmenter. You have to reset a registry key to solve this. Maybe this could be related ?

Not sure why but I would check that Windows Defrag is still the default defragmenter. You can check this by going into a drive properties, select tool, then defragment. And if there is an error message saying no default defragmenter is installed, O&O has messed up again... They sent me once a .reg file that solves the issue, sometimes a reboot is required.

 

interesting point ill check but still wonder why it would only affect one brand of usb stick. i tried 6 different brands and only the one is affected. and three different models are affected from the same brand.. the rest can even show up in O&O when you open it, i dont defrag usb drives but they will show on the list.

 

I have used O&O in the past and never experienced anything like that.

 

yeah its really strange. i set up a desktop installed windows 7 updated it. sticks worked fine. installed O&O 17 .422 and tried the sticks same result as my laptop. very strange thing indeed.

 

Yes, strange indeed, defragmentation seems a far-fetched explanation but that's all I could think of. Maybe you can try, on another PC, to reformat one of those USB stick using a special formatting tool like HPFormat or GUIFormat and see if the issue persists.

GUIFormat : http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm

HP Format : http://www.pcworld.com/product/946261/hp-usb-disk-storage-format-tool.html

The answer from O&O should be interesting.

BTW : I still use O&O Defrag V16 and I think I'll wait before considering upgrading. I never had such an issue with V16. But I don't have any of these USB flashkey brand.

 

This may not be relevant to your issue, but some new USB sticks show up in Windows under "Hard Disk Drives" rather than "Devices with Removable Storage" (or vice versa). You could look to see if the problem sticks show up differently to the others.

 

these all show up under "hard drives" but are listed as a usb device in device manager i sent them another support ticket to see what they say. will let you know if i get a response.

 

Zfactor,

I tried O&O last year. I would specify the different zones, then make a full defrag. After completion. out of curiosity, I would just defrag again. To my amazement, the defragger would go back into full ballte mode again, taking hours to re-defrag. Yet I did not do anything between the first and second session. I just clicked one key to make it run again. I did not like that very much.

Did you experience that too?

 

Yes, that's why I stopped using Zones... I mainly do a stealth optimization.

 

i do not use zones. i use the stealth selection most of the time and once in a while run the optimize with space. i do find O&O 17 does a much better job then even perfectdisk as far as full defragmentation and leaving less gaps. the difference is perfectdisk just works and works well. O&O still has its minor issues. by the way no response yet from their support.

 

sorry to say so far their tech support has been useless. they just keep asking for my system config which i clearly explained the issue happens on multiple systems BUT i figured it out. when i downloaded the program from their OWN site directly i got version 17. 422 well thats not the normal releases version. which is 17.420. today i re-downloaded and got the 17.420 and it works perfectly fine no issues at all. so the .422 version i have no idea why or where it came from but doesnt work properly. .420 does. they must have pulled .422 and when submitting the support ticket i clearly stated i was running .422 well all is fine now with .420 and hopefully if and or when the update they dont break things like .422 was.

 

MerleOne, thanks for confirming that fully defragmenting with Zones still leaves the user open to hours of further defragmentation immediately after.

Zfactor, redownloading was not an obvious solution, unless you noticed that a different version was posted, or unless you just hoped that progress was made--SOMEHOW--since your first download. Instead of explicitly admitting a mistake through the support ticket, it looks like O&O quiety backpedalled to the earlier build, suggesting that its communication methods are bad, but that it's still paying attention.

 

I think Softpedia allows for download of build .422, at least it's what it is indicated...

 

many people say .422 has lots of bugs...