PrivaZer Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'privacy technology' started by The_PrivaZer_Team, Feb 15, 2013.

  1. mlauzon

    mlauzon Registered Member

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  2. david banner

    david banner Registered Member

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    Will it delete all the files in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp

    Some TMP files will not delete for me in that location. Are they dat files. Some say cannot delete open in other program but they are not
     
  3. zmechys

    zmechys Registered Member

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    The modified version is perfect.
    Thank you for your prompt respond.
    Superb customer service as always - that's what I like about Privazer.
     
  4. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Hi Guys

    On Item 1. DUH!

    On Item 2. I cleaned the MFT and thoroughly tested Raxco IR. Worked perfectly. Well done.

    Pete
     
  5. The_PrivaZer_Team

    The_PrivaZer_Team Developer

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    Hello to all here,

    firstly, we would like to thank everybody here for the help to build with us, probably the best cleaner and privacy tool ever.
    We work hard and we hope that one of us will be able to quit his job to work on PrivaZer full-time since we have still a lot to offer.


    @mlauzon,
    sorry for delay. We missed your post.
    PrivaZer supports Windows 32 bits and 64 bits.

    1. Afaik, the time required to scan/delete traces mainly depends on your HDD read/write speed (the bottleneck), not on being a x64 or x86 app.
    2. We will do our best to build a x64 version, maybe next year

    Hope it help.

    @david banner
    You can see index.dat contents in the "index.dat" section in PrivaZer when a scan is completed. Click on it to see the details.
    If it is unclear, please send us screenshots here or contact us : support@privazer.com

    @zmechys
    Great !

    @Peter2150
    Good to know that!
    Feel free to contact us.
     
  6. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I am afraid I spoke way to soon. That full cleaning turned out to be a disaster. System still isn't right. I am tired so will post details tomorrow.

    Pete
     
  7. mlauzon

    mlauzon Registered Member

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    It's very clear from your response that you didn't actually read my question, or you would've acknowledged that I know it runs on both versions of Windows!
     
  8. The_PrivaZer_Team

    The_PrivaZer_Team Developer

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    @mlauzon
    sorry, just giving this details for readers to avoid misunderstanding.
    Some may believe that you need a x64 app to run on a x64 OS.

    @Peter2150
    yes, please, give us more details.
     
  9. jwcca

    jwcca Registered Member

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    Privazer works with the 'original' FD-ISR so possibly it's something to do with the Raxco implementation of IR. I'd been running Raxco's PerfectDisk up to V 11 without problem but upon installing V 12, it broke FD. Raxco said that they'd made sure both worked together up until V 11 but considered FD-ISR too old to continue making PerfectDisk work with FD-ISR and so made some change that broke it. Luckily I was able to restore an image and kept V 11 until I switched to SSDs at which point I no longer needed PerfectDisk.

    Perhaps Raxco should get involved to help sort this out.
    They were very good about finding the issue with V 12 and FD-ISR and suggested that I could use V 12 if I bypassed installing the 'intelligent' defrag option.
    I didn't try that as I'd already made up my mind to use SSDs (in fact I'd already purchased them just prior to the V 12 release).

    J
     
  10. jwcca

    jwcca Registered Member

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    But he did, you didn't read/quote everything:
    Point 2 was your answer...
     
  11. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    First

    @ JW This was in no way Raxco's problem. I am sure they would say we should not have cleaned everything, and at this point I'd agree.


    Okay what happened.

    1. I did a complete cleaning. Everything.

    2. My early tests looked good

    3. I decided to check my most recent Shadowprotect images. I had a base image and a differential. I check them by mounting them and opening a pdf file that contains a video. I opened the differential It mounted it but then the mounted drive was write protected. The baseline checked okay. I also checked an image from the 28th. Bad, One from the 24th before Privazer and it was good. So I booted the recovery disk, and first tried verifying the differential. Tested good. But mounting it showed a blank disk. Then I tried restoring the differential. Appeared okay, but system wouldn't boot. Restored the baseline fine. So mounting is a good test.

    4. With the baseline restored, I decided to first update my IR archives. Did my second one first, and it hung at the end. So I deleted the archive, and tried building a new one. I stopped looking when the no. of errors exceeded 50000. Yep 50000, not a typo. I booted to my secondary snapshot in IR, and from there I was able to completely build a new archive of of the primary snapshot which is essentially the c drive. This alone indicates a problem with the file system on the Primary.

    5. Booted back to the primary snapshot. Decided to try chkdisk/r. It wouldn't run. Said something about a problem caused by some new software. Finally last night I booted the WIndows Recovery CD. Had no mouse which before when I used it I did. Found the OS but reported problems with the system start up. I just booted out of it.

    6. Last thing I did was restore my good image from the 24th. Restored fine and then ran chkdsk. Said the disk was fine.

    This morning I am going to rebuild all the IR archives, and the redo the windows updates.

    Inescapable inclusion is Privazer was way way to aggressive.

    Pete
     
  12. jwcca

    jwcca Registered Member

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    Pete, I wasn't trying to 'blame' Raxco per se, just that they could advise what shouldn't be cleaned by Privazer.
    J
     
  13. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Gotcha. I suspect, they would advise not to use it at all. Interesting though, I thought a good starting point would be to defrag before doing anything else. I use Perfect Disk 13. It was running slower then molasses in Alaska. I stopped it and did an offline defrag of the system files, and now PD is running at normal speed.

    Pete
     
  14. jwcca

    jwcca Registered Member

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    Pete + PrivaZer Team....

    After re-reading Pete's post I wondered if the ShellBag cleaner inside PrivaZer might be the problem.

    It will "scramble" dates in the ShellBag records. If your backup had 'the real dates' prior to running PrivaZer, then you ran PrivaZer and it scrambled the dates, then you ran the recovery, there could be a lot of 'differences' due to the changes to the 'Dates'.

    Now I'm not saying this is the problem, just that it might be.

    The way to determine that would be to change the PrivaZer setting for ShellBags, i.e. uncheck it, and try your tests again. Just be sure to have that good backup in case it isn't 'the fix'... ;)

    Any comments from the Privazer Team?

    J
     

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  15. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Hi JW

    So far so good. Rebuilt one IR archive and it was error free. 2nd one building now. Then just have to do the windows updates.

    Assuming I try again, I wouldn't touch those first three windows items, the registry, disk free space, and the windows history.

    Even with a good backup, I have no wish to repeat any part of this experience.

    Pete
     
  16. jwcca

    jwcca Registered Member

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    Glad to hear that Pete,

    Yeah, I know, you'd have to be a complete masochist to 'enjoy' another disaster like that. We never know just when a disaster will bite us when we start mixing software from so many different vendors.:eek:

    J
     
  17. The_PrivaZer_Team

    The_PrivaZer_Team Developer

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    Hello here,

    ShellBag contains user settings of folder views.
    I don't think this is the cause.
    It requires more investigations to figure out what failed combining Raxco's IR and PrivaZer.
     
  18. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    It wasn't just Raxco's IR. It also screwed up Storagecraft Shadowprotect, the ability to run chkdsk /r and also windows reported start up errors.

    I may play a bit in a vm machine, but this was a pretty good system hosing.

    Recovery is underway, but just time consuming.

    Pete
     
  19. The_PrivaZer_Team

    The_PrivaZer_Team Developer

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    Sorry Pete,
    we will investigate. Hope you can help us.
     
  20. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I will try. Once I get fully restored, part of which is re upgrading from an older image, I will work for a bit in a virtual machine. I use VM Workstation 10, and have almost a similar software load on it. Just it is slower so experimenting takes time.

    First I want to see if I can reproduce it, then see if I can tell what part caused the issue. It's the testing that is time consuming.

    If you have any ideas on where to start, let me know.

    Pete
     
  21. The_PrivaZer_Team

    The_PrivaZer_Team Developer

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    Pete,
    1. I would suggest you to uncheck "free space", "USN Journal", "$Logfile", "system" "Windows history" and run a PrivaZer cleanup + test the integrity of your recovery tool
    2. Re-Check one of them and re-run a PrivaZer cleanup + test the integrity of your recovery tool
    2. I mainly suspect "free space" and/or "system"

    Thanks for your help & time Pete.
     
  22. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Will do. It make take a couple of days. I am going to add the MFT to that list.

    Just so you know, all this was bad, it was no where as bad as some things I've had happen. Try beta testing imaging software. :argh: :argh:
     
  23. The_PrivaZer_Team

    The_PrivaZer_Team Developer

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    Did you check errors in the Event Viewer?
     
  24. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    No frankly I rarely bother as they never have told me anything useful.

    BTW Murphy's law struck. I setup the VM machine with both Shadowprotect, IR and PRivazer, and did a full clean. Worked perfectly. So I am going back to the desktop to test but with proper backups.

    Will keep you posted. It's going to be slow.

    Pete
     
  25. eekobob

    eekobob Registered Member

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    Hi i tried to install privazer_free.exe on my old XP system but it failed saying it is not a valid WIN32 Application. Is there one available?
     
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