Trying NOD32 Demo--2 problems

I have been trying the NOD 32 3.0.650.0 trial version and so far I've been very pleased but I noticed two things happening. I have downloaded the manual and checked the preferences settings but I can't find anything on these 2 problems I am having.

I am using Win XP and Firefox 2.0.0.14

1) I can no longer download .gif files--I only get a blank. The only thing I've changed is installing NOD 32. I couldn't find anything in the program about setting security for specific file types. I don't think it's Firefox because I was able to right click and download .gif files before.

At the minute I am doing a workaround by using the Print Screen function in Windows and pasting into IrfanView and saving the file as a .jpg but it's rather odd so I thought I'd ask what was going on with this file type.

2) When I'm offline I am finding browsing in IrfanView or Photoshop to be very slow and thumbnail previews don't immediately appear. I'm assuming that NOD32 is checking files in the background and thus slowing things down.

Is there a way to get it not to check things in the background when I'm offline and in other programs or some other way to fix this? I've been shutting it off temporarily when running Photoshop, but that was never necessary with the other a/v program I used (Norton a/v)

Thanks

 

Hello,

I just tried visiting Google's home page using Mozilla Firefox v2.0.0.14 on a computer running v3.0.650.0 and was able to right-click on the Google logo (it is a .GIF file) and save it on my computer.

Can you tell us a little more about your configuration? Perhaps the problem has something to do with how your copy of Firefox is configured, or with the specific sites from which you are downloading .GIF files.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

I just tried it as well with the same versions of both Fire Fox and NOD32. I can download the .gif file just as the previous poster.

Photography is a hobby of mine, and I deal with a few editing programs similar to yours. I generally set up file exclusions for what I feel are files that I do not consider to be affected by viruii. I will also set up the applications themselves not to be scanned (unless doing a full system scan). Likewise with games, often I select game folders not to be scanned (the updates are scanned when downloaded from the internet). This relieves some of the scanning required during normal day to day activities.

 

The same setup no problems.

 

I'm just checking another site that has gif files and yes it copied fine.

This is where the problem was:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elenaho/2461841152/in/pool-u-handbag_amy-butler

It seems that on Flickr, gif files convert for some reason--they all seem to be labelled "spaceball" and won't copy. I've never been to Flickr before and my first visit coincided with installing NOD32, so thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Who knew? Very nice of you to help, and problem solved there.

As far as Photoshop goes, I was looking at the Exclusion capability. It uses wildcard file naming, right? If I'm browsing a folder with images in My Documents, I don't see how I can exclude that. I guess I don't really understand why a program would allow exclusions but not allow you to simply click on a folder and be done.

It might be easier for me to turn NOD32 off and on. When you start burying wildcard exclusions in the program it seems to unnecessarily complicate things.

I'm not a great fiddler and tweaker. I clean up files and the registry and I tweak preferences to set things up and then I just want to do my work and open my files and such.

Thanks for answering, I appreciate the help.

 

Hello,

I viewed the source for the page and found the URL of the image you were trying to download to be http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2171/2461841152_17a479cc5b.jpg?v=0. If you want to download images from Flickr, I believe you will have to view the source for the page and then look for the actual embedded URL for the JPEG file.

I do not have a copy of Adobe Photoshop to test with, but can download a copy of IrfanView. Can you tell me which version you are using so I can try to reproduce this issue?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

I just tried Photoshop CS2 for the first time since the install, I have not set my exclusions yet (there are none by default) and the thumbnails are produced instantly. I can also open up my images very fast as well. When I refer to fast I mean, as soon as you click the button they are opened (typical 6 meg JPEG, 6-11 meg RAW file).

I think at this time knowing your system specs would be a good thing, as well as your HDD capacity. You mentioned previous A/V, is it still installed, or did you remove it? Just to be sure, have you set up your scratch disks to use HDD other than your primary HDD? Also, what other applications are running (in the system tray)? What is your memory usage after a reboot with all background process running? What is your memory usage after opening up Photoshop?

For reference:

I am currently using 2 gigs PC 6400 Ram (800MHz) an Intel E6600, My primary and application partitions are on a SATA II HDD, Raid 0 array, my images reside on a SATA II HDD. My disk access time is above average when compared to the majority of home PC's, so please take that into consideration when using my system as a comparison. I currently have 100+ Gigs of images on my PC, browsing them does not take very long (in thumbnail view) and using Nikon View NX (slower than Infran) is extremely fast as well.

 

Holy Cow, you guys are good.

I am absolutely shocked because when I checked my CPU Usage in system performance in IrfanView and Photoshop I got a couple of small spikes on start-up from 8 to 13% that settled down to 0%. RAM usage was about 238 MB (I assume that's what PF Usage means in the performance box I got by pressing Ctrl+Al+Delete?) PF Usage jumped to 369 MB when I opened Photoshop.

I opened the browser window within Photoshop and CPU usage hovered from 0 to 4. I clicked on the option for thumbnails and the CPU usage absolutely jumped up to 83 to 100%. I tried it in IrfanView after closing Photoshop and got the same result. So I guess there's my problem.

I used to just use the Details list for browsing but lately I have so many files that I've been using the thumbnail view.

I can give you all the info on my system set-up but I'm not sure it's necessary.

Other system info:

Windows XP SP2--I have a 200 GB HD and I've only used about 36GB of
it, so 150 GB are free. Athlon 3200+ AMD processor with 512 MB RAM and
I upgraded the video card so it has about the same RAM. Processor
speed 2.20 GHz and 400MHz front side bus.

It's a Compaq and Compaq set up a 5 GB "D" drive partition for their
stuff of which 4.07 is used.

System tray--NOD32; SuperAntiSpyware free version, Post-it notes
software from 3M, my ATI video card has something there although I
never use it, and the Windows icon for "safely remove hardware" Hidden
icons--Quick Time.

My previous a/v was Norton 2004 and I removed it and ran CCleaner. It
seems to be gone successfully.

I'm using my HD for a scratch disk--don't have an extra
partition for Photoshop or an external drive to put a partition on.
I'm not doing professional work, just my own stuff so images are maybe
30MB at the largest for print quality of 300dpi.

I imagine there is some tweak for Windows hogging resources when I'm browsing. That's definitely out of my territory so any help is appreciated. I'm relieved to know what was causing it, I've never had any trouble with CPU usage until this odd thing.

 

Just an addendum--I have database software for books that includes thumbnails. When I open that program and browse thumbnails it goes to 35 to 40% CPU and then lowers. It has 500 images with an average size of 50kb and it can handle browsing.

So if it can do it, why can't Windows? I checked with Windows explorer too (right click on Start button> Explore) and when it did thumbnail previews it was spiking like mad for 80 to 100% CPU Usage as well.

Here I was blaming the poor a/v software but it seems it isn't the culprit, Windows is mismanaging the memory somewhere but just in thumbnail browsing mode.

Is this my own anomaly or do other people have it happen?

 

I just checked a couple other things--the most resources are taken by ekrn.exe at 29 to 30,000 K--which is NOD 32 I think. Is that about a normal level for the program to take up?

I turned off Advances Heuristics for Threat Sense in NOD32--didn't seem to make a difference.

This odd CPU Usage problem seems to be another one of those wonderful Windows things that no one can solve.

Because this is the forum for NOD32 I don't want to get into that too much. I just want to verify that NOD32 isn't causing this because I do like the program and as long as it's running fine I'll probably buy it after another couple weeks of testing.

Thanks

 

Hello,

You mentioned you are using another security package in addition to ESET NOD32 Antivirus, the free version of SuperAntiSpyware. If you uninstall this package for testing purposes, does the problem persist?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

No, I had the problem before I installed SuperAntiSpyware.

The free version of SAS doesn't run in real time, so doesn't affect anything that I've outlined here. I don't want to delete it as it isn't relevant to the problem and it's useful as a back-up.

It takes up a tiny 436 K of room in memory and remains inactive in the system tray until I manually open it. Compare 436K to the 30,000K of NOD32and you'll get a sense of relevance to memory issues.

Thanks for trying to help though.

 

Here are some things to try in order of importance:

Assure that the files (you can choose one to experiment with) are associated with windows picture and previewer. Unless you need them tied to another application (see below).

Have you run defrag lately?

In windows explorer, right click on an image file, and left click Properties. On the tab called "Photoshop Image", Uncheck the "Generate Thumbnails" combobox if your images are associated with Photoshop. (I think that was removed after PS 7.0 or later cannot recall.)

Thumbnail Cache
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced]
"DisableThumbnailCache"=dword:00000001

1 means Yes (disabled) while 0 means No (enabled) I would choose 0, if it is not already done. This will allow XP to cache thumbnails to your HDD instead of recreating them every time you browse the folder.

gathered from here (read the info!):

http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/sgp-tweaks.ars/3

Also here:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Let us know if any of this works, still have more tricks!

See if any of those help, my thoughts are that something is incorrect in your registry and or windows/applications install(s).

I am familiar with a few DAM applications, and the ones I have tried (even including Picasa which is more of an image browser) have their own system for creating thumbnail cache, that may be the difference you are seeing...

You are not alone

If you only have one HDD, then just stick with that for PS scratch disks. Partitions slow down a HDD (YMMV). I would not use an external as the USB will be a slower data throughput than purchasing another (internal)HDD. USB is great for backup, not so good for a working HDD.

If you want to experiment, you can click Start/Run type in msconfig and click on the tab "Startup" and disable one at a time" things that are not needed. Although I am guessing that your resources are good by the looks of it and you may not have a resource issue. I have however seen database applications that slow things down (for example Version Cue by Adobe). I would try that as a last resort right before a fresh reformat.