ALL BROWSERS MALFUNCTION POST UNUSED DISK SPACE ERASURE

B

bearspencer

New Member
I've just run Eraser 6.07 for the first time on a Windows Media Center XP Service Pack 3 System overnight and now have problems with all my browsers.

No title bar is completely functional, whether it's associated with a browser or any other program. They display only the program's logo without the additional information normally shown. For example, IE 8's title bar no longer displays the "Windows Internet Explorer" title, nor does it show the name of the website currently open. Home pages for Google, MSN, CNN, Adobe and Oracle load quickly and normally. Home pages for Amazon, Weather.com, and Wunderground only partially load with the mouse flickering between the "hourglass" and "pointer" displays. Your homepage, http://eraser.heidi.ie/ loads fine, but ironically your support forum at http://bbs.heidi.ie/ will not come up (except for the Amazon advertisements running at the top of the page.

Opening the Windows Help and Support browser will allow searching for topics (system restore, as an example), but clicking on any search results has no effect.

Microsoft Office programs and notepad experience the same title bar problems, but otherwise seem to function normally.

Eraser 6.07 was set to erase unused disk space for drive C: It set to delete any other files or folders. The task status after completion was "Completed with errors".

The day before this incident, I updated all her programs (Windows, Office, Real, Adobe, Norton AV) and ran them to ensure all was working properly. I then defragged the drive and re-booted the system. Everything functioned normally until erasing the free space.

This is my fiance's PC, who will be returning from a trip to New Orleans on Monday. She is a French Cajan, with a tendency towards OCD (Obsessive Compulsion Disorder) and a proclivity towards CQC (Close Quarters Combat), who will not appreciate that my intent was to be helpful.

I would greatly appreciate your guidance in returning her system to normal function.

After all, I do have to sleep sometime.
 
The best method, if you have a recent restore point, is to use System Restore. Before you do that, check the amount of drive space left; if it has reduced significantly, see the instructions in FAQ on how to get it back.

You might also find it useful to run a disk check, which Windows will almost certainly want to schedule to run on reboot.

Also check the eraser Task Log for the task; if the errors you got were all about failure to erase cluster tips, don't worry; that's normal. If the log indicates that the task did not complete properly, please could you report that.

Good luck!

David
 
Please, don't use caps in future. It's rude.

This problem is a Windows problem. The solution is just to reboot your computer.
 
Thanks David & Joel.

Here's what happened next.

Last night we had a short power outage. When it ended, I turned her 'puter back on and walked away from it to turn on all the other electronic gear in the house. When I got back to it, at least 5 mins later, I found the screen blank, nor was there any indication of hard drive activity. Afraid & desperate, I shut it down, waited a couple of minutes and turned it back on. It started its POST, but after a full 5 minutes, it did not complete it. I hit the power button, turned it off, waited 5 mins and turned it back on. After 2 more cycles, the PC finally booted into Windows. All the problems that caused me to post in the first place were corrected.

However, I now have to decide if I'm going to use this program again, so I have two follow up questions.
Is having to reboot multiple times a common occurence for this program or should I have just waited than 5 or 10 minutes between reboots?
 
Eraser has to go further into the system than other programs, so you should expect system errors, especially in the development builds. But I cannot recall one instance in all my beta testing when Eraser has frozen the whole system and a reboot has been required.

Joel is of the view that Eraser as such did not cause your problem. I am inclined to agree with him. What a long-running task can sometimes do is bring out problems that are already waiting to happen. Assuming that your fiancee's machine is a laptop, my instinct is that it went into sleep mode and had difficulty recovering. They do that sometimes. If the sleep settings shut down the hard drive after a period of what the system deems is inactivity (and a running Eraser task may not count as activity), recovery of a running Eraser task may be tricky. In those circumstances, my advice on checking the drive still stands.

If you are going to wipe free space in future, temporarily disable sleep mode. It may also help to disconnect from the net and temporarily disable your antivirus. Then Eraser can get on with its job without interruption, hard disk churn is much reduced and the task completes faster. These precautions are not required for ordinary file and folder wiping.

David
 
bearspencer said:
Last night we had a short power outage. When it ended, I turned her 'puter back on and walked away from it to turn on all the other electronic gear in the house. When I got back to it, at least 5 mins later, I found the screen blank, nor was there any indication of hard drive activity. Afraid & desperate, I shut it down, waited a couple of minutes and turned it back on. It started its POST, but after a full 5 minutes, it did not complete it. I hit the power button, turned it off, waited 5 mins and turned it back on. After 2 more cycles, the PC finally booted into Windows. All the problems that caused me to post in the first place were corrected.

However, I now have to decide if I'm going to use this program again, so I have two follow up questions.
Is having to reboot multiple times a common occurence for this program or should I have just waited than 5 or 10 minutes between reboots?
Click to expand...
No, but some computers just have problem getting back from standby. Also, Eraser can cause file fragmentation (when doing unused space erausres) especially if the file system is already highly fragmented. It could also be driver issues. Having said that, a power outage usually is sufficient to corrupt system drives when the drive is in the process of writing data, so the fact that your computer managed to boot is already a blessing.
 
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