Eraser Shell Extension *Critical Bug*

G

ghostofterror

New Member
I installed eraser about 2 months ago and erased free space 2 times. everything was good up until yesturday. I started my computer and something was wrong. Every time I tried to right click a file or icon or move a file or icon, windows would freeze. I posted on a forum and someone told me to get ShellExView and disable non-microsoft context menu items one at a time and see what happened. The first one was Eraser Shell Extension so I disabled it and now everything works again. This seems to be a pretty serious bug and I can give you more information if you need it.

heres all the software I have installed(excluding games):

windows xp home
zone alarm pro 5.0
mcafee antivirus
norton systemworks
hdcleaner
nero
diskeeper
openoffice
gamedrive
norton goback
protowall
shareaza
spybot s&d
spyware blaster
ad-aware
zipgenius
 
It could be that the Eraser shellext is conflicting with another shellext. Try enabling the Eraser one but stepping through disabling others and see if things work that way.
 
I also had this problem

I also had this problem with Eraser, on pretty much a fresh WindowsXP install. It caused me so much grief I ended up removing it.

If there's any debug build or something I can run I'd be happy to.
 
Hi there :)
I have the same problem : I have installed WinXP just after I formatted. First I installed Eraser 5.7 and the right-click button caused the widow to freeze. But in the last install of windows XP, I installed Eraser first too but I didn't have such a problem... so weird. Anyway, I hope that this bug will be fixed in the next update.
 
>>Freeze issue - right click
I suggest you re-install Eraser and turn off Entropy Polling.

How to turn off Entropy Polling:
1. Click on Edit
2. Select Preferences->General
3. Untick the field 'Enbable background (slow)entropy polling'

It's not really required as Eraser already uses DOD standard patterns.
It was added at an earlier stage for random number generation.
 
I disactivated this option without re-intall eraser but it works indeed. If it's not usefull, why did you implement it ? I thought it increased security a little more.
 
ghost. If you have NSW installed why didn't you just use the feature in Cleansweep that cleans unused space?
 
PC Frezing on right-click'ing.

Hi kidds,
I have run Eraser on '98 and XP, and from a fresh F&R, and reinstall with both systems. I am getting the same right-click lock-up's on both platforms, and even when I have not re-installed all the things I normally have going on from a normal boot.
There Is deffinitally something 'Wrong' going on with this 'Eraser' .
I deffinatly like the program, but,,, it locking up me PC when I right click on what-ever, is keeping me from using it.
I like it so much, I periatically down-load it after a time, to see if this problem has been fixed.
So far ,,, No, it hasn't.
Why is it causing this problem, and why, after all this time has it not been addressed or fixed?
Saigo.
(0411101753)Wednessday).
 
Erase-Loch-Ooops.

Hi again kidds,,,
Umm, kindof a P.S. I meant to leave my Email address if some one wanted to give a more direct responce, and who know's, I don't just show up here all the time.

I can be reached at:

kujikuri@hotmail.com
 
Curt said:
The "bug" seems to be all the junk software you have installed.
Click to expand...

Upon looking at what you are calling 'All that Junk you have installed',
This person has NOT installed a bunch of junk on his PC, These are mostly utilities that one would want running in the background any-ways.
So,,, this leads me to the conclusion that you are of the opinion that if one wants to use "Eraser", one should not have 'Anything' else installed and running on ones PC. That is not the way to wright a program.
I am having simular problems on different PC's and different Windows OS's,
This is a bug that the mekers of Erasers need to take the time to look into and address and 'Fix'.
Thanx.
Saigo.
kujikuri@hotmail.com
(0411110620)Thursday).
 
Curt said:
Pretty everything BUT Windows XP and Eraser is junk.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by this? That one should not have a Virus scanner running? That one should not have a Junk&Spyware checker running? That one should not have a Firewall running on there PC?
What is with your Biased opinion about Eraser? Do you run your PC with 'Nothing-But' your OS and Eraser?
You seem to be calling anything installed 'Junk'.
When one wrights a program, it needs to be writen in such a way to work around and with outher running programs, without generating conflicts and interfering with the receorces used on that PC.
Are you living on some kind of PC Island? Just you and your Eraser?

Saigo.
kujikuri@hotmail.com
(0411110645)Thursday).
 
Curt wrote:
Pretty everything BUT Windows XP and Eraser is junk.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by this? That one should not have a Virus scanner running? That one should not have a Junk&Spyware checker running? That one should not have a Firewall running on there PC?
What is with your Biased opinion about Eraser? Do you run your PC with 'Nothing-But' your OS and Eraser?
You seem to be calling anything installed 'Junk'.
When one wrights a program, it needs to be writen in such a way to work around and with outher running programs, without generating conflicts and interfering with the receorces used on that PC.
Are you living on some kind of PC Island? Just you and your Eraser?
Click to expand...

I have no idea what he mean by this, but judging from his statement, I think Curt is a opinionated moron.
 
Context Menu Integration does have a problem

I've noticed the same problem the other users have mentioned.
If I do a fresh install of nothing but XP (SP1, SP1a, SP2RC3, or SP2)
and Eraser and right-click on anything I end up with a frozen Explorer. The freeze up is not caused by entropy polling, etc. The entier computer does not freeze. What happens is that Explorer stops responding. Killing Explorer and reloading it fixes the problem until I right click on something again.

Using Eraser does not cause this problem either. I can erase the HD all
i want, no problems. But, right clicking causes a problem. So, if you are
not going to fix the underlying problem, how about add in an option to
disable the Context Menu support? Or, at least post a list of the Registry
entries added during installation that are related to the context menu
support. Then, at least, we would be able to manually remove them
to stop the problem.

I'm not here just to complain though. I've found Eraser to be a great,
fast, thorough program. Keep up the good work! Hopefully, you will
have a solution to this problem sometime in the near future. I would
love to install it again when it's fixed or a work-around is added.

Thanks for listening,
RJS
 
I am including my experience in case it can help the developer isolate the problem.

I have had eraser installed on my system since 1/14/2004 9:08pm. Fastforward to the only thing I installed that I would think could conflict with it was 12 Ghosts shellx, 9/14/2004 7:09 AM, but that DID NOT create any problem that I am aware of.

Finally some time early November I started having this problem of explorer locking up doing the following: Drag & drop, right clicking on a file or folder icon, but NOT locking up if rightclicking within a folder within explorer. The task menu would show was Explorer was not responding.

I could end explorer and restart it and continue using windows, But I could not seem to eliminate the problem even by booting into safe mode in explorer. I thought I was doomed to reinstall my otherwise COMPLETELY STABLE 2-3 year install of win2k.

Fast forward to tonight after Many hours over the last few weeks having determined that the problem was clearly in Registry associations. By process of elimination in:
HKEY_Classes_Root\* (default association f all files) and
HKEY_Classes_Root\directory
HKEY_Classes_Root\Drive
HKEY_Classes_Root\Folder
I isolated it to the erasext entries for context menu and drag and drop.
I had NO CLUE beforehand that that was the problem. SO I restored the registry entries and *** uninstalled Eraser and the problem disappeared ***
The ONLY CLUE I CAN OFFER IS THE FOLLOWING. The only action related to eraser I took was to DISABLE THE SCHEDULER, or maybe it was just to delete all of the scheduled tasks, because I was agravated by having it start up when I was on the computer.

Is it possible that there is some setting or variable that is going out of bounds when the SCHEDULER HAS NO ITEMS SCHEDULED? If anyone else has noticed that as a variable, let me know. Other than interrupting a scheduled eraser session, it is the only thing I can think of that I did, unless I also did an update of eraser that I do not remember.

Specs: at time of uninstall I was running Eraser 5.7, on a PIII 800, Windows install ~ 2-3 years old. Eraser had been running sucessfully since January 2004. I haven't coded in a two decades, but I am my own a sys admin for the 3 computers in our two companies. So I guess I'd be considered an advanced user.

When I get a chance I'll create some reg files that can delete or restore just the eraser assocations so that people can test this issue without taking the time to do complete uninstalls and reinstalls. I won't have time to test this further for a while though as I am recuperating from the problems this has caused me the last 4 weeks.

I hope this helps. I'd appreciate any feedback anyone else might have. Or info re this being addressed in a future version.

MosoPlant
 
I thought it prudent to note that this issue still exists (and to keep this thread recent).

Just did a new install of W2003 (SP1) on a separate drive and the only added software was anti-virus. Right clicking to get a context menu is definitely causing Windows explorer to hang. Shutting down the anti-virus software does not help either. Running standard Windows performance software does not show anything unusual with either eraser or explorer and there is no apparent memory leak. Other machines can still attach to the machine and read files with no apparent issues. In fact a network backup being performed on this machine (client) continued without issue after explorer was hung.

Where this is a dual processor box I thought that this may be the problem, but there are certainly enough people who have seen this to suggest that the processor count is not related. BTW... throwing barbs does not get the issue fixed. So enough already.

This box is sort of in flux right now (other drives) so the normal diagnostic utilities I use are not readily available. But if anyone wants me to try something specific, I'll try it.

Thanks
 
I imagine you have tried running Eraser with no apps. running in the background whatsoever,and if it works, maybe a pruning of those apps. which are not essential would help in case of any conflicts.
I must confess to no trouble with Eraser on either W98SE or WinXP/SP2,but I have been ruthless with many non essential apps. that always seem to be needlessly enthusiastic on start up!
A check thru Run/msconfig,and reference to http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php
for those you are unsure about removing is always a good idea anyway.
 
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