Have Win7 - Want stable version that works.

B

bill735

New Member
Have Win7 64 bit Home Premium upgraded from Vista earlier this month. Tried Eraser stable version 6.0.6.1376. Wouldn't start as described by others on this forum. Uninstalled and tried latest daily build for 6.0.6. Also didn't start with same error. Uninstalled that version. Since I had used version 5 with good success in the past on an older XP machine, I downloaded and installed stable version 5.8.8. Worked as expected to erase a file on demand from Windows Explorer. Tried to erase unused space on my C:\ drive and got the error message:

Information:
Statistics:
Erased area = 0 bytes
Cluster tips = 0 bytes
Data written = 0 bytes
Write time = 0.00 s
Failures:
Error: Erasing the Free Space of a drive requires elevation
Error: Erasing the Free Space of a drive requires elevation
Error: Failed to erase file names from drive C:\, don't know why exactly.

I am logged in Win7 as an administrator user. I just want a stable version that works to erase on demand for my Win7 machine. Please advise.
 
Check the FAQ.

For v6 problems, you should quote the exact error message. There are at least 3 known causes for crashes on startup.
 
Recent nightly builds of Version 6 work well for me under Windows 7 x64. Despite the fact that v6 is still work in progress, I now prefer it to version 5.

As regards version 5, I have found with Vista (I am not running it under Windows 7) that, for many tasks, it has to be run 'elevated' (right click on the shortcut and select 'run as administrator'); you can also change the properties of the shortcut so that Eraser always runs in this mode. Why erasing the free space on a system drive requires elevation is a mystery to me; it is surely less destructive than erasing the contents of the Recycle Bin, which doesn't require elevation. But that's Microsoft for you.

David
 
David an Joel - Thanks for the quick responses. I have installed v. 5.8.8 now, having tried two versions of 6 without success. I have now encountered the error given in first message when I try to erase free space using this "stable" version 5.8.8? I will use 5.8.8 if it works reliably under Win7 Home Premium. Since our messages seem to have crossed I will try David's suggestion for 5.8.8 now. If it works it will take some time to cycle through the freespace for this relatively new computer. If that works I think I should wait for next stable release for 6 before trying it again.
 
I guess this would come up soon.

We don't need to run it as elevated, strictly speaking. It's done so to ensure that the following do not apply:
  • Cluster tip erasures can successfully erase files not belonging to the current user. (including the program files folder -- when Vista first came out I ran v5 on it and lo and behold my ProgramData folder replicated the Program Files folder. Not fun.)
  • Disk quotas are circumvented -- usually administrators do not have disk quotas enforced. Having quotas mean that Eraser cannot completely fill up the unused disk space and erase the unused space of the drive
  • I/O redirection would usually be off, it's like point #1 but applies to files in general (but the most notable will still be the Program Files folder.)

Hope this answer helps.
 
So I was maligning Microsoft? Well, they're big boys now, they can take it in their stride.

Thanks for the explanation. As my daughter says, "every day's a school day".

David
 
Thanks both of you. I got it to work after David's hint. I'm not a system guy so most of this administrator stuff is new to me since recent move to Vista and now Win7. For me, XP was just fine. I did find that I forgot to turn off sleep mode in order to get the erasing of unused space to ever finish. After leaving it run overnight, I found after that it had rebooted itself in the morning but had never finished. I restarted it again after making sure I was again running as an administrator and sleep was disabled. This time it finished fine after many hours. A few files could not be overwritten because system didn't allow it. Seems unlikely, however, to leave any sensitive data uncleansed. Anyway, I guess you might call me silly for running such a long test, but it was really a trial for my future occasional uses. I guess when I see a feature I just have to try it in case I might ever need it. Now :)
 
bill735 said:
I did find that I forgot to turn off sleep mode in order to get the erasing of unused space to ever finish. After leaving it run overnight, I found after that it had rebooted itself in the morning but had never finished. I restarted it again after making sure I was again running as an administrator and sleep was disabled.
Click to expand...
Eraser will disable sleep mode before the erase starts and re-enables it after it ends... the restart was probably triggered by other things.
 
Are you sure, that's also true for v.5? I am positive that the Win7 notebook computer went to sleep during the unused space erasure using v5.8.8. You are likely quite right about something else maybe causing it to re-boot. I also found that quite mysterious. Anyway v.5 seems to work fine now so long as I turn off sleep and run as an administrator. The feature to automatically turn off sleep mode might be a good reason to try v.6 again sometime in the future when I feel brave.
 
Hmm, I can't be sure about v5, but v6 does. I just saw it the other day.
 
I had trouble running 6.0 on Win7 x64. But 6.2 worked better.

But now that I know that 5.8.8 works on this OS, I will go back to it cos I never had any problems with it and I liked it better.
 
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