Author Topic: Pre-Scan function (Step 2) in Windows 7, is "shady" (SOLVED)  (Read 7713 times)

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Offline ttiihone

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Pre-Scan function (Step 2) in Windows 7, is "shady" (SOLVED)
« on: August 11, 2015, 11:00:46 am »
Well, bare me - I might be really stupid or something - but this Pre-Scan function is somewhat confusing me.

First off, I'll mention the most important thing, that my Reparse Points are NOT fixed. As You might have read from my other posts, I do have my Users Profiles directory on drive D instead of drive C. I'm not sure if that's reason for that, since I must confess that I don't know 100% surely what the Reparse Points even are. My best guess is that they are some kind of a logic "shortcuts" to the real folders by old Windows based names or whatever.. I really don't know.

1. But anyway, when I click REPAIR REPARSE POINTS > SCAN..., it does find "Missing Default Reparse Point" 's. Then, when I click "Repair Selected" it seems to at least try to fix them and it doesn't show any error, but when I run the scan again, those same missing reparse points are STILL found. And also it tells me that it has found 31 reparse points, but the list of those points to be fixed is much, much longer (some 80-90 items).

2. Also the Repair Environment Variables is shady to me. When clicked directly, it doesn't seem to do anything. Even if I first click Start Scan (I guess it scans both Reparse points and Env Variables or does it? Or what?) then the Env Variables section has all kinds of buttons but it's totally unclear to me whether it has found some errors on those or not. And how to run any fixes (if there even are any) since the data on both sides of different paths' sub-windows are exactly the same.

3. Shouldn't there be ONLY an option START SCAN under the Pre-Scan section? And then if it finds anything then just select what to fix?

4. Also if and when I first click either one of those REPAIR buttons then there is no way getting back to the "original" Pre-Scan window. I don't know, I just find it strange.

Anyway, what I would do is to simply have ONE BUTTON named START SCAN and nothing more on that initial Pre-Scan window. And whatever it scans then the next window would have the results displayed clearly. And all the repairs would be easy to do on one go.

OK, tell me what You think. Thanks for the otherwise magnificent tool!
« Last Edit: August 11, 2015, 12:44:52 pm by ttiihone »

Offline Shane

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Re: Pre-Scan function (Step 2) in Windows 7, is shady? :/
« Reply #1 on: August 11, 2015, 12:10:44 pm »
Not sure how any of that makes it shady lol

Shady means something you cant trust and is up to something that isnt good.

Quote
First off, I'll mention the most important thing, that my Reparse Points are NOT fixed. As You might have read from my other posts, I do have my Users Profiles directory on drive D instead of drive C. I'm not sure if that's reason for that, since I must confess that I don't know 100% surely what the Reparse Points even are. My best guess is that they are some kind of a logic "shortcuts" to the real folders by old Windows based names or whatever.. I really don't know.

This might be the fact that your profile path is on another drive, I will check the code for that and see. There are default re-parse points in windows, that is what the program checks, it also checks for any custom points and makes sure they dont point back to a parent folder, which makes an infinite loop.

Quote
2. Also the Repair Environment Variables is shady to me. When clicked directly, it doesn't seem to do anything. Even if I first click Start Scan (I guess it scans both Reparse points and Env Variables or does it? Or what?) then the Env Variables section has all kinds of buttons but it's totally unclear to me whether it has found some errors on those or not. And how to run any fixes (if there even are any) since the data on both sides of different paths' sub-windows are exactly the same.

Again, not sure why it is shady. It opens up and its goal is to look for any missing defaults and then for the paths it looks for any missing folders that no longer need to be in there.

So when you are in a cmd.exe window and you type in a command with no path, cmd.exe looks at all the paths for that file, and if you type in a command with no extension like .exe or .bet then cmd.exe looks for those types as well based on what is specified.

So when you have a bunch of paths that have been added by 3rd party programs and they are no longer on the system and those folders are not there, it just slows down anything using the paths.

Also if you dont have the default paths such as system32 in there then any command you run in cmd.exe wont run, it wont know what path to pull it from.

So the tool simply fixes all that. You can see what the old values are and what the new will be, and you choose if you want to apply them.

Quote
3. Shouldn't there be ONLY an option START SCAN under the Pre-Scan section? And then if it finds anything then just select what to fix?

No, because then if someone needs to go back and run one of the fixes they can go directly to it, instead of running the scan again.

Quote
4. Also if and when I first click either one of those REPAIR buttons then there is no way getting back to the "original" Pre-Scan window. I don't know, I just find it strange.

Why is that strange? If you ran the fixes then the old pre-scan is invaild and you want to run a new one to see if the fixes took hold. You can also always save the pre-scan log to a file as well.

Quote
Anyway, what I would do is to simply have ONE BUTTON named START SCAN and nothing more on that initial Pre-Scan window. And whatever it scans then the next window would have the results displayed clearly. And all the repairs would be easy to do on one go.

OK, tell me what You think. Thanks for the otherwise magnificent tool!

I design the program with both a tech and user in mind. So i normally go down the middle, while providing easy and automated tools for the tech and user but some quick to tools as well that a tech or someone following my instructions can get to easily :-)

Shane

Offline ttiihone

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Re: Pre-Scan function (Step 2) in Windows 7, is shady? :/
« Reply #2 on: August 11, 2015, 12:32:47 pm »
Yeah, Shane, sorry for the work "shady" in absense of a better word in my Finnish head :) I definitely did not mean that it would be untrustworthy or anything like that - I just tried to come up with a word describing something like "unclear to me" :)

I'll check out the rest of Your reply now \m/

Offline ttiihone

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Re: Pre-Scan function (Step 2) in Windows 7, is shady? :/
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2015, 12:36:08 pm »
Good points, and I understand it now :) Thanks for the reply.

Not sure how any of that makes it shady lol

Shady means something you cant trust and is up to something that isnt good.

Quote
First off, I'll mention the most important thing, that my Reparse Points are NOT fixed. As You might have read from my other posts, I do have my Users Profiles directory on drive D instead of drive C. I'm not sure if that's reason for that, since I must confess that I don't know 100% surely what the Reparse Points even are. My best guess is that they are some kind of a logic "shortcuts" to the real folders by old Windows based names or whatever.. I really don't know.

This might be the fact that your profile path is on another drive, I will check the code for that and see. There are default re-parse points in windows, that is what the program checks, it also checks for any custom points and makes sure they dont point back to a parent folder, which makes an infinite loop.

Quote
2. Also the Repair Environment Variables is shady to me. When clicked directly, it doesn't seem to do anything. Even if I first click Start Scan (I guess it scans both Reparse points and Env Variables or does it? Or what?) then the Env Variables section has all kinds of buttons but it's totally unclear to me whether it has found some errors on those or not. And how to run any fixes (if there even are any) since the data on both sides of different paths' sub-windows are exactly the same.

Again, not sure why it is shady. It opens up and its goal is to look for any missing defaults and then for the paths it looks for any missing folders that no longer need to be in there.

So when you are in a cmd.exe window and you type in a command with no path, cmd.exe looks at all the paths for that file, and if you type in a command with no extension like .exe or .bet then cmd.exe looks for those types as well based on what is specified.

So when you have a bunch of paths that have been added by 3rd party programs and they are no longer on the system and those folders are not there, it just slows down anything using the paths.

Also if you dont have the default paths such as system32 in there then any command you run in cmd.exe wont run, it wont know what path to pull it from.

So the tool simply fixes all that. You can see what the old values are and what the new will be, and you choose if you want to apply them.

Quote
3. Shouldn't there be ONLY an option START SCAN under the Pre-Scan section? And then if it finds anything then just select what to fix?

No, because then if someone needs to go back and run one of the fixes they can go directly to it, instead of running the scan again.

Quote
4. Also if and when I first click either one of those REPAIR buttons then there is no way getting back to the "original" Pre-Scan window. I don't know, I just find it strange.

Why is that strange? If you ran the fixes then the old pre-scan is invaild and you want to run a new one to see if the fixes took hold. You can also always save the pre-scan log to a file as well.

Quote
Anyway, what I would do is to simply have ONE BUTTON named START SCAN and nothing more on that initial Pre-Scan window. And whatever it scans then the next window would have the results displayed clearly. And all the repairs would be easy to do on one go.

OK, tell me what You think. Thanks for the otherwise magnificent tool!

I design the program with both a tech and user in mind. So i normally go down the middle, while providing easy and automated tools for the tech and user but some quick to tools as well that a tech or someone following my instructions can get to easily :-)

Shane

Offline Shane

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Re: Pre-Scan function (Step 2) in Windows 7, is shady? :/
« Reply #4 on: August 11, 2015, 12:39:56 pm »
Quote
Yeah, Shane, sorry for the work "shady" in absense of a better word in my Finnish head :) I definitely did not mean that it would be untrustworthy or anything like that - I just tried to come up with a word describing something like "unclear to me"

Ah! thats good :-)

Shane

Offline ttiihone

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Re: Pre-Scan function (Step 2) in Windows 7, is "shady" (SOLVED)
« Reply #5 on: August 11, 2015, 12:43:54 pm »
 :smiley: