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modus_ponens
B.V. Info Seeker
Joined: Jan 16, 2006
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 Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 6:35 am Post subject: recovery from crash |
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I have found the search feature in windows xp to be quite buggy. If there are ever a lot of hits, my 'puter doesn't like it when I try to do things like select all or select all and click on properties. Try searching for *.*, hitting ctrl+A and right click on the selection. It may take a while to even get the menu to select properties. I recently wanted to see how many mp3s I had and there were about 10,000 mp3s. I wanted to see how much space those files occupied and it didn't like that. Maybe it would have been ok if they were all in the same folder but they're not.
So, anyway, I didn't think I'd have a problem with a search resulting in only 350 hits but I was wrong.
So I opened the task manager and killed the search as well as the dumprep process, which always seems to cause problems. Then something happened which happens from time to time, in the past a lot more frequently with prior versions of windows. My task bar thingy dissapeared along with all icons on my desktop. I guess I also killed "explorer" which I thought controlled the search. I could still use my browser and whatever else was running. Using task manager, I could run things, too. But I wanted to see my icons and open the task bar thingy without restarting because I had some very important downloads going on.
So I used task manager to "run" explorer. And bang, my icons came back as well as the task bar thingy (which didn't appear when I used the key with the windows logo on my keyboard).
While xp is far from perfect, it's a lot better with crashes than older versions of windows. Norton's anti-crash program wasn't even 100% effective, though I think I was using it on windows ME at the time. |
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modus_ponens
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 6:54 am Post subject: |
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duh. I just realized that at the command prompt, I can get to the root on each drive and use the dir *.mp3 /s and just check the summary. I'd still have to do it for each drive but that's better than not getting any results and my 'puter freezing.
Let's see:
C: 698 files for a total of 3,254,685,375 bytes (avg. 4.45 MB per mp3)
D: 0 files/bytes
E: 11941 File(s) 27,742,476,930 bytes (avg. 2.22 MB per mp3)
H: 4730 File(s) 20,374,500,315 (avg. 4.11 MB per mp3)
for a grand total of 17,369 files 51,371,662,620 bytes or about 47.8 GB (avg. 2.82 MB per mp3) -- I'd guess around 35 days or 800 hours of sound.
discrepancy probably due to the fact that all my games are on E.
it was interesting to watch the four windows list mp3s. Never were any two lists progressing at the same time, even on different drives, even external drives. Do all hard drives use the same IRQ or something?
with all this variety, one might think I could listen to stuff for a month and not hear a repeat but I usually listen to the same small set of stuff over and over for days and then switch to a new set. Sometimes, that set is just one song or soundbyte (maybe 30 seconds or less) and I listen to it for days on repeat. My roommates were probably pretty tired of the "i love you you love me" song by barney and friends by the time the week was over. Oh well, **ck em. |
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Alexia
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 9:33 am Post subject: |
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the most common cause of computer hang during searches is a dirty cd or faulty cd player (or dvd).
Remove any cd's or dvd's or any other removable media like memory sticks or zip drive discs etc., and try searching again.
If the search still hangs your computer then you likely have at least one hard drive or partition that you need to run scandisk on. |
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modus_ponens
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 10:23 am Post subject: |
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| Alexia wrote: |
the most common cause of computer hang during searches is a dirty cd or faulty cd player (or dvd).
Remove any cd's or dvd's or any other removable media like memory sticks or zip drive discs etc., and try searching again.
If the search still hangs your computer then you likely have at least one hard drive or partition that you need to run scandisk on. |
odd in that no cd/dvd drives were included in the search. i believe certain filesystems (ntfs?) have a feature of indexing filenames and locations for faster searching but it still shouldn't freeze. i don't think scandisk is necessary because it did the search from the command prompt on 4 hard drives (two of them partitions on one drive) simultaneously without a problem. then again, from a command prompt, i can't exactly select all files which is what causes me the problem in the search.  |
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Alexia
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 10:31 am Post subject: |
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scandisk will fix any errors on the drive that may be causing the hang. Typically a computer hanging on the search is encountering an access problem with the media which is why cd's and dvd's are the most common culprit.
I have seen a dirty cd hang a computer even if it is not part of the search, another common problem is the lack of a floppy drive that has not been turned off in the cmos and so is still reported as present to windows.
Scandisk (error-checking) fixes problem areas on the harddisk itself or in the root indexing of the disk. Using a dos prompt is not going to bypass disk errors. |
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modus_ponens
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 10:48 am Post subject: |
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| Alexia wrote: |
scandisk will fix any errors on the drive that may be causing the hang. Typically a computer hanging on the search is encountering an access problem with the media which is why cd's and dvd's are the most common culprit.
I have seen a dirty cd hang a computer even if it is not part of the search, another common problem is the lack of a floppy drive that has not been turned off in the cmos and so is still reported as present to windows.
Scandisk (error-checking) fixes problem areas on the harddisk itself or in the root indexing of the disk. Using a dos prompt is not going to bypass disk errors. |
There isn't a disc in my DVD drive and I'll try scandisk. There were no problems with the dos prompt search, so if a dos prompt is not going to bypass disk errors, then I'm suspecting the problem is not the disks but the search software. It only craps out when the results are "complicated." If the results are like 20 files all in one folder, there is no problem. I'll let you know if scandisk works. |
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tarsustom
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 3:37 pm Post subject: Re: recovery from crash |
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| modus_ponens wrote: |
| So I opened the task manager and killed the search as well as the dumprep process, which always seems to cause problems. Then something happened which happens from time to time, in the past a lot more frequently with prior versions of windows. My task bar thingy dissapeared along with all icons on my desktop. I guess I also killed "explorer" which I thought controlled the search. |
Killing explorer cripples Windows. I don't even know why it's an option. One might as well hit the restart button because once explorer is killed, restarting is the only next option, other than power off or unplug. |
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tarsustom
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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And by the way modus ponens....
The problem you are having with the 10,000 mp3 search is going to be a problem for ANYONE. It doesn't have to have anything to do with disk errors.
| A wrote: |
| Typically a computer hanging on the search is encountering an access problem with the media which is why cd's and dvd's are the most common culprit. |
Maybe true, if someone is doing a very simple search. But in modus ponens' case, it's a problem of combined file size compared to processing capability and RAM.
I bet if modus ponens increase his RAM to about 4 or 5 gig, and had dual, overclocked Athlon 64 3000+ cpus, things would be a little different. |
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modus_ponens
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 3:58 pm Post subject: Re: recovery from crash |
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| tarsustom wrote: |
| modus_ponens wrote: |
| So I opened the task manager and killed the search as well as the dumprep process, which always seems to cause problems. Then something happened which happens from time to time, in the past a lot more frequently with prior versions of windows. My task bar thingy dissapeared along with all icons on my desktop. I guess I also killed "explorer" which I thought controlled the search. |
Killing explorer cripples Windows. I don't even know why it's an option. One might as well hit the restart button because once explorer is killed, restarting is the only next option, other than power off or unplug. |
i used to think so but when i ran explorer from the task man., everything came back... |
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modus_ponens
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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| tarsustom wrote: |
And by the way modus ponens....
The problem you are having with the 10,000 mp3 search is going to be a problem for ANYONE. It doesn't have to have anything to do with disk errors.
| A wrote: |
| Typically a computer hanging on the search is encountering an access problem with the media which is why cd's and dvd's are the most common culprit. |
Maybe true, if someone is doing a very simple search. But in modus ponens' case, it's a problem of combined file size compared to processing capability and RAM.
I bet if modus ponens increase his RAM to about 4 or 5 gig, and had dual, overclocked Athlon 64 3000+ cpus, things would be a little different. |
Maybe, I have only a quarter of that RAM... It really shouldn't be that resource intensive. google can't be THAT much more sophisitated than my OS, can it? Speaking of that, maybe I should try their "desktop search" program... Oh well, I found an alternate way to count up my **it so now I don't really care about how to fix the windows search.
I never suspected cd/dvd uncleanliness, mainly because the drive was empty at the time and the access light never came on. |
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Alexia
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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having a lot of files shouldnt cause a problem.
I have over 12,000 mp3 files and a search of them only takes seconds even though they are spread over several partitions.
My spyware/virus scan also searches over 52,000 total files and seems to have no problem with the number. |
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modus_ponens
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Alexia wrote: |
having a lot of files shouldnt cause a problem.
I have over 12,000 mp3 files and a search of them only takes seconds even though they are spread over several partitions. |
after you get results, select them all and right click and go to properties, how long does it take to get a count or filesize? you're using xp? |
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MIB
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| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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Use a recovery tool?
GetDataBackforNTFS or GetDataBackforFAT32 has helped me out before. |
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