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[dave.m]

Ashampoo Winoptimizer 2009 is free to a certain magazines readers only, but I Googled the name of the program and on page two of a Google search:

http://tinyurl.com/5zfem7

Second item down is this:

http://tinyurl.com/59rvjm

I am not pouching it as the Google crawlers have already found it.
It is a brilliant program, enjoy!
dave

[kitz]

I notice they say instructions for installation are in issue 276.
Is a special reg key needed?

[kitz]

Just sussed it out - download and install  before 1st Oct.. and when you install you get an option come up with a free registration.

Fill in your email address and ashampoo mails you a full registration key.


Nice one Dave

[kitz]

woah - just be careful if you use the drive cleaner.

I just called an abrupt halt as I saw it about to automatically delete standard backup files (.bak) and any files that I had prefixed with ~ which I do use myself.

* kitz hopes that I havent lost anything.

In the settings I'd only asked it to scan a certain drive, but it scanned and brought up files from the other drives too.

Confused why its scanned all drives - double checked and only the 2 drives Ive asked it to scan are checked.

[oldfogy]

I notice they say instructions for installation are in issue 276.
Is a special reg key needed?

No they just want more people to buy the mag.

They have even started spamming their own forum with so called "Just received a fantastic offer email"
Must be getting desperate.

[kitz]

Holy crap

Theres no auto restore!

Its deleted tons of stuff... any files

.bak extension - so there goes my MRTG records - even worse a pile of progs I wrote whilst in college.
.tmp extension - I use this in several programs
.$$$ - oops Java programmes Ive coded and wanted to keep a history of.
~ files - I often use this as a prefix to separate old versions I want to keep
.old - yeah I use this for backups and mrtg records eg errors_hec.old from different routers... and a pile of html files from the site I wanted to keep.
.log - oops a coder often sends stuff to log files for a purpose.



-------------------
OK luckily its sent all files to the recycle bin..  and from there Ive restored 647 files that it deleted before I was able to halt the program.. I was able to identify them all from the time of deletion.
They were mostly MRTG files and programmes I'd coded and many log files that I wanted to keep.

Boy do I now feel bloody stupid that I didnt check the program settings first before I got trigger happy. 
In all fairness unless youre a coder or use something like MRG then you probably wouldnt miss these types of  files.

[oldfogy]

But no doubt your "Drive image backup" would of gotten you out of the mire........
No, I'm sorry, just being sarcastic not very funny, please don't send me to the NC.

But a lesson now learnt and passed to others is to make sure you have backups, especially when trying new programs.

Glad that you managed to get the files restored Kitz.

[kitz]

>> But no doubt your "Drive image backup" would of gotten you out of the mire.

Yeah I have one of those for a clean install - which is kept on the linkstation.
 
I also have a mirrored drive on this PC which runs each night.
F is a complete mirror of my D Drive and the E drive is an incremental backup of commonly used files/progs/my docs etc.
Reason I was peed off is cause I unticked the 2 drives I use for mirrors and backups, but it still went ahead and started deleting files on the backup drives too - despite them being unticked.

Was easier to restore from the recycle bin than start doing a full restore from the image.

[oldfogy]

Actually I know how you feel.
I also use "Tune-up Utilities 2008, and that also does something very similar even when a drive has been UN-ticked, fortunately I have used it several times now without losing anything I needed/wanted to keep, so feel fairly safe in continuing to use it.