I hoped to move the conversation away from ATI as the cause to the effect in X2...
Then stop using phrases suggestive of a causal nexus like "If I remove all the .tib files the effects go away"! 
Philosophically speaking, I'm not entirely sure if it's even possible (outside of the above described timer-wrapping-convention) for a file-manager to be "aware" of what may be interfering with its normal operation, or indeed if it even could be aware of such hanging in the first place. Never mind the inherent contradiction that the programme can't be aware of being delayed until well after the event itself. I would imagine the sheer overhead of implementation (via debug timers) would negate it as a practical development feature as for all intents and purposes it's no different from a variation on the usual "debug mode" which is always intentionally removed, post-beta.
Does such a feature exist in other file-managers? (Maybe some kind of "selfish-mode" where it simply ignores all shell extensions - since, as ShellExView shows, it is possible to deactivate them "on the fly" as it were. Seems impractical on first thought... but one never knows.)
Statistics: Posted by Kilmatead — 2013 Aug 17, 20:07
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if the problem can't be recreated, then it's not a problem (to coin a phrase)
I hoped to move the conversation away from ATI as the cause to the effect in X2, but of course you are correct -- unless someone else can report a similar effect without ATI in the picture?Statistics: Posted by MKairys — 2013 Aug 17, 19:30
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If this were with the current version of ATI, and its shell extension was shown to work perfectly with other 3rd-party managers, then Nikos might look a little closer - but as it is, what can be done?
For example - your thought that x2 should somehow block user-input until the bed has been made, the teeth brushed, and the orange-juice consumed is a little against the ethos - x2 is (as I recall) specifically designed so that users need not wait while column-information is collated, folder-sizes computed, and so on before searching for those sacred porn images. Never mind the practical end of that request - for x2 to "know" it's being held up due to something beyond its control it would have to set an internal timer for every single API/Shell request it makes, decide on what's considered a reasonable time delay based on the user's hardware, then decide if it should just "give up" or not... all based on a set of conditions (the state of the shell) over which it has no control.
I'm not insensitive to your predicament (well, in fact I am, considering I have already dismissed ATI as malware
) but you can at least see the problem here. Short of the forum being inundated by a hundred-and-one vociferous ATI 2010 users all claiming the same thing (while showing it works in Dopus, et al), compatibility with 3.5-year old malware is probably not to be expected.Besides, if you read the original posts in this thread (from 2009), I already did some contemporary testing with whatever the current version of ATI was then, and found it to be less than overflowing with effervescent bliss.
How much mud do you want me to slosh through? Didn't you see the end of the Shawshank Redemption?Maybe we'll initiate a kickstarter (I hear they're all the rage these days) to donate Macrium licenses to all the poor and afflicted ATI users out there. We could probably get tax-exemption status as being a much-needed charity.Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of s#it smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.
Again, I know you would prefer more "real help" and less smart-arse remarks - but Nikos rarely gets interested in bad shell extensions (for obvious reasons), and even you admitted that your complaint was a wee bit tenuous in the best of light ("And here is my thin excuse for unburdening myself here...").
At least you're not being ignored, like those poor lonesome lads illogically asking year-in year-out why new tabs can't open next to their elder brethren.
Statistics: Posted by Kilmatead — 2013 Aug 17, 18:13
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Statistics: Posted by MKairys — 2013 Aug 17, 16:54
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What apparently happened at Acronis is that the original group of engineers who developed the core backup functionality left the company, and subsequent development focused on adding bells and whistles and layers and UI, much of which turned out to be both ill-conceived and ill-executed. But I don't use any of that stuff so I don't care.
Statistics: Posted by MKairys — 2013 Aug 15, 16:15
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Seems it has no incremental or differential option, no scheduler, no indexed search, no image verification, no support for rotating backup sets, yet it costs about the same as Acronis or Macrium.
To be fair, it does have differentials, but it does come across as a little-bare-bones (for the price). Given the audience it's aiming at (this is not for regular punters), doing everything via CLI means that they are assuming their users are bright enough to be able to "pick up the slack" and thus there's no need for the hand-holding which seems endemic these days (most options in these programmes really are fluff - very nice fluff - but fluff nonetheless). And if it cost €9.95, that would be dandy. But in the same bracket as Macrium, it's not a serious alternative (for the general public).Misbehaving service, perhaps? I'm out of ideas.Neither disabling ATI shell extensions nor browsing in raw mode made a difference. I think the issue is that ATI does its work with a filter driver and upperfilter/lowerfilter references.
Ordinarily in these circumstances I would install the software to see if I could recreate the user's complaint and find a way to work with it, but as I see ATI as a dysfunctional entity which should be removed from reality to begin with, and thus question the sanity of those who use it, we won't be doing that today.
No offence - but even you seem to question the reliability of the company and the competence of the dev's- are you continuing to use it because these backups from 2010 must be maintained? Just curious. Statistics: Posted by Kilmatead — 2013 Aug 15, 14:57
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Seems it has no incremental or differential option, no scheduler, no indexed search, no image verification, no support for rotating backup sets, yet it costs about the same as Acronis or Macrium.
As I recall from discussions among the disaffected in the Acronis forums, Macrium is the best thing out there.
Statistics: Posted by MKairys — 2013 Aug 15, 12:34
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http://www.drivesnapshot.de/
It's a < 400k executable only. No installation needed. Images can be mounted naturally. I'm astonished how this works with just so few kilobytes when the contenders need hundreds of MB. It can be tested for 30 days for free. It's worth a try and consideration.
(No, I'm not affiliated with the vendor, just a very satisfied customer who keeps smiling when people on the internet complain about problems with acronis)
Statistics: Posted by BRX — 2013 Aug 15, 11:56
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Statistics: Posted by MKairys — 2013 Aug 14, 15:50
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I believe it is the fault of the ATI Explorer plugin or whatever you call it, that discovers or indexes or whatever all the .tib files it finds.
The technical term is Naughty Shell Extension. In particular experiment with ShellExView until you find the offending element. (Anything disabled may be as easily enabled again, should you choose to "live with it", if you think that ATI requires it for normal operation.)Are these folders in mounted drives (as in mounted TIB images) that are displaying incomplete data, or just normal storage folders? What happens if you try View -> Raw Contents or, for that matter, try a different view other than "Details"?
Statistics: Posted by Kilmatead — 2013 Aug 14, 14:01
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And here is my thin excuse for unburdening myself here: I find the presence of large numbers of .tib files on a given disk makes xplorer2 *very* slow in dealing with that disk, particularly the first time it is accessed in a login session. I believe it is the fault of the ATI Explorer plugin or whatever you call it, that discovers or indexes or whatever all the .tib files it finds. But worse than slow is this: going to a folder on that disk, it fills in the folder but then takes a good 5-7 seconds to fill in the file pane, giving quite an inaccurate picture:
Also, any mouse clicks on the file pane while in this "indeterminate state" are passed through to what "will be" there when it fills in, if you follow me... I wish X2 could recognize this condition and discard mouse clicks before the pane is filled in. And when the pane finally fills in it is still partly unresponsive: each time I try to move the scrollbar to reveal more files I get 3-4 seconds of wait cursor. This all happens only to the disk where my .tib files are, and If I remove all the .tib files the effects go away.
I don't see these effects in Windows Explorer. It lags slightly the first time I go to that disk but it's hardly noticeable.
Statistics: Posted by MKairys — 2013 Aug 14, 13:28
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What did you switch to? I'm still using TI and so far it has served me well but I'm always looking for a better solution.
See this series of recent posts.If TI serves you well, then it's difficult to judge imaging products by "features", as - much like File Managers - they effectively do all the same things at the end of the day, so it's a matter of taste. If an imaging system didn't "do what it says on the tin" then it would pretty much die overnight as a going concern.
My decision was more or less made according to Macrium's approach as a company (meaning "attentiveness to forums" and listening/responding to users concerns or requests) - something that TI failed miserably at. Perhaps they've cleaned up their act since - I wouldn't know. Too little too late.I like Macrium simply because it's never once given me any trouble, while remaining as flexible as I would want when I need it to be. To be fair, I'm not the most demanding user - 99% of the time it's just "incremental and forget", as I already know how my hardware works, so nothing funny comes up (and could handle it myself if it ever did anyway) and I only ever need to open the main interface to update it, never to actually use it. Me being me, I've automated everything else (x2 integrated multi-image-mounting, etc) via scripting.
The thing that swayed me was just reading the responses of the dev's on the forum - they always give the impression of "knowing their stuff" without flaunting it, and the confidence that exudes when dealing with some of the surprisingly complex (hardware-related) difficulties users have found themselves in. Acronis - on the odd chance they actually said anything at all - always came across as schoolboys trying to explain why Madden 2005 was better than Madden 2004 and why you should get it even though it has nothing to do with your immediate problem. They somehow managed to turn into the Norton of the imaging world - too big to even know how to do anything except sell stuff to people who mistakenly think that "well-known" automatically means "well-respected".
Statistics: Posted by Kilmatead — 2013 Aug 12, 20:01
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