Debug log too verbose with Registry Cleaner

tullik

Application Hang with new Debug Mode v.1.8.0.466

Note: topic renamed 7 August 2008

Note: topic renamed 16 August 2008 -- link to changed emphasis

After activating Debug Mode, action sequence was:

1. Start PT from Quick Launch

2. Close message box

3. Click File Tools

4. Click File Cleaner

5. Click Start (default set to list all in "Temp dirs")

6. List populates with 36 lines (without Debug Mode, and a 34 line list, it took 3 clicks on "Delete" to clear the list)

7. Click on any PT window gets "Not Responding"

8. Click on results window X button gets Windows pop-up in screenshot

9. PT closed with "Close the program" option in pop-up

08-05-2008_19-26-08.jpg

Debug log .zip

tullik

Many access violations in Debug Mode

After activating Debug Mode, I ran several tools in a single PT session.

I ran these tools in this order and tried to perform "normal" procedures with each one:

Registry Cleaner (did normal cleaning)

History Cleaner (did normal cleaning)

Software Manager (only viewed list)

Startup Manager (only viewed list)

Start Menu and Desktop Tool (removed an empty directory)

File Finder (removed some files)

Directory Finder (invoked explore for several directories and removed some files)

Duplicate File Finder (ran two or three procedures and viewed the results)

File Cleaner (produced no result; tried four times)

Exited PowerTools

Except for a reasonable slowness, most of the tools performed as expected. There were these noticeable exceptions:

Registry Cleaner -- an access violation message appeared with the Scan Report (see below); cleaning proceeded with no problems.

File Cleaner -- it produced no results; settings were the same as those used in the post preceding this one.

I then opened the debug log with Firefox. There are many access violations in the log. Dozens and dozens. Based on the form name, most were in the Registry Cleaner. There were also about nine in the History Cleaner and about six in the File Cleaner. Winword says there are 163 occurrences of the word "violation" in the log.

The debug log is too large (30.7 MB) to attach, so I took a screenshot (resized) of Firefox showing some of the Registry Cleaner violations.

08-07-2008_03-53-25.jpg

08-07-2008_03-53-32.jpg

08-07-2008_05-48-50 (1).jpg

tullik

Many access violations in Debug Mode

After activating Debug Mode, I ran only the Registry Cleaner. The list had only one "does not exist" item. The Scan Report message box had the same message as shown in the prior post. I took no cleaning action but immediately closed all PT windows. I did this three times.

Each time, the debug log was larger than 25 MB, so it is not possible to attach any of the logs.

The program seems to be logging probably thousands of registry items. It needs to be less verbose.

tullik

Many access violations in Debug Mode

After activating Debug Mode, I ran only the History Cleaner. The list had only 7 lines. I took no cleaning action but immediately closed all PT windows.

The debug log was only 140 KB, but I have not attached it because it contained no access violation messages.

tullik

Many access violations in Debug Mode

After activating Debug Mode, I ran only the File Cleaner. The list had 16 lines. I cleaned them with no problems, then closed all PT windows.

The debug log was only 372 KB, but I have not attached it because it contained no access violation messages.

The File Cleaner/Debug Mode problem described in the first post in this topic apparently is not going to be easily repeatable.

However, the Registry Cleaner situation has happened every time I've done it.

I then restored the 36 files removed on August 5 during the first test described in this post, and reran the test. Results were the same, except the debug log was empty. Perhaps I let windows kill the program too soon . . .

So I did it again exactly the same way. That time, the program did not hang when I clicked a PT window. I selected and deleted the 36 lines, then closed all PT windows. The debug log was 634 KB, but contained no access violations.

It seems the new Debug Mode needs some work . . .

I think it is very likely the problems described in this topic are only with Debug Mode, not with the tools.

jv16

I have been able to reproduce these problems, lets see if I can fix them...

jv16

I'm quite certain that this bug is now fixed, at least I can no longer crash the program in debug mode in any of my test environments. The fix will be included to the next released version, thank you for reporting!

tullik

With v.1.8.0.467, I ran just Registry Cleaner with Quick select: normal settings and the raw list format. The debug log was still larger than 25 MB. Thus it is unattachable.

Wordpad did not find the word violation in the log.

There were a dozen or so lines in the list. It was doing the last scan (file reference) when the error message below appeared, so I aborted it.

: Font entry scan finished.


: Menu order scan finished.
: Help file entry scan finished.
: Left-over software data scan finished.
: Application path scan finished.
: Add / Remove software list scan finished.
: Open With entry scan finished.
: Obsolete software scan finished.
: Shared Component entry scan finished.
: File extension scan finished.
: List index out of bounds (5)
: Operation aborted.

tullik

v.1.8.0.468

@ jv16

Did you make any changes to Debug Mode?

I ran Registry Cleaner as described in the prior post. There were 18 lines on the list without Debug Mode. The same ones appeared with Debug Mode. Eight were "Obsolete Add/Remove menu entry." 10 were "Useless file extension." All scans except the "file reference scan" showed finished in the message box.

Then the APPCRASH shown below popped up. When I clicked on the message box to capture its contents, all PT windows and its process went away.

The debug log is 16+ MB (down from the earlier 25+ MB last week) -- still too large to attach.

08-21-2008_07-17-44.jpg

I then ran it again and got the same "List index out of bounds error" as last week.

: Font entry scan finished.


: Menu order scan finished.
: Help file entry scan finished.
: Left-over software data scan finished.
: Open With entry scan finished.
: Application path scan finished.
: Add / Remove software list scan finished.
: Shared Component entry scan finished.
: Obsolete software scan finished.
: File extension scan finished.
: List index out of bounds (5)

: File reference scan finished.

The debug log is almost 22 MB.

I tried again a few hours later. That time, there was no indication of a crash or other failure. The File reference scan did run a long time, almost three more minutes.

08-21-2008_15-02-51.jpg

The debug log is more than 26 MB.

tullik

v.1.8.0.468 Registry Cleaner with Debug Mode activated

Procedure:

1. Quick launch PT2008

2. Click Registry Cleaner icon

3. Select just one scan (start with the top one) and click Start

4. Close the three PT windows when the selected scan finishes

5. Display jv16PT_debuglog.html properties

6. Delete jv16PT_debuglog.html

7. Repeat 1 through 6 for each of the selectable scans

Results (13+ scans) -- size of jv16PT_debuglog.html; exceptions, if any:

1. 25.8 MB; "List index out of bounds (5)" in message box

2. 297 KB

3. 485 KB

4. 297 KB

5. 289 KB

6. 294 KB

7. 264 KB; APPCRASH (retried at 7.0)

7.0. 296 KB

8. 290 KB

9. 290 KB

10. 289 KB

11. 290 KB

12. 339 KB

13. 505 KB

2 through 13 at the same time: 757 KB

1 through 13 at the same time: 13.7 MB; APPCRASH (retried at 1 through 13 at the same time #2)

1 through 13 at the same time #2: 24.8 MB; APPCRASH

It seems that scan 1 (File reference) is the verbose one in Debug Mode. It is likely in some sort of large loop …

Also, scan 7 (Left-over software data) apparently lost track of its rightful place in memory the one time.

So if you need to get a debug log with Registry Cleaner, a workaround for the verbosity issue is leave out the File reference scan …

NB: these are likely issues about Debug Mode, not Registry Cleaner.

tullik

@ jv16

Below is a file showing an exception in the tests above.

I'll try to e-mail these debug logs:

Open With entry scan only - List index out of bounds.zip

File reference scan only - List index out of bounds.zip

13 scans - File reference APPCRASH.zip

The board software says "The file is too big, maximum allowed size is 256 KB." If you don't get them, they likely were too big for my e-mail service …

Other debug mode exceptions.zip

jv16

I have now made some changes that limit the size of the generated Debug Log when using the Registry Cleaner. It's a thin line we are walking here, if someone reports a bug within the Registry Cleaner I'd need as much debug data as possible, but on the other hand I do understand that creating a too large log isn't a good idea either.

tullik

tullik wrote
@ jv16 ...

I'll try to e-mail these debug logs:

Open With entry scan only - List index out of bounds.zip

File reference scan only - List index out of bounds.zip

13 scans - File reference APPCRASH.zip

The board software says "The file is too big, maximum allowed size is 256 KB." If you don't get them, they likely were too big for my e-mail service ...

As it turned out, my e-mail service allows about 3 MB worth of attachments. When zipped, the debug logs can therefore be mailed.

These were sent on 23 August 2008:

*** Subject: Debug logs 1 and 2 of 3.

*** Subject: Debug log 3 of 3

If/when you get to them, perhaps they will help identify solutions to the "out of bounds" and APPCRASH situations.

jv16 wrote
I have now made some changes that limit the size of the generated Debug Log when using the Registry Cleaner. It's a thin line we are walking here, if someone reports a bug within the Registry Cleaner I'd need as much debug data as possible, but on the other hand I do understand that creating a too large log isn't a good idea either.

I understand the need for a detailed trace of the registry data returned by the Windows APIs as the program proceeds through its scan logic.

Perhaps an additional DEBUG MODE option could be implemented with a DebugModeVerbose.dat switch so we could do it either way if necessary.

tullik

With the new debug mode method in v.1.8.0.472, these issues are fixed (or irrelevant).

I'll make a new topic for anomalies noticed with the new method.