NOT so happy with dopus anymore (stability, foldersize calc)

Help & Support
1

Hi forum & GPsoft team

Lately (like for about a year) I've come to the impression that Dopus has started to become less stable than it used to be.

Unfortunately I have to say that there is only one of the about 250 applications that I use which actually crashes more often than Dopus (that app being Dragon NaturallySpeaking).

For example, Dopus very often completely locks when a html file or mht file is pre-viewed in the preview pane.

The other continued, major annoyance for me is that Dopus literally brings my computer to a standstill for like two minutes every time it is started, just because it thinks it must calculate every single of my 100,000 folders' size anew every time (or at least the size of the 500-something folders that are shown in my Dopus Startup Tab Group).

PLEASE GPSOFT, MAKE DOPUS CACHE or remember the folders' sizes in between sessions, like even the simple freeware "Folder Size for Windows Explorer" does. Or at least, don't have Dopus calculate the size of folders in tabs that are not active, at the same time it calculates the folders' size in the active tab. This regularly almost breaks my hard drives (audibly).

The same behaviour of Dopus is probably also the reason why Dopus can take as long as 20 seconds to simply delete a 10kb *.txt file or something -- after this, Dopus unnecessarily seems to be re-calculating every directories' size that is in the same lister.

Thanks already for (serious) consideration,

Regards David.P

2

[quote="DavidP"]Unfortunately I have to say that there is only one of the about 250 applications that I use which actually crashes more often than Dopus (that app being Dragon NaturallySpeaking).

For example, Dopus very often completely locks when a html file or mht file is pre-viewed in the preview pane.[/quote]
Didn't you trace the stability problems in Opus, at least when viewing HTML files, as coming from Dragon NaturallySpeaking (which loads itself into other processes)?

If it's causing problems why not turn off automatic size calculation?

I agree that having automatic calculation turned on can be annoying due to all the disk access generating information that you may not actually need at the time. I need the folder-size info rarely enough that I am happy triggering the calculation via a toolbar button. (Probably why it's off by default, though I can see it being useful to turn it on within certain directories that you know don't take long to calculate and often need the info for. You can turn it on, restricted to certain folders only, using folder formats.)

To get something on GPSoftware's radar it's best to contact them directly as they don't see everything posted to the forums.

If you don't want the information to be ready the moment you switch to the tab, why calculate it automatically at all?

Does that happen all the time or just sometimes? It doesn't happen for me so I'm wondering if there's more to reproducing it. If it can be easily reproduced by other people then it should be fixable.

3

By the way, have you tried using the Folder Size for Windows Explorer util with Opus? Assuming it works the way I think it does you should find its Folder Size column in Opus, under the "Special" category. (That's where all Explorer shell extension columns will be listed.)

4

Hi Leo and thanks for the fast reply.

That once seemed to have influenced the problem, but doesn't solve it (at least not anymore).

For example, also when NaturallySpeaking is not running, and Dopus displays a mht file in the preview pane. Then, you want to leave that file and display a simple JPEG or something instead. Dopus then either will lock up completely, or will lock for about 30 seconds, and only then will change over to the next file that was selected in the lister. This is all with IE6 since with IE7, the previewing problems were even much worse.

I need it all the time, am used so much to the folders displaying a "relative size" bar in the lister. This btw. should be a natural feature of the leading file manager on the market.

Well I want the information ready, so that is only a proposal for a workaround.

BTW, the folder size information could be simply stored in a hidden text file of the superordinate folder, together with the information ABOUT THE SORT ORDER of the files in that folder.......................................!

This problem only happens sometimes.

David.P

5

[quote="DavidP"]That once seemed to have influenced the problem, but doesn't solve it (at least not anymore).

For example, also when NaturallySpeaking is not running, and Dopus displays a mht file in the preview pane. Then, you want to leave that file and display a simple JPEG or something instead. Dopus then either will lock up completely, or will lock for about 30 seconds, and only then will change over to the next file that was selected in the lister. This is all with IE6 since with IE7, the previewing problems were even much worse.[/quote]

Presumably NaturallySpeaking is still installed? If so then its IE add-on could still be causing problems when Opus uses IE to display HTML and MHT files. The add-on will still be run by IE whether or not the program is running.

I'm not sure if you can do it in IE6 but in IE7 there is a menu which lets you disable IE add-ons (and enable them again later, of course). In IE7 the menu is called Tools -> Manage Add-Ons. (By default the window that appears only shows add-ons which are currently loaded in that copy of IE, so it's best to display the same MHT file to ensure the same add-ons are loaded. Or you can change the drop-down so it shows everything.)

The SysInternals AutoRuns tools will also show you at least some of the IE add-ons (in the Internet Explorer tab, under Browser Helper Objects) and it gives you a quick way to enable/disable them.

After disabling them it's worth restarting Opus to ensure any existing IE and add-ons running inside of Opus are flushed.

If none of that helps then I can try sending you a debug version of the ActiveX plugin to see if we find anything useful again. It's difficult for me to debug remotely when there could be many factors involved, i.e. IE add-ons and possibly firewall/anti-virus software that integrates with IE and when I don't think there are any similar reports to get an idea of what might be a common cause.

Where it's stored isn't a big deal. The problem is how the data is kept up-to-date, which I think we've discussed before. It would require a background service running all the time, monitoring for filesystem changes and updating the folder sizes cache. (Folder Size for Windows Explorer uses a service like that.) It would go wrong when any changes were made when the service wasn't running (e.g. during system boot or shutdown) and it'd also have problems with things like Samba network drives which usually do not report changes properly.

That isn't to say it's a terrible idea. If none of those issues bother you then I can see it being great. But I think those are the reasons GPSoftware are reluctant to implement it.

BTW, I just tried it out and Folder Size for Windows Explorer works fine within Opus, although it obviously doesn't give you relative size graphs:

3acdf1907a6e9244edff04361609834b3b8fea17.png726×652 36.3 KB

6

Hi Leo and thanks for your in-depth reply.

I'd be happy to try the debug version if you'd send it to me. I'll send you a PM with the mail address.

Its interesting that Folder Size for Windows Explorer should work within Dopus! I thought I had tried it and couldn't get its column displayed in Dopus. Why is it then that for you the relative size column would not work in Dopus?

Thanks
David.P

7

The Relative Size column works fine but it displays Opus's idea of the folder size and doesn't know about the Explorer extension's idea of the folder size. So to populate the Relative Size columns you still have to let Opus calculate the sizes itself.

8

Please try disabling all IE add-ons first as it's likely we'll need to try that anyway to rule them out as potential causes.

9

I see -- thanks.

Cheers David.P