Thrashing disk

Hello,

I'm slightly worried about my new version of dopus.

Since I installed version "10.5.2.0 (4913) x64" on my "windows 7 x64" I have been noticing weird behaviour.

First off, I have dopus set to start with windows and its set to show a lister when i double click on the desktop.

Now when this new version starts it takes maximum cpu time for about 10 seconds all the the while my disk is churning away.

When I start my computer it is noticeably slower, if I then stop dopus, using taskman, everytime i double click on my desktop this same thing happens with the cpu and disk.

using sysinternal's process monitor it is constanly checking the same directories, at 1000 events a second, after a few minutes the disk noise subsides, Im guessing due too caching.

Another thing that I have not noticed before is in taskman there is dopurt as normal but dopus.exe is running under taskeng using this command line:
""C:\Program Files\GPSoftware\Directory Opus\dopus.exe" nodef dblclk event dopusrt-startup-01679be8"

I realise that maybe this is a new way to handle the double click on the desktop but I had assumed this was the reason for dopusrt.

My computer also list the dopus.exe as version "4.0.3.37," is this right?

not quite sure what other info to provide..

Regards
Dazbo

Which directories does Process Monitor show being accessed?

If you don't need your file collections, go to coll://, select all the collections and delete them. That will normally reduce the (usually harmless) noise of file/folder access when Opus starts. Note: Select the collections themselves (so just the collections are removed), not the things inside them (doing that would delete the things themselves).

Does it happen regardless of which directory Opus is viewing?

(i.e. Open just one window, with just one tab, pointing at an empty directory. The best way would be to create an empty dir on your desktop and then double-click it, so that no other directory gets loaded first. Does it still happen then? If it does still happen, see if turning off the folder tree helps. If it doesn't, see Crash, exit or high CPU usage when viewing certain directories for suggestions.)

It's also worth checking if Windows Explorer triggers similar activity when viewing the same folder.

I was just reading the article "How to find components causing memory leaks" that you made, very informative i might add.

I'm posting a screenshot of just one lister opened and after 5 minutes runtime, in this time I did not do anything except try and capture a screenshot.
This was my second attempt as vmmap crashed this first time.

I dont use collections but I see there some listings under collections, actually I clicked on "duplicate files" which was under collections and it spent about 2 minutes with no response and then showed some of the folders that i had seen in process monitor.

your quick response has lead to my incomplete reply.

so i will delete the collections and check.

Yes, deleting the "duplicate files" collection has solved the problem. thanks

seems surprising that this behaviour would happen considering duplicate files is a feature of dopus.

another thing I mentioned in my first post is:
when I double click on the desktop to start a lister it appears under the taskeng.exe, as a a task.
Here is another screenshot:

Ithought this was the purpose of dopusrt.exe?

dopusrt.exe is what handles the double-click. Once you double-click, it will then run dopus.exe which is the program itself.

Yes i realise that dopusr.exe is a hepper app, but I do not understand why dopus.exe would then run as a task under the task manager.

If you fully exit Opus, so that dopus.exe is no longer in the process list at all, then double-click the desktop again, is it still running under TaskEng.exe?

When you say exit dopus does this include dopusrt.exe?

If I exit dopus.exe, so that none remains in taskman, except dopusrt.exe If I then double click the desktop, dopus runs under taskeng, as per the screenshot.

if i exit dopus.exe and dopusrt.exe then nothing happens when I double click desktop, as to be expected.

Not sure I understand what your actual question is. If Opus is running, it's going to be visible in task manager. If Opus isn't running it won't be.

If dopusrt.exe is running dopus.exe via TaskEng, then that probably means dopusrt.exe has been run elevated by mistake. That might happen if you run the Explorer.exe which handles the desktop itself elevated (which isn't a good idea), or if dopusrt.exe is being launched in an unusual way, or maybe if it was launched by a dopus.exe that was run elevated (not a good idea either; use Opus's admin mode instead of elevating the whole process).

If dopusrt.exe is elevated, it will run dopus.exe via TaskEng to drop the elevation, so that dopus.exe runs as a normal process.

But it's also normal sometimes for TaskEng to run dopus.exe; for example, if the installer launches Opus then it may do that, since the installer runs elevated and uses TaskEng to run dopus.exe as a normal process. That'd only happen right after an install, though, and not after you exited Opus or rebooted.

Well dopus is always running under taskeng and I see from the pic I posted that your are right, its set to run as a standard user task.

I'm guessing elevation is something to do with uac, which I disable the instant windows 7 is installed, I don't see much point in different elevation levels as its just not Unix.

Where is this admin mode and am I missing out by not running my dopus process at the highest level?

I think, there is a button in the standard setup (which i don´t use, that´s why i can´t say), but you can also use following command:
Set ADMIN=Toggle,10. You can change the number to some other value. It defines, how many minutes
the admin mode is maintained.

Thanks for pointing that out. I was just reading about admin mode in the help file.

If UAC is turned off the admin mode doesn't apply to you and you can probably ignore the TaskEng stuff as well, unless you run into any problems that seem related to it.

OK that's great thanks a lot for clearing up my problem with dopus.

As you say i'm not seeing any problems with it running like this and only mentioned as there was the initial problem with the collections.

Thanks again.

Dazboa