RAXCO and Perfect Disk 6.0

[JP]

The following is based on my own personal experience using Raxco Perfect
Disk on WindowsXP.

First I downloaded the trial software from Raxco, and tried it out on my
computer. It worked great. Both offline and online defrag passes were
relatively fast when compared to other defrag utilities. Being impressed
with the trial software, I decided to purchase the full version.

The very first offline pass using the FULL version took well over an hour.
It took nearly 30 minutes simply to analyze the drive. I contacted Raxco
customer support, and on my first attempt, I did not receive a reply. I
tried again a couple of days later, again with no reply. On the THIRD
attempt, I kept hitting the submit button flooding Raxco's email server.
That got the attention of a customer support "person". I won't go into
details regarding this person, but I will go as far as to say I was not at
all happy with the results. Now out of either frustration or incompetence,
this person has handed my complaint over to another CS rep.

I don't know why I am experiencing such profound differences in performance
between the trial version and the full version. If there is no difference,
Raxco has not convinced me otherwise. I keep getting asked the same
questions over and over again. I had to remind him at least a dozen times
that I am refering to an OFFLINE pass. Overall, I am about 80% satisfied
with PD, and it far out performs Norton's Speed Disk, which in my opinion is
a joke.

My problem is with the quality of Raxco's customer support. I personally was
not impressed at all. I did become so frustrated that I asked for a refund.
In order to get the refund, I had to furnish proof that I destroyed the
software, along with a letter giving personal contact information. I just
decide to keep PD and deal with the SLOW offline passes.

I will not recommend Raxco software, nor will I discourage anyone from
buying any, but I will say that what ever you decide to do, do so at your
own risk. Beware that there are problems with ANY forms of software. Maybe
PD 7.0 will have these issues works out.

 

[JAX]

Most anything those "computer perfect' software rip-offs claim to do, you
can do with tools that are native to the OS. Most of the time, they will do
more harm than good.

IMNSHO, JAX

 

[Quaoar]

Most anything those "computer perfect' software rip-offs claim to do,
you can do with tools that are native to the OS. Most of the time,
they will do more harm than good.

IMNSHO, JAX

I disagree completely. PerfectDisk provides far better support than
anything in the OS. Version 6 works just fine on my computers.

Q

 

[davetest]

Most anything those "computer perfect' software rip-offs claim to do, you
can do with tools that are native to the OS. Most of the time, they will do
more harm than good.

IMNSHO, JAX

I had an experience with the latest trial of Executive software's
Diskeeper. It installed cleanly, and at first glance, seemed
to fit my needs. It seemed polished, and it behaved well.

However, I found a least two oddities with the software.
It's incredibly slow and ineficient under Xp with Fat32;
secondly the whole system can become unresponsive if you
defrag an NFTS volume that contains many big files.

I attempted to defrag a 30gb NTFS drive which had 15 files
of between 700 - 750MB. Once it started, I lost control
of my system for over 20 minutes, the start button and
task bar wouldn't repond, finally I was able to get control of
my PC by stopping the defrag. (It took that long for the STOP
button to work)

Of course, I emailed them , and got a very courteous response.
Received the reply on a Sunday, too. Executive software
are aware of these problems and are working on them.

It seems as if the software is not quite right in all
circumstances, however, based on the tone of the two responses
I got, I would be prepared to do business with them.

Dave

 

[Michael Cecil]

I disagree completely. PerfectDisk provides far better support than
anything in the OS. Version 6 works just fine on my computers.

Yeah, I agree. PD is a very nice program. Not actually perfect but close
(there are some features I'd like them to copy from O&O). I'd suggest
that the original poster disable hibernation and set his pagefile to
"none" before doing the offline defrag since apparently his drive is low
on free space.

 

[JP]

61% free space. The drive is not even half full. There has to be something
else running before PD at bootup which slows it down. I have ran ad-aware,
disk cleaner, tracks eraser, and Norton web tools all prior to running PD.
The slow part appears to be when it analyzes before moving files.

 

[Quaoar]

61% free space. The drive is not even half full. There has to be
something else running before PD at bootup which slows it down. I
have ran ad-aware, disk cleaner, tracks eraser, and Norton web tools
all prior to running PD. The slow part appears to be when it analyzes
before moving files.

Check the the drives are operating with DMA. Device Manager - IDE
ATA/ATAPI controllers, Primary and Secondary IDE channels. Both should
DMA if Available, Current Transfer Mode Ultra DMA Mode X where X is
usually 4 or 5. If in PIO mode, that could explain the slowness.
Additionally, there might be a HD problem that should be fixed with
checkdisk. Open a command prompt, type: chkdsk[space here]/f[enter].
You will be prompted the the disk cannot be locked, do you want to run
at next boot, select Y.

Q

 

[Gerry Cornell]

JP

What Firewall are you using?


~~~~~~


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please tell the newsgroup how any
suggested solution worked for you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

61% free space. The drive is not even half full. There has to be something
else running before PD at bootup which slows it down. I have ran ad-aware,
disk cleaner, tracks eraser, and Norton web tools all prior to running PD.
The slow part appears to be when it analyzes before moving files.

 

[JP]

Norton which is part of Norton Internet Security.

--

JP
jpilgrim@(NOSPAM)bellsouth.net

JP

What Firewall are you using?


~~~~~~


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please tell the newsgroup how any
suggested solution worked for you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[JP]

Primary IDE is Ultra DMA mode 5.

--

JP
jpilgrim@(NOSPAM)bellsouth.net

61% free space. The drive is not even half full. There has to be
something else running before PD at bootup which slows it down. I
have ran ad-aware, disk cleaner, tracks eraser, and Norton web tools
all prior to running PD. The slow part appears to be when it analyzes
before moving files.

Check the the drives are operating with DMA. Device Manager - IDE
ATA/ATAPI controllers, Primary and Secondary IDE channels. Both should
DMA if Available, Current Transfer Mode Ultra DMA Mode X where X is
usually 4 or 5. If in PIO mode, that could explain the slowness.
Additionally, there might be a HD problem that should be fixed with
checkdisk. Open a command prompt, type: chkdsk[space here]/f[enter].
You will be prompted the the disk cannot be locked, do you want to run
at next boot, select Y.

Q

 

[Gerry Cornell]

JP

I am wondering whether there is any common ground with this KB Article:
Virtual Memory Error Message When You Shut Down the Computer
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811153&Product=winxp

and this:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...88256bfb007f295c?OpenDocument&src=bar_sch_nam

--

~~~~~~


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please tell the newsgroup how any
suggested solution worked for you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[JP]

I did not find iamapp.exe on my machine. I am using Norton Internet Firewall
as a part on Norton Internet Security. I did however find ccApp.exe.

 

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

JP,

You need to make sure that you tell the whole story.

- You left out that there were repeated emails back and forth between myself
and you as I attempted to gather information about your system and what was
installed.
- There were times where I was out of the office and you did not receive my
Outlook out-of-office reply.
- There were emails that I did not receive from you - even though you sent
them.
- You absolutely chose not to believe there are no differences in the defrag
engine between the evaluation version and the licensed version (like Raxco
would sell software that performed worse than the evaluation software).
- Even though you told me that there were other disk programs (not
PerfectDisk) that were performing slower than they were previously - you
insisted that the issue was with PerfectDisk and demanded that we identify
for you what software on YOUR system may be causing the slowdown.
- You said that we didn't offer a money back guarantee (which we do) and
when I offered to provide a full refund, you demanded that we not only give
you the software for free but "fix" the problem. You objected to proving
that you had "destroyed" the software as well as giving out your contact
information - even though you had to provide this information in order to
purchase. You also let slip that you had the licensed version of
PerfectDisk installed on multiple computers - even though you had only
purchased a license for a single computer.
- You became very abusive in your emails. You got mad at me because after
one of your abusive emails you sent an apology and I didn't immediately
reply (I went home for the evening and didn't get it until the next day).
- When it became too hard for me to remain objective in trying to work with
you on this issue, I assigned to another support person.
- When that person didn't immediately email you, you again became abusive
and accused me of lying about this support person - saying that you doubted
that person even existed.

Many people on these forums know of Raxco's reputation for technical
expertise. Many others know of my reputation for honesty and technical
knowledge.

Raxco Software is NOT an expert on every single piece of software that is
available for Windows and how it may affect Windows. It is also not our job
to diagnose general Windows performance issues for people. I attempted to
work with you until the point that you became abusive. At that point, it
became pointless and a waste of my time to continue.

I suggest that the best way to determine what on your system is slowing
things down is to reformat and re-install Windows, then install PerfectDisk
and slowly start adding programs until you find what is causing drive
performance for everybody to slow down.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File Systems

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a
commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.

 

[JP]

Jason is handling the complaint now, and I must say, doing a much better
job. As I stated in my post, this is what happened when I used it. I made no
implications that Raxco would do the same for everyone. I have PD installed
on ONE machine, and you ARE a damned liar. You are just posting here because
your were too incompetent to know what to do.

 

[JP]

Why don't YOU tell the correct story, Monkey Nuts! I had the TRIAL software
installed on more than one machine. I only have the FULL version on this
one.