Dave-H

Soporific, I replied to your two PMs from earlier today, and apart from the fact that I couldn't find any way to attach files to the message, when I looked in my "sent items" box it appears to be an empty message! I don't know WTF is going on with this, did you get the message OK? Cheers, Dave.

Dave-H, if you installed Revolutions Pack 7.11 AND the AP environment space fix, you will find AP doesn't load. The problem is due to the SHELL command in CONFIG.SYS -- click START then RUN and type in SYSEDIT in the run dialog box and hit enter. Your system files will come up -- in CONFIG.SYS find this line: SHELL=COMMAND.COM /E:4096 /P and delete it. If you subsequently find that you needed the fix in order for AP to work properly then we will need to make a special AUTOEXEC.BAT file for you to use. Let me know if this is the case. Sop. Hi Sop, thanks for the quick reply! Unfortunately, I still haven't resolved the problem. I have never used Revolutions Pack BTW. I tried deleting the SHELL= line from my config.sys as you suggested. Autopatcher then kept running, and talked me through the environment space fix. That all seemed to go OK, but after the re-boot it was exactly as before, running AP just makes a DOS box pop up briefly and immediately close! I have checked config.sys, and the SHELL=COMMAND.COM /E:4096 /P line is there correctly, and the back-ups of config.sys are there OK in the C:\ root folder. As I said before, I had already manually made that modification to config.sys with no result, and it looks as if AP's automatic fixing procedure is just producing the same result. Any more ideas why if might not be running? As I said, it does run OK in Safe Mode, but not in normal mode, even with everything but explorer.exe shut down. Thanks, dave.

Hi Soporific, I have just tried to use the new December 2007 full release of AP, but unfortunately I'm getting the same problem as I had with the previous version. I did manage to use the one before that successfully, but the last two versions won't run! When I run them the DOS box comes up and then immediately closes down. If I run the debug batch file, it runs OK until I press "any key to continue" and the same thing happens, it just closes! No error messages, nothing........... I have tried increasing my environment in config.sys manually from 768 to 4096, and even to 8192, but this makes absolutely no difference. It still won't run if I close down all other running programs. It will however run in Safe Mode, at least the DOS box stays open and will respond to commands, but I haven't tried actually using AP in Safe Mode. Is this OK to do? I would have thought that there would be things that it cannot do properly in Safe Mode, like system analysis. Any idea why it won't run in the first place? I did get the version before last to work OK, and I haven't changed any settings to my knowledge, so why would later ones now not work? Unless AP changed something itself of course which is preventing it from running again! Thanks, Dave.

Amen to that!

Thanks again, I had missed that link to UserAss. Got it now! The Registry Compactor program that I found is here http://www.majorgeeks.com/Registry_Compactor_d3504.html Seems to do the same job I suspect, especially now I've er, enabled it! I also found a program called "Registry Space Profiler" which I found very useful. You can find it here - http://www.tliquest.net/software/rsp/ It shows the sizes of the various sections of the registry, so you can see what's taking up the most space. In my case, the "Interface" section is the biggest, at 2,039,736, followed by the "CLSID" section at 1,926,404. All the other sections are very much smaller, but there's an awful lot of them of course!

dencorso, thank you so much! I have downloaded and deployed all the tools you mention, except UserAss 1.2, which I couldn't find anywhere to download. My searches only kept coming back to http://www.utdallas.edu/~jbs024000/software/index.html which doesn't seem to work any more. Do you know anywhere else I can download it from? I've removed all the UserAssist keys from my registry manually anyway, and I assume that's all it does. Registry Compactor only actually compacts the registry if you pay for it, but even without its full functionality it's worth having to tell you how much empty space there is in the registry. I assume that the Norton Optimisation Wizard, which I have been using for ages, does exactly the same job. My starting point was with system.dat at 12,273MB. I've now got it down to 11,677MB. The biggest drop was when I ran oleclean, when it dropped from 12,273 to 11,801. I couldn't believe how many invalid entries there were! Obviously I'd like to get it down to a bit smaller than that, but that will do for now! Thanks again!

soporific, I'm getting exactly the same problem as Bankis. The October full release installs OK but won't load, exactly as he describes. The DOS window, both in normal and verbose mode, just disappears, with no error messages. I've tried running the August full release again, which I had already run and used successfully a couple of months ago, but it won't run now either! Exactly the same result. It obviously isn't a problem with your program, something has changed, at least on my system (as the August release did work), which is now preventing the batch files from executing. I have tried the Environment Space fix which you suggested, and it did what it said on the tin, but makes no difference to the problem. I am intrigued by its adding of "REM -- please leave this REM line here" to autoexec.bat. What does that do exactly? Great program BTW, I was very impressed indeed with the August release when I did manage to run it!

Well, I'm still at it! Got the system.dat file down to 12.269MB now....... Checked with TonyArts EasyCleaner, which showed all green lights, no spurious entries. I would have been surprised if there had been, as I've always regularly checked the registry with Norton Windoctor, which does the same thing, and removed or corrected any invalid entries. Thought I would go into DOS and try a scanreg /fix routine, just to see if that made any difference. It got to 78% complete, and then told me - "Windows found an error in your system files and was unable to fix the problem. Try deleting some files to free up disk space on your Windows drive. If that doesn't work then you will need to install Windows in a new directory." What a load of rubbish! I certainly hope that nobody has actually reinstalled Windows in a new directory as a result of this nonsense. I assume that it failed because, as was mentioned earlier, scanreg chokes on any registry bigger than 8MB, which as far as I can see makes it completely useless, at least in my scenario! I will backup the files now and see if clearing the MRU and run data helps.........