Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I get DiskState to avoid folder
names with a specific pattern for DiskClean? I want to ignore
all folders in the "Santa" folder named "Backup".
a) Go to Settings | DiskClean. In the lower part of this
window, click on the magic wand button. In the edit box, enter
".*Santa\\.*Backup\\$" without the quotes. DiskState
uses regular expressions, thus this statement makes DiskState
ignore anything beginning with Santa\ followed by Backup\ folder
(note the double "\").
- I can't seem to get the DiskState service
running. What am I doing wrong to the this deletion engine running?
a) Are you running Windows XP SP2 or newer? :-)
b) Current user must have been given service rights. Bring
up the user manager and enable service rights. Tip: if you are
logged in as Administrator, simply invoke the Services from the
control panel and start the service manually from there.
c) The DiskState service requires the MFC library. You
might not have this correctly installed. Go to: http://activex.microsoft.com/controls/vc/mfc42.cab
- I want to quit DiskState, but it appears
to be busy. How?
a) Locate the main window, press the 'Q' three times and
answer "Yes" in popping dialog. This will force-kill
DiskState.
- When saving files to be deleted to a zip
file, DiskState appears to be "Not Responding" in the
task list. Why?
a) DiskState is single-threaded in the deletion process and
the program is invoking the Zip.dll routines at this point. It
does not pump any message queues at this point. In plain English
- this is normal as long as you can observe disk activity to
create the large zip file. The same can happen when recoverying
deleted entries. FYI - DiskState 2.8 and newer edition has an improved
response time on this.
- Is it safe to delete the files suggested
duplicate files?
a) When DiskState presents you with a list of duplicate files
across several volumes, it does not necessary mean that it is
safe to delete the duplicate files. Sometimes, it is normal to
have duplicate files (even Windows has a backup folder in its
folder structure - only viewable from DiskState with enabling
system files option before scan). You should decide which files
should be deleted or not. Generally, look for multimedia sequences,
like MP3s or any other space hogging files. You save the most
by deleting such duplicates. If a files has the extension .dll,
then you can move that file with Explorer to your Windows\System32
folder. You should then safely delete the duplicates of this dll-file, as
long as there exists one original in the system folder of your
system.
- Why does not "Select All" select
all the files for duplicates?
a) This is a safety behavior by design to prevent mistaken
with certain important system files. Naturally, some of you experts
want to disable this safety. For DiskClean, this can be done
by enabling "Expert mode" before scanning the volume
for temporary files. As for the duplicate finder, right click
in the list of duplicate files and enable the "Select All
Files Regardless". "Select All" will then always
select everything, regardless of system files etc.
- Some files are listed with a red color
in listings. This looks weird on my brown background color
in Windows. Help?
a) You can change this color by right-clicking in the duplicate
file listing window. Select "Choose Warning Color"
from the context menu to adjust the red color to a more appropriate
color.
- There are no partitions available in the
system tool "Extract Boot Blocks". I'm using Windows XP. Why is that?
a) This is most likely a security problem. You need Administrator rights
to access the partition tables under Windows XP or newer versions of Windows.
- When I uninstall DiskState, the file
DService.exe remains in the DiskState folder. What is this? Why?
a) This file is the DiskState Service for the Deletion Engine.
You should stop the service and uninstall it in the
settings before you uninstall
DiskState. Just install and uninstall DiskState after you have done this to
remove the DService.exe file. The file was not originally removed, because
it was locked by the operating system.
- I am experiencing high CPU utilization
using the DiskState Service? Why?
a) If you are running the DiskState Service under a network
account with very restricted rights, this may cause this
behavior. Try using another network account with less restrictions or a local
account.
- The DiskState Service ends unexpectedly and I cannot seem to get it running. Why?
a) Is the DiskState installation folder readable and writable by the user context of the DiskState service? If you are unsure about this, add modify and read rights for "Everyone" in e.g. C:\Program Files\DiskState.
- Regular expressions are difficult to
understand. Is there a tester somewhere?
a) Yes, bring up the regular expressions in DiskState. The quickest way to do this might be to right-click in the DiskState main window and select the menu item "Regular expressions..." and click on the "Regular Expression Tester" button in the left corner of the next help window.
- Seems like DiskState is using the Windows registry? Thought it was portable.
a) It is for the Deletion Engine, which runs as a Windows service. The registry is
used to help the DiskState service find its configuration files. The Windows registry is not
used for plain non-service functionality in DiskState.
- Can I manually change DiskState's settings? If so, where is it stored?
a) DiskState's settings file is in DiskState.ini. This file is located in the "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Geekcorp\DiskState" folder on Windows 7 and Vista. For other platforms, please have a look in "%ProgramFiles%\DiskState" or "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\DiskState". Example: "C:\Program Files\DiskState\DiskState.ini" or "C:\Users\My User Name\AppData\Local\Geekcorp\DiskState\DiskState.ini".