Version 7.0.2 (3377.514.1238) released

[Manny Carvalho]

Thanks. My scans took several hours and never completed so I forced them to stop. It's happened twice already. It must be something I did if you can get the scanner working properly in OSS. I'll try a clean install one more time and see what happens.

[Manny Carvalho]

Well, I hate to report this as I'm not sure I understand but I fixed the problem of scans taking a very long time. It was caused by a bad paging file. All I did is reset it to make a new one and OSS is scanning just fine.

What lead me to this was the Startup Repair tool that I needed to use to bring back my non-booting PC. I started looking around the Startup Repair tool logs [%windir%\System32\LogFiles\Srt\] and it was saying [the disklayout.txt file] that I had no paging file even though I had one. Actually I have two; one on C:\ and another on my second drive. So taking a leap of faith I reset C paging file and after a reboot the AM scan started working normally.

A quick scan just finished under a minute instead of hours. It's been almost a week since this fix worked but I wanted to make sure it stuck before reporting. It looks like it has.

[romil]

Manny, interesting that your problem hasn't resurfaced after a week. This could be the fix for the installation and logging problems that I'm seeing here (more on this later, if needed). I'll give it a try this weekend to see if it fixes the logging problems that I have.

[Manny Carvalho]

Frankly, I can't see what reseting the paging file has to do with either your or my problems but it did fix my problem. Trying it can't hurt anything; go for it.

[romil]

I couldn't wait for the week-end. It didn't fix my problem. I even tried turning off paging without any success. Why did I think it might work? To easily see the problem I'm having, you need a firewall log with 400-500 entries in it. Every time I right click an entry to exclude an entry from the log, op_mon consumes 1 mb of memory. It will also consume the memory by switching to a different log and switching back to the firewall log again. To buy some more time before Outpost crashes, "Memory Improve Ultimate Free Version" helps, until my paging file fills. Clearing the log does not free up the memory. It seems to me that Outpost has a memory swapping issue, and a bad paging file seemed to be a good bet. - Windows 7

[Manny Carvalho]

Fair enough. I might think that way as well.

With about the same number of entries in my logs I tried your exclusion experiment. I don't observe what you do even when I excluded several items.

That is a lot of memory to consume but does it hinder your machine's performance in any way? Free memory is just wasted memory.

I don't understand this:

To buy some more time before Outpost crashes, "Memory Improve Ultimate Free Version" helps, until my paging file fills

[romil]

Sorry, Manny, to have wasted your time with my problem. I certainly would not have posted my problem if I thought that I was the only one with the problem, but after seeing your bad paging file post (I assumed that Outpost caused your problem) and Agnostic's logging problems (I suspected that the missing logging entries were in memory and not written to the log files on disk yet), I really thought that my problem would be something that everyone else would have. I can think of 4 possibilities for my problem, 3 being video related, and the last is that my machine is not truly Windows 7 ready. I'm going to end my message here. I'm having Outpost withdrawal pangs and am not not feeling very sociable at this time.

[Manny Carvalho]

You didn't waste my time. I'm sorry if somehow I gave you that impression. I was actually agreeing with your logic once explained. And I just didn't understand the sentence I quoted. I presume though this is no longer an issue since you uninstalled OP?

[romil]

Nothing you said gave me the impression. Just having a bad day. I've been an Outpost user since ver 1, and it's hard for me to accept that it really is over. My problem won't be resolved until I can forget about this program and don't look back.
The memory program forces Outpost to release the memory used and stores the contents in the paging file. This can be seen in the program's GUI. The numbers that I posted are test numbers to easily see my problem. My real-life work day numbers are 3.5 Mb per click. I once saw op_mon consume 1.5 GB of my 2GB of ram, but Outpost will usually crash when consumed memory exceeds 500 Mb. I have a large log file. I can fill the default 512 kb log in 15-20 minutes, and there are many firewall rules that I am not logging. Outpost ver 6.7 also has this problem. I don't know about ver 6.5. I also restored my XP back-up today. Same problem but slightly better. 500-600 log entries for 1 Mb of memory.
There are several anti-leak problems I'm having that have already been mentioned by others, so I won't list them here, but I do want to list one that hasn't been mentioned yet.
Several months ago I briefly mentioned a section in the machine.ini that I didn't want to talk about for fears that someone might remove the entries and won't be able to start up their machine again. I mentioned that I can see how Windows can start without any anti-leak rules and why people can have driver problems. That section has been removed, and today I have confirmed my worst fear - there is no more antileak protection during startup. This is Agnitum's solution for resolving the driver problems that people were having. Privoxy is one start-up application that I've always had to restart in order to get Outpost to ask me questions needed to run the program. The first question was an anti-leak driver load question. Today I changed the rule to block, restarted my machine, and Outpost is ignoring my rule. Privoxy is running fine, even though it's not allowed to load its driver.

[jmjsc]

Hello, romil. I was just wondering which version of Privoxy you are using, because I have 3.0.16 and it does not load any driver when run.

Please tell us about the section in machine.ini you claim is gone.

[romil]

Holy cow, you are correct. I had to wipe the egg off my face and install Outpost again. There's no driver load anti-leak question for Privoxy. Luckily for me I have more proof, and this time I'm going to be more careful. Bee-Think IP Blocker. I'm allowing Outpost to "auto create and update rules" and automatically train for one week. After restarting and connecting to the internet, there are no rules for IP Blocker. The driver load rule is the only rule that this program needs. The program is running fine. One more restart to be sure that Outpost is not going to create the rule. I connect to the internet, and no rule yet. Now I'm leaving auto-learn mode, disable automatic rule creation, uncheck creating rules for trusted vendors, and restart again. Uh, oh. New problem I have never seen before. After logging in, my machine is continuing very slowly. Restart again. Same problem. In the past, I have many times deleted all my rules and restarted without ever seeing this problem, so I doubt that my problem is a missing anti-leak rule for a system file. I'm starting to wonder about Manny's bad paging file problem and then remembered the installation problem I had 2 weeks ago. I don't have the time to talk about that one now. I shut down my machine, and after starting up again, everything seems to be fine now. Back to Bee-Think. I shut down the program and start it again. Now I get the load driver question. Quick connection to the internet. Running good. No more questions. I shut down the program, change the rule to block, try to start the program again. Blocker service can't start. After some fun trying to shut down the program, I restarted my machine. The program works. One more time to be absolutely sure. Checked the rule - blocked. Shut down the program and can't start it again. Restart my machine and the program works.

[romil]

I forgot to answer your question. You're putting me in a tough position. If I do post the answer, it will probably be deleted. Just look at the file contents. You'll know you found it when you see it. Windows needs some anti-leak rules to start up, and yet Windows can start without any anti-leak rules. How can it do this? When you do find the section you'll see a couple of Windows files listed and probably a couple of your anti-virus program file names if you didn't uncheck Outposts detection of your virus program when you installed Outpost. If you can't solve my little riddle, then maybe it's best that you don't know the answer to the question.

[jmjsc]

I am sorry, but you pointing out a section in machine.ini will not land you into trouble. Please tell me about that section.

[Manny Carvalho]

Go ahead and post it romil. I'm sure you'll stick to the forum rules and we will provide appropriate warnings if your suggestion does something to make things unreliable.