…so you don’t have to.
I try out various softwares all the time, so that when someone asks about a certain need or issue, I am more likely to have a reasonable suggestion to offer them. Now, this applies to apps for ‘nix and Windows environments only, but, frankly, most (though certainly not all) of the time, the “stupid things” applies to Windows app testing, simply because there are so many more Windows apps to test and so very, very many ways for such apps to screw things up.
Often, problems with apps don’t show their faces until the app’s been around a while. Such is this latest “stupid thing”.
Comodo Cleaner and Windows 7 64-bit. Not a good combo. Here’s why. I had downloaded and installed the app to see how well it performed as opposed to such apps as CCLeaner and Glary Utilities, neither of which have–yet!–screwed up any Windows computers I’ve tested them on. It seemed to perform well, apart from the stupid “reboot between each action” behavior. For that, I tagged it as less useful than either CCLeaner or GLary Utilities.
But. All of a sudden last week, I started receiving a strange error every time I tried to save a file of any kind, via any means (except for one, which I’ll explain later as a workaround for folks who really, really want to try Comodo Cleaner on 64-bit Windows anyway): “There are no more files”.
WTF?!?
Searches for solutions on the web turned up all kinds of answers that did not apply to my testbed computer, and so, of course, did nothing to correct the problem. I decided to effect a temporary workaround until I could solve the problem, and so I used dropbox, saving files I needed by ftp-ing them to a remote site (that meant sending the temp file Windows created of them, since temp files weren’t affected) and transferring them from there to another computer (no, I couldn’t save on locally networked drives, either), then dropping them in that computer’s Dropbox folder, which would sync with the testbed’s Dropbox folder and be accessible for use.
It worked but was a real PITA. (BTW, I could use Teamviewer 6 to do all the necessary things on the other computer directly from the testbed. *heh*)
So, where did Comodo Cleaner come in? About 15 Google pages into searches for “There are no more files”, that’s where. Someone on a Comodo forum noted the behavior in a Windows 7 64-bit environment, and that the error disappeared on a simple uninstall of Comodo Cleaner.
Uninstalled Comodo Cleaner.
Bob’s your uncle. Problem gone.
Now, note that I had previously applied each suggested solution, even such things as using a Restore Point predating the issue, and rebooted after each proffered solution to no avail. Hmmm, even after a Restore Point? Yep. So it wasn’t a change I had made manually or an app I had recently installed myself. Nor was it some sort of malware, as I scanned the testbed with six different well-regarded anti-malware scanners in Safe Mode, even outside the Windows environment entirely etc., and noted nothing that could cause such things (I did eliminate some tracking cookies, though :-))
Here’s what I think probably happened. I tested Comodo Cleaner just as I think most users would have: I allowed it to perform auto updates. Although it’d been on the computer, rarely used (because of the stupid “reboot between each and every action” behavior), for several months, apparently the most recent auto update had screwed things up.
Simply uninstalling the app solved the problem. Sure, I rebooted after uninstalling, but the very next thing I did after uninstalling Comodo Cleaner was to test whether I could save files both of original creation and from the web. Works now.
As a side point, this is one of the reasons I suggest that folks who only use thir computers for web surfing, email, typical office app stuff and listening music to or watching videos seriously consider a Linux environment: it really is harder to screw a ‘nix computer up b y installing a “bad” app, and recovery is usually more straightforward. Configuring a ‘nix computer for use is still, unfortunately, not as easy as a Windows computer, especially as slickly as Win7 does the job, but it’s getting there.