Scanner 2.12 ------------ Content: 1. Purpose And Usage 2. Initial folder 3. Optimization by Parallel Scanning 4. Language Support 5. System Requirements 6. Installation/Deinstallation 7. Terms of Use 8. Known Bugs And Limitations 9. FAQ 10. Version History 1. Purpose And Usage The Scanner provides a visualization of your media usage. To show the relations optimally, all files and folders of the selected disk(s) are displayed together in one diagram - with an area size proportional to the used space. Smaller objects are invisible, of course. So the Scanner is not intended to be a File Manager. The Scanner uses an extended pie chart with concentric rings. Outer segments represent deeper directory levels. When you move the cursor over a particular colored area you will see descriptive information about it. Right-click on it to open its context menu. It provides several actions depending on the object type: - Show/Hide folder contents - Zoom into a folder (also directly available via left-click) - Rescan a folder - Open a file/folder with the appropriate application - Recycle a file/folder (delete it by moving it to Recycle Bin) - Remove a file/folder After the initial scan you get a hard disk summary. To get similar results for any other drives on your computer, please select the appropriate button on the left side. Clicking on the selected drive again causes a rescan action. Determine which drives are part of the summary by using the "Summary" switch in the drive context menu (right-click the appropriate button). Use the "Back" button to change to the previously focused folder, "Parent Folder" to step up in the folder hirarchy. The "Rescan Folder" button causes rescanning of the focused folder only. Additionally, the program provides fast access to two means of space regain: Software Removal and empty the Recycle Bin. Note: while the latter function will be recognized automatically, you should let the display update after you removed software. You can change the size of the application window with the buttons "+" and "-". If you detect any bugs, please report them to me. Include an exact description of your drives and the logfile 'Scanner.log', which you can generate by pressing 'L' from the Scanner. 2. Initial folder In order to start the tool zoomed to a certain drive or folder, pass the path of that drive or folder in the command line. This option can also be used to incorporate the Scanner into the Windows Explorer context menu of drives and folders. You can do that either manually in the "Folder Options" or using the file "Add Scanner to Context Menu.reg" which is contained in the package. For the latter, do the following steps: 1. Edit the file "Add Scanner to Context Menu.reg" 2. There are two paths "...\Scanner.exe" contained, change them to the actual location of the tool 3. Save the changes and close the file 4. Merge the file to the registry by double click To remove the context menu entries, merge the file "Delete Scanner from Context Menu.reg" to the registry. You don't need to edit this one before. 3. Optimization by Parallel Scanning This paragraph is only of interest to you if your system contains more than one physical hard disk. The program is capable of scanning all disks simultaneously, thereby reducing the scan time. Each drive has a context menu (right-click the appropriate button), where you can adjust the physical device ID. Drives with different numbers are beeing scanned simultaneously. Note: Do not adjust partitions on the same physical disk to different numbers - you'd make the program slower! 4. Language Support Scanner is capable of detecting the language of your windows system. If a translation for this language is available, Scanner will automatically use it. In case you experience problems with your localization, please delete the file 'Scanner.lang', so the program will appear in English. If you'd like to have the program in your native language, but it appears in English on your system, you may send a translation of all used words and phrases (see following list) to me (http://www.steffengerlach.de/contact/), I'll include it. Send the words as attached textfile, not inside the mail text! Please have a look in which context the words appear before translating them. Scanning... Bytes Files Total Used on Free on Summary Recycle Bin Virtual Memory* Application Wizard Empty Recycle Bin Parent Folder Back Rescan Folder Version Zoom Rescan Open Recycle Remove Physical Device ID Cluster Size* Auto Detect* Show Hide *outdated, no longer in use 5. System Requirements Windows XP or subsequent Windows version 6. Installation/Deinstallation After you have unpacked the ZIP-Archive, the Scanner is ready for use. If you want to incorporate the program into the Start Menu, it has to be done manually. To uninstall, simply delete all Scanner.* files. The program does not change the Windows system directory. 7. Terms of Use This software is Freeware. Usage is not time-limited and does not require registration. Everyone is permitted to distribute the package in any way without my explicit agreement. Copyright (C)2012 by Steffen Gerlach Visit my freeware page for the latest version: http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ From there it's also possible to make a donation. Complaints, comments or proposals may be sent using this web form: http://www.steffengerlach.de/contact/ 8. Known Bugs And Limitations - When starting with a command line parameter (e.g. from Explorer context menu), the progress bar doesn't work for the first scanning. - The number of accessable drives depends on how many buttons fit to the chosen window size. - You can't zoom into folders that are too small to be visible from the parent folder. - On some systems, the tool doesn't work with network drives. - There are minor problems with some characters from the extended set (e.g. code 0xB4) when contained in the name of a file or folder. Such objects cannot be passed in the command line (by long file name), and the context menu doesn't fully work for them. - The recycle bin folder is recognized by its name. If a normal folder with a name starting on 'RECYCL' is located in the root of a drive, it might be confused. - Sometimes, the tool doesn't show absolutely correct values for the space used by folders. However, this inaccuracy should be very little (far less than 1%). - Unformatted drives and drives with file systems which are not accessable for Windows can't be scanned, even if a button for them appears. 9. FAQ Question: After launch, the program immediately starts scanning all hard disks. I dont like that, because this process takes rather long on my system and I'm only interested in some selective information. What can I do? Answer: Just do what you want to, don't let the scanning process stop you. The scanning will automatically be abandoned if you order something else. Question: I got more than 13 drives and I'd like to access all of them. Answer: Enlarge the Scanner window with the "+" button. Question: I'd like to scan a flash drive but there's no button for it. Answer: Exit and restart the tool. It only recognizes drives that exist when it starts. Question: One/some of my hard disks appear as hard disk symbols in the drive list to the left, but are not shown in the summary chart. A bug? Answer: Probably it was yourself who (accidently) removed these drives from the summary. See section 1. Question: Does the program have a problem with calculating folder sizes? E.g. for my cookies folder, which contains several thousands of very small files, it displays a size of some hundred MB, but the files make not even one MB in total. Answer: The Scanner shows used space, not cumulated file sizes. Those values may be very different, particularly in the case of small files combined with a large cluster size, because each file consumes a whole cluster in minimum. The cluster size depends on the file system and can be up to 32 KB. Question: Scanner tells a total used space for my drive that is smaller than the sum of the folder sizes that it tells. How can that be? Answer: These values are coming from different sources. The drive usage is queried from Windows and thus definitely correct. In contrast, the folder sizes are calculated by Scanner, which might not be absolutely exact. However, this inaccuracy should be very little (far less than 1%). Question: Why is the window resizing of the Scanner that awkward and not smooth as usual in Windows applications? Answer: The process of painting and smoothing the special pie chart takes too much time for a fast, continuous resizing. 10. Version History: 2.13 (07/12/12) - bugfix: hangup when breaking multiple drive scan 2.12 (05/15/12) - welcome to the age of TByte - network drives with most of the content not visible to the user: visible files are not assigned to total drive usage anymore - only visible files are shown now, not the free/used space of the drive - bugfix: chart update problems when deleting files 2.11 (01/31/12) - bugfix: folders with long filenames not found on some volumes - bugfix: recycle bin not recognized on some volumes under Windows Vista and later - bugfix: correct recognition of sparse file size - bigger window possible 2.10 (01/21/09) - target platform is now Window XP and newer -- the quirks of older systems are no longer cared for - support for compressed folders and files - overall usage of drives is no longer calculated but queried from the OS, so these values are always right - recycle bin content is now counted used space, which avoids strange miscalculations when the data changes after scanning - bug with filenames containing certain extended characters fixed - complete rework 2.8 (03/23/06) - fixed crash after rescan 2.7 (03/17/06) - initial path as command line parameter possible - folders that only link to content in other folders/on other drives are not scanned - thousand separator is no longer used for sizes because it could easily be confused with the decimal separator 2.6 (04/13/02) - show/hide option 2.5 (09/01/01) - parallel scanning errors of version 2.3 fixed - variable window size - less strict recycle bin recognition - application responds during scanning 2.3 (06/06/00) - serious bug (with files >=2GByte) fixed 2.2 (05/09/00) - uncommon display problems in high color mode fixed - support for languages with different character set 2.1 (01/17/00) - chart object context menu - experimental network support 2.0 (07/25/99) - folder zoom - drive selectable, all drive types supported - automatic k/M/GBytes display - optional parallel scanning of drives - no more limitation on the total folder number 1.6 (07/05/99) - display preparation speeded up 1.5 (05/30/99) - multi-lingual 1.4 (05/04/99) - serious bug (on partitions >=4GByte) fixed 1.3 (05/02/99) - serious bug (with more than one large partition) fixed - Scanner can generate logfiles now 1.2 (04/17/99) - button graphics changed - anti-aliasing can be turned off now 1.1 (04/14/99) - serious bug (when 16384+ files) fixed 1.0 (03/14/99)