Wanted to give everyone a heads up on what I believe is Xenon File Manager 1.5 corrupting my Windows XP computer.
[SUMMARY HERE (full details in rest of message) - used Xenon File Manager to cut / paste a PDF file from one folder to another, got a strange Xenon pop-up window with no text, tried to exit by rebooting. After reboot, realized half of my data is gone, and my profile data in "Documents and Settings" are deleted. This is a new PC with a new XP install, SP3, no viruses as far as I can tell after running multiple virus scanners. Fully believe it was a strange bug with Xenon File Manager]
I bought a new Dell E6400 PC, with XP Pro SP 3 installed, about a week ago. I'm very anal about keeping my Windows clean and not installing crap on it, which is why I love Portable Apps. Only had Avast Home, Bullzip PDF printer, Google Chrome, and Office 2003 installed, all critical Windows Updates are fully up-to-date.
Naturally one of the first things I did on this machine is download the latest Portable Apps and set them up to use.
Well, I had it all set up very nicely, but decided to try out the Xenon File Manager and see how it compares to the stock XP Windows Explorer.
Here's the situation: Nothing else running except for a single Windows Explorer window, and opened Xenon File Manger, to move a single PDF file from one of my Documents folder to another folder. This is my first time using Xenon to move files, previously I had only used it to view folders.
As I cut the single PDF file in Xenon File Manager, open a new tab, and try to open a different folder to paste the PDF file there, a strange thing happened. Before I'm able to paste the PDF file to the new location, a Xenon File Manager message window popped up. The Xenon window has an icon of scissors, and a round circular image to the right of it, with no text showing. At the bottom right of the message window, is a single confirmation button, without any text on the button. I was like "What the heck is this?", and not knowing what Xenon File Manager was up to, and what the single button was going to do, I shut down Windows XP immediately (escape button didn't work to escape out of the confirmation screen, so I had to use the windows shutdown command, via the start bar, to turn off the PC).
Then I restarted Windows XP, and I realized that my Quick Launch bar is gone. I try to bring back the quick launch bar, but there is no way to bring it back, it's simply an empty toolbar at this point, without any of my shortcuts.
So I open up Google Chrome, to do a search on Xenon File Manager on what happened. When I open Google Chrome via the start menu, the icons for Google Chrome and Google Chrome Uninstall are missing (but the Program menu shortcut is still there). But Google Chrome is able to open. I had it set to open previously open sessions, but the previous sessions are gone, and Google Chrome only shows a single tab. I was very puzzled, and decided to research further what was going on.
Then I look at the Google profile folder under "Documents and Settings", and find the entire Google folders are there, but there are no files in there! I did a Property display of the Google Chrome folder, and the total bytes of data is 0, meaning my Google Chrome folder with all of my profile data is gone!
So I then look through My Documents folders, and half of my folders in My Documents have the folders there, but the files in the folders are gone! Strangely, the other half of the folders still have some data / files in there. For example, my Downloads folder had 6 files totaling 55MB, but I knew before it had 10 files totaling 90MB. So some files are missing. Windows XP appears to be running okay, but my profile data is gone, and about half of my personal data is gone too. As another example, my Internet Explorer favorites folders exist, but all the favorites are gong.
So after taking some notes on what was missing, I use Acronis True Image to make a back up of my Windows, and then restore to an image I had made 2 days earlier (after I had set up this laptop to my liking). After restoring to my previous image, I now have my launch bar back, my older data back, and my Google Chrome opened with my previous sessions from 2 days ago.
This is a very bizarre situation. I had never used Xenon File Manager before, but after this I think I'll stick with Windows Explorer.
I think it's 99% likely that Xenon File Manager did something strange to my Windows install. 1% could be a virus or something, but I seriously dobut it, because this is a clean Dell machine, and I run firewall / Avast anti-virus and never had a problem before.
Anyway, I ran the online Trend Micro virus scan and my machine came back clean. And I did a full Avast virus scan and it's currently clean.
My XP install is very generic also, I use Portable apps I trust, no funky software installed, and all Windows Updates completely up to date. So this is why I say it's very very unlikely that it could have been a virus or anything causing the strange data loss and behavior.
Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to let folks know of the strange experience I had with Xenon File Manager. File Managers should never exhibit strange behavior like this, and should preserve key functions like "undo" as well as keep a log of what transpired, idealy. This is why I stick with Windows Explorer, because even though it's very basic, it doesn't do anything strange that I don't expect, and it's at least able to "undo" the previous action if I change my mind. 3rd party File Managers don't always keep these critical functions, focusing instead on a prettier user interface. But the lack of the File Manager actions to the end user is very dangerous, as end users need to always fully control what the file manager is doing, and always be informed on what it is going to do / has done in the past.
And the moral of the story here is, BACK UP YOUR DATA!! Fortunately I back up my files religiously, and was able to restore my Windows and all data within 30 minutes, but this is a great lesson to me confirming my paranoia about backing up data is not wasted effort.
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From where did you get Xenon File Manager?
How did you shutdown Windows, C+A+D or the power button?
Ed
I downloaded it from this site, a redirect to Sourceforge. I shut down windows by using the Windows shutdown command.
This is such a bizarre story, that if it didn't happen to me I would never believe it. I still cannot believe that a file manager like Xenon could wipe out half my files and my profile data in the space of a few seconds. Simply incredible. I think the data was probably there, but Xenon somehow corrupted the MBR or some Windows file index that lost track of all those files, because there's no way it had a chance to wipe away those files.
This is my first bad experience with a portable app, ever. I really hope it will be my last.
And I hope maybe the authors of Xenon File Manager might be able to shed some light on this strange and bizarre event. Hopefully other users won't lose critical data like I did, and more importantly, teach everyone to back up their data religiously.
Everything that you point at as missing is a part of the user profile.
The most likely cause of this will have been some error at login that caused Windows to log you in with a new profile directory instead of reusing your existing one. It would cause all of the symptoms you saw.
As for what caused that to happen.... well, I guess xenon might have done something to cause it, but it's never done anything similar for its many many other users, and I have in the past seen PCs where the user has had 20-30 profile directories (username, username.001, username.002 etc) that windows just decided to create for them.
Might have been a registry corruption, might have been a filesystem corruption, but, in all honesty, the most likely root cause is that the windows kernel crashed at that point, it happens, and it can leave your machine in a real mess.
That might be, but I seriously doubt it Jimbo. I had a single user on this Dell (aside from the default Windows Admin which shows up in safe mode). And I was able to access some of the files that I had in that user's profile, such as the "download" folder in "my documents" of this user. If Windows had logged me in with a new profile, I should not / would not have had access to any documents in the previous user profile.
With regards as to what might have caused to happen, the most likely candidate is Xenon, because it was the only piece of relatively untested software running at the time that the problem occurred.
I have used Avast / Office 2003 / Bullzip PDF / Google Chrome for a lot longer than Xenon, and I use them on half a dozen of other Windows XP machines at home and at work, and none of the machines have ever had a problem like this, so I have to theorize it's Xenon. The fact that the problem occurred right as I was doing something with Xenon speaks volumes too.
Bottom line is, I could not have asked for a better, cleaner machine to test a software out and be able to reasonable isolate the problem to that new software. New computer, running trusted and well known programs, and experience a problem when running a new software, all point the problem being with the new software I was using. If my computer had a lot more software installed, and had been used for months and months with a registry that was cluttered, yes I would understand your argument.
But as I happily type on this restored machine, without Xenon, and with zero problems, I can only say that I can be about as sure as I possibly can be, that the problem was with Xenon, and nothing else on my machine.
I guess we'll never know, but as a very experienced long time DOS / Windows power user, I'll have to stick to my suspicions, until I have another experience that proves me wrong, or the developers explain what happened and that it could not possibly have been Xenon.
EDIT to add: Since I had made an Acronis image of the corrupted Windows install, I used Acronis explorer to look at the Documents and Settings directory. And sure enough, there was only my single username profile / folder. There is no username.001 / username.002 etc directories / profiles. Also, this is the only user profile, besides the standard "All Users" profiles, etc. So this seems to confirm that it was not a profile problem.
I'm sorry that you've had problems with Xenon. What were the source and destination of the file? Also did you use D&D? Btw, the cut splash screen tells you that it is moving a file. The button is a cancel button to stop it. I hope you will be willing to try version 2 when it comes out because it is a complete rewrite (in C++ instead of autoit) and is much less likely to be buggy. (I blame autoit for most of the bugs.)
cowsay Moo
cowthink 'Dude, why are you staring at me.'
Bit of a side note, but the cut is a bit unclear. How about we do a file move icon. I can do one using the same icon set the PA theme for Xenon is in.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I agree, That would be better for the 1.5 release.
cowsay Moo
cowthink 'Dude, why are you staring at me.'
Hi John B., what would be nice also is a "Xenon log" that logs what the file manager did, in terms of moving / deleting / copying files around. That way a user can have good visibility in terms of what has changed from a file and system perspective.
I know that's a lot to ask, but it would be a killer addition if it had that. And the file log could be used to have limited undo capability, just like Windows Explorer.
Thanks!
Hi John B., thank you for your reply. Yes I would definitely try out version 2 when it comes out. You guys work too hard on this stuff for us not to use it.
However, I will definitely try it out in a virtual PC though, and thoroughly test it, to make sure I won't experience any bugs. But I do appreciate your sentiment and will look forward to version 2.
By the way, what is D&D? The source of the file was My Documents\temp, and the destination was My Documents\Downloads\other files . Thanks for the info on the splash screen, I don't know why it didn't show any text on it, on the screen nor the button. Maybe in the future pressing "ESC" can do the samething as the button, that way if people don't see the text on the button they can still cancel out of the screen.
Thank you again for your reply and help!
D&D = Drag and Drop
Version 2 is currently in beta testing so you can try it out now if you want. I just updated it today, actually. The file operation screen is different and uses a progress bar instead of an image so I think that would work better.
cowsay Moo
cowthink 'Dude, why are you staring at me.'
Ok thanks for the explanation. No I don't use drag and drop, because I didn't see how I could put the two tabs next to each other (I really haven't played around much with Xenon before). So I used the manual right click > cut, and click on the new tab, right click > paste. I cancelled before step 2 when the pop-up showed up.
Thanks for the link to beta testing, I'll give it a go in my virtual PC and see how it performs.
Thanks again for your helpful replies!
Based on the window you saw, it sounds like the files were moved somewhere. That would have taken place relatively quickly since it just updates the pointers. Can you check your hard drive elsewhere for some of the files by searching? They're probably just elsewhere. Actually, I think you already restored and ditched the old one right?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John, I actually used Acronis to make a back up image of that corrupted Windows XP install before I ditched it (I'm pretty anal about back ups, and even make back ups of corrupted install just in case I need to go back and look for something).
However, Acronis image explorer doesn't have a search function, from what I can tell, to look for files. I did go through and manually poke through a bunch of folders in C:\windows and my profile folders, and can't see where the missing files went.
It is worth noting, the file that I was actually trying to cut and paste via Xenon file manager, still exists. When I restarted Windows, it was still in my original folder, and I had used Windows Explorer to cut and paste it to the destination folder that I wanted. However, it's the other stuff, that I never intended to cut / paste, that is missing. That's what makes it all the more baffling.
Thanks for your help.
If you have time, do a fresh backup of your clean machine and then try Xenon again and see if the problem reoccurs. If it does maybe you can catch what is happening before shutting down.
Ed
Hi Ed, I don't have time to do it right now, but when I get a chance later this week I'll see if I have time to do this test. It would be interesting for sure.
This is a long topic and reference has been made to the "profile".
Just to check:
Could you navigate to:
C:\Documents and Settings
and note what you see:
is there a directory/folder with a name like yourlogin.00X ?
If not, ok, but could not hurt to check.
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
Hi Tim, that is correct, there are no extra folders, like .00x and such. There is only one true user folder, my user, aside from all the standard user folders (all users, default user, etc...)
I do agree it can be confusing so it's good to double check. Thanks.
SIMILAR PROBLEMS.
USING XP, 2003, FACTORY PRE-INSTALLED ON IBM LAPTOP.
CURRENT RE-INSTALL WAS CLEAN, AND PRE-XENON ON THE EXTERNALS.
XP REQUIRED CHECK AND SCAN DISK TO CORRECT ERRORS ON HEWLETT-PACKARD 320GB HDD.
NUMEROUS ERRORS FOUND AND CORRECTED.
THEREUPON THE HARDDRIVE (WITH XENON) WAS SHOWN TO HAVE NO DATA.
ONLY OPTION GIVEN WAS TO REFORMAT.
I DIDN'T.
UPON NEXT STARTUP, XP AGAIN REQUIRED CHECK AND SCAN DISK.
DISK REPORTED AGAIN AS CORRUPT, AND CORRECTIONS TO BE MADE.
NO CORRECTIONS MADE.
START UP PROCEEDED, AND THE ALL DATA ON EXTERNAL HDD WAS ACCESSIBLE.
I DID NOT SUSPECT XENON.
XENON ALSO ON MALLORY 16GB THUMB DRIVE.
XP USUALLY SHOWS THE INTERNAL, THE HP DRIVE, THE MALLORY, AND, AT THE LAST, A WESTERN DIGITAL 500GB EXTERNAL.
WITHOUT THE HP HDD IN THE LINE UP, IT WAS THE INTERNAL, THE MALLORY, AND THE WESTERN DIGITAL.
XP REQUIRED CHECK AND SCAN OF THE THUMB DRIVE, INDICATING FILES CORRUPT.
I REMOVED THE MALLORY, AND LET XP PROCESS START UP.
THUMB DRIVE DATA WAS TOTALLY ACCESSIBLE.
XENON NOT ON THE WESTERN DIGITAL DRIVE, NOR ON THE INTERNAL HDD.
DATA ON THE HP IS DUPLICATED ON THE WESTERN DIGITAL.
DATA ON THE MALLORY IS DUPLICATED ON THE HP AND THE WESTERN DIGITAL.
THIS DOES NOT BODE WELL FOR XENON.
allan
Did you even run Xenon?
Also, we could just pull Xenon 1.5 and stop development on 2.0 considering that I've gotten no feedback on the latest beta.
cowsay Moo
cowthink 'Dude, why are you staring at me.'
What he's describing isn't really possible for software to do. So me thinks something else is at work here. And you've got over 115,000 downloads of 1.5, so there are a LOT of people out there that like it!
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
got over 115,000 downloads of 1.5, so there are a LOT of people out there that like it!
Or a lot of people who don't actually use it.
Or a lot of people that can't be bothered reporting a problem with it.
I've seen drugs pulled from the market and cars from the road with lower rates of reported problems.
Ed
I believe there have been two reports of this issue. One was unsolved. And this one by the actual explanation isn't possible with a piece of software.... especially since it isn't even clear he ran it.
If it deleted files randomly, we'd have a LOT of complaints after 115k downloads.
Stop being alarmist and show some support for a developer working for you for free.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
That's why I asked if he ran it.
cowsay Moo
cowthink 'Dude, why are you staring at me.'
positive! Working on your own app can be tough, I know, only last week Toucan 2.0.5 had some major issues, including not even running on some PCs, but trust me, keep going, for example (although it may not be totally relevent to you) I am fairly sure that my work on Toucan helped me to get an offer of a place at a top UK university (I shall blog about that soon, it means good things).
On a slightly wider note I was talking to John Haller the other day about testing, I do think that the homegrown apps here do need more testing, ideas welcome, I might start a new topic on this later. Personally I found it very frustrating to see all the bugs in 2.0.5 after all the work I had put in but werent caught becasue of the lack of testing.
EDIT: Hope that didnt come off too preachey, I just think that you have a really great app in Xenon with loads of potential, don't give up!
Well, I'd rather not give up. It's just that with no feedback at all, I can't really do anything.
cowsay Moo
cowthink 'Dude, why are you staring at me.'