[2018-03-23] Winrep18 (4.0.15+) {Rant and Rave}

[mcc85]

Hi everyone, I'd like to introduce myself... my name is Michael and I'm a Senior Technician (among a dozen other titles/hats) for a small IT company with about 25+ years experience in hardware and networking engineering/administration/support/etc.

Ok, so, just want to congratulate the team that made this awesome program. I think it is absolutely amazing, and think that I will be using it a lot as time goes on... Whenever I work on a client machine I usually jump to the desire to install a fresh OS image, but with this tool I can generally save some time if it seems rather apparent that it will take longer to set everything back up the way the client wants the machine.

However... I've got some serious problems with the way the program works, #1 being that if I run the all repairs function, the program opens about 30 different command prompts on top of whatever else I happen to be working on... that is a serious aggravation. Is there an option to keep it all in one command prompt or is there an option to have it run without it obnoxiously popping up and consistently derailing whatever I am typing or researching?

Seriously, there's no problem with it being on the backburner, I'm just doing research or coming up with a word/text document, and literally a hundred windows pop up and disappear...

That is by far my biggest gripe with this program. I mean, you've got such a great product here, why would anyone make it that annoying?

I have some other suggestions though besides that. Perhaps this whole repair program could be streamlined into a 'one touch' button that basically checks everything? I mean, using this in conjunction with sfc chkdsk and dism is pretty cool even though I already knew to use those programs, what this program offers though is the ability to have all of these options and templates. Could this be deployed in a corporate environment, domain, or small workgroup/homegroup? I've noticed that the program doesn't like being run over the network which saddens me, but not enough to discourage using it. I don't mind using the portable version on my thumbdrive, but a network function would be absolutely terrific!

Still I think that there ought to be a one click version of the tool (i don't mean just the 'all presets' function, i mean everything... reparse to firewall rules, one click n done... that would appeal to a great deal of people). This is onto something big. I think this could be the next hirens or ubcd, and what they lacked was basically a clever little GUI that strung all of it together. I still don't know what's okay to suggest for inclusion and what isn't, but I'm assuming that anything open source is off limits? Maybe inclusion is a matter of contacting any given developers? Maybe some of you software engineers don't mind using the included windows tools to do half of the things i'm about to mention, but here I go.

HDTune is a great program, and I use it all the time to check disk health, that way I can tell whether SFC or CHKDSK will even work at all.
ADW Cleaner is another great program, use that a lot too to determine whether or not I need to load up MWB, or just go with a wipe/reload, or hell a new hard drive.
SDI-Tool.org is an excellent program that checks all of the devices and whether the drivers are up to date, I used to use driverpacksolutions but SDI is way better.
Rkill/rkill64 is great for if there's some serious stuff on a computer that won't let up.

I've got a load of other suggestions that would complement this software, but I'd like to know if my suggestions are even welcome or if they draw inspiration for the devs?

If nothing else, please do something about the 100 pop ups that derail anything you happen to be typing or researching at the time... That is beyond annoying.

Everything else about this program is awesome. I don't like how it was showing up as a trojan however, i'm guessing it was a false positive but I'm no programmer, i just use these tools to get jobs done. All things considered... I still love this program despite the few flaws it has which I feel could be easily remedied.

What do you all think?

[Boggin]

I'll pass your thread onto my Support.

The program should be run in Safe Mode with Networking so I would think that using the machine for anything else while the repairs are being done would be less than practical.

A word of caution though.

Some who are using Win 10 have found they have been left with just a black screen and white cursor after the reboot, so it would be prudent to create an image onto external media and a means to boot up to restore from it.

I hope you encourage your clients to make regular system images - I use Macrium Reflect Free on my two Win 10 machines as MS have said they have deprecated the Win 7 system image on Win 10 and have advised to use a 3rd party program.

I and others have found that while the repair program has said it has created a restore point, if that option is taken up - it doesn't physically create it.

This can be checked by going into System protection after creating it through the program.

Have you considered performing a repair install instead of a clean install as that doesn't affect personal stuff or installed programs.

However, Win 10 can reset some items back to default, but they are simple to check and put back the way your clients may want them.

As for the reported Trojan which is a false positive, it would depend upon which AV program is being used - Norton Security doesn't snag it, although it did for an earlier version for me until it was white listed.

So far it has only been reported that Windows Defender (Win 10) and MSE have snagged this and kicked out the repair program, although it can be downloaded and run in Safe Mode with Networking - also, in the main, v4.0.14 doesn't seem to be affected.

[jpm]

I believe if you run the .exe  with  /silent  it will do what you want.
The sinlge click idea we started introducing in 4.0 but would love input on that. In fact. if you would write me are support @ tweaking . com I;d love to pick your brain and hear some of your suggestion as we are working on the UI as we speak.