Armed with a plethora of features, Unsurrogater sports a clean user interface that builds on a Job Category based navigation. The duplicate search process itself is very intuitive to start as the wizards guide you to setting up the job.

Search Result

Results are viewed hierarchically in a Tree Table display.

Auto Marking

Files can be marked manually or using the Auto Mark feature that takes hints from the user & automatically selects files across the entire result.

Actions

After marking the files, users can choose to perform operations such as copy, move, delete, archive, replace by hard links, etc.

Reports

Results can be stored historically for viewing later or exported as an HTML/XML Report.

Result Combination

A key feature of Unsurrogater is the ability to combine the search results of multiple jobs & discover new duplicates. This saves a lot of time as you don’t have to run the job again for the files already scanned.

1. Start Firefox in Safe Mode (from Start menu)
2. Reset all the addons
3. Restart firefox

You can find the most recent version of the site at http://nssf.maxotek.net

Initially, I thought it was due to overheating of the CPU as the error would always occur after 4-5 minutes and it could be avoided if the operation was run through a pause-resume cycle. However, the BIOS did not report any overheating event. The temperature was a bit high, but certainly not beyond the recommended limits. Then, I thought that my system must have got corrupted, so I dual booted with another clean install of Windows XP SP2. But, the problem existed there as well.

Next, I tried booting into safe mode and doing the RAR compression there. This worked and I seemed to be nearing to the culprit – a driver error. I would not mind to do RAR compressions in safe mode, but Windows Movie Maker would not work in Safe mode. So, I had to resolve this error. I started scrolling the time backwards, trying to recall when was it that problem didn’t exist and what changes (Hardware/Software) I had made since then.

I pin pointed the Blue Screen of Death error to the additional 512 MB DDR Ram module that I had recently installed. So, I took out the new chip and tried to run the processes. This worked and the annoying IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error was no where to be seen. I tried the same with just the other chip on and the error didn’t reproduce there either. So, the problem seems to be a case of incompatibility between the two RAM chips. Strangely though, they are at peace with each other as long as a three way heavy Job (CPU, RAM & HDD) isn’t executed.

Update

I have switched the RAM chips to single channel mode. Currently, a test run with heavy stress is under action. 9 Minutes into the RAR Compression & all is OK up until now.

15 Minutes gone, still no Stop Error. Another thing that I did, was reset the BIOS settings to Optimal.

After 27 minutes of non-stop compression, the process has finally come to an end. The good news is that, the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Stop Error did not surface.

Switching to Single Channel mode does negate some amount of the performance gain as the Intel Processors do benefit from the Dual Channel mode. But, that is a very minor issue compared to what I had been facing. All is well that ends well.

Since then, I have had to download the Direct X SDK and re-format my Windows partition. Thanks to the power failure attributing to Visual Studio Orcas Uninstallation going berserk. That wasn’t the end of it though. The old nLited Unattended CD of Windows XP SP2 which was backed up on the CD-RW blew as well.

Back to the tutorials! The entire article being well explained is divided into 8 parts. I’ve managed to sail through the first two. Although, I cannot say that everything was crystal clear. This whole venture requires a lot of background learning on the basis of the co-ordinate system and patience is the key.

Here goes the link.

Again, the urge to build applications that stand out has pushed the demand for custom skinning of Forms. Fortunately, implementing these using .NET are much easier, although still no child’s play. The complicacies involved in the Drawing of Windows is something that I am realizing now. Countless Messages need to be intercepted, scenarios handled. I must say that there are quite a few quality products that allow painless skinning of Forms and controls, Skincrafter being one of them.

Though, what I want is to have total control over the skinning. Something which can only come when the source code is with you. After a lot of Googling, I found a project developed by Szymon Kobalczyk to be extremely good. But once again, I am not satisfied with things. I want to create a skinning tool that would be even better and so I start a journey today, as I did with Pika Bot. Only this time, with a lot more experience.

I have been traversing through Szymon’s codes quite a lot. Getting a hold of someone’s code takes a lot of time. But I do seem to be getting there little by little. I am going to build the skinner from ground up and use his codes for references where I falter.

Friday, June 8 2007

Not much luck in getting the thing to work. Nor have I been able to rectify the resizing bug that’s present in Szymon’s code.

Sunday, June 10 2007

I have made considerable progress in the Skinner. Most of the messages have been intercepted pretty well although some bugs continue to exist along with an overall slowness in the drawing.

Saturday, June 16 2007

Fixed major problems which had quite simple roots. Still, a few painting bugs remain.

Saturday, June 23 2007

The Form Skinner is almost ready to be released. It also includes a new licensing mechanism that uses hardware fingerprints for activation.

The process of linking of library functions during runtime is called Dynamic Linking. In Dynamic Linking, the code for the functions are not copied during compilation, rather only a reference to them is added. At runtime, the reference is resolved (when needed) and the code inside the library where the function definition exists is given the control. After completion the control is passed to the application.

Note:- Control here implies the flow of execution.

Dynamic Linking has various advantages when compared to static linking:-

• Smaller Size of Compiled Application: The function definitions
• Easy Updation: The program does not need recompilation if the library is updated.
• Better Memory Usage: A Library can be shared by multiple programs, thus the memory requirement is reduced.

A compiled library file has an extension .dll which stands for Dynamic Link Library.

The process of linking of library functions during runtime is called Dynamic Linking. In Dynamic Linking, the code for the functions are not copied during compilation, rather only a reference to them is added. At runtime, the reference is resolved (when needed) and the code inside the library where the function definition exists is given the control. After completion the control is passed to the application.

Note:- Control here implies the flow of execution.

Dynamic Linking has various advantages when compared to static linking:-

• Smaller Size of Compiled Application: The function definitions
• Easy Updation: The program does not need recompilation if the library is updated.
• Better Memory Usage: A Library can be shared by multiple programs, thus the memory requirement is reduced.

A compiled library file has an extension .dll which stands for Dynamic Link Library.