do I need applog

Thanks, guys. Out they go.

 

Hi there Billy Bob,
I had posted the size of my 2 Applog Folders to see if that size was normal.
But yes they are no more exept the Applog$$$ that is still in my Backup resting for the time .
and thanks John B. for that Link that cleared any doubts that I had.
I will take careful note to compare if any Programs take longer to load just for my own curiosity.
so far so good
cheers
hawk22

 

I may be knocking myself off of the pedestal that you guys have me on but here goes anyway.

I believe that the link JohnB pointed to deals with a completely different issue.

It deals with STARTUP problems. It tells what certain thiings being loaded at startup do. And in turn effects System Resources. That is the end of it.

It does tell what Taskmonitor does. But what it does not tell us is what effects Taskmon may have on the rest of the system.

The issue being discussed here is what happens after something is loaded. And way beyond startup.

I say Taskmon is useless. I say it drives defrag bonkers and PSYSICALLY OVERWORKS the Hard Drive.

Others may disagree. Well so be it. I fully expect that.

When I can cut the defrag time from 3-4 minutes down to no more than 1 minute and most of the time 30 seconds I think that says something. And these times are on just 1.25gig of data. What in the world would it be on a much larger amount of data.

Any teeney-weeny, itty-bitty bit of time that may be saved in starting a program may well be lost and then some when defragging. I also have the wild idea that it might even have some effect on the life of a hard drive.

With short seek times and high transfer rates of today's hard drives, it is probably superfluous. "

If that is saying it may not be of any real help then I fully agree.

OOPS !!

I have a question that I have never been able to realy answer.

Does Taskmonitor work on all partitions or just the C: drive ?

If just the C: drive then it may well be useless for me as I have very few programs on the C: drive. Most ( 95% ) programs are on other partitions and only have a Shortcut to them in a folder on the Desktop.

I think that a lot of times Microsoft and others base their info on us having just one drive ( partition ) with which I also disagree.

BillyBob

 

Taskmon was part of the original Win98 system, as a attempt to "automatically" add a little speed to PCs that had slow disks and little ram. (no one seems to remember those days, where every little tweak helped).

This is from the Win 98 Resource Kit Chapter 10 "Disks and File Systems "

"Disk Defragmenter has been enhanced to make programs start much faster. When a program starts (loads), it typically reads an EXE file and various DLL files. However, only portions of the EXE and DLL files are read during start. Furthermore, these reads are not sequential and jump back and forth, both within the same file and between files. Every one of these non sequential accesses translate to a disk seek and a performance penalty. Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter tries to place disk clusters in the order they are read, so these seeks are eliminated or greatly reduced, shortening the time needed to start the program. "


As pointed out in this thread, on todays fast channel, fast access, huge memory boxes, this optimization will most likely never be noticed. And, the fact the the EXE and other DLL files required at run time, cause the disk heads to jump around in a non optimum fashion, is not noticed due to this speed.

Hence the recommendation to stop runnning Taskmon, and delete all the APPLOG files. (btw the $$$ ones can go to. I can't remember when they are created, but they serve no useful purpose)


BillyBob:
Taskmon tracks all apps that initiate, regardless of what drive they are on.

The letter at the end of the file extension indicates that drive.
Ie: LGC is the C: drive, and LGD is the D: drive.

 

WhitPhil

Thanks for the info. I have to admit I never paid any attention to that as I never had TaskMon loading that long.

BillyBob

 

Hi BillyBob. I posted that link just to shed a little light on the TaskMonitor function. I agree that it may be somewhat useless/redundant. I have had it deactivated for a couple of years now, with no adverse affects. I also cleaned out the Applog files, and none have been rebuilt nor have they been missed. I use the WinME defag on my Win98SE and it runs quite quickly compared to the 98 defrag.

I would recommend to anyone that is into turning things off/on to do a little research first. Could save a bundle of trouble down the road. Being a tinkerer myself, have gone down that road.

With the amount of info out on the net and on BBS's like this one there is a lot of help out there, even for the beginner.

 

I posted that link just to shed a little light on the TaskMonitor function. I agree that it may be somewhat useless/redundant

OK. I now believe we are now reading from the same page in the same book.

I also agree with using Win ME defrag in 98 FE & SE. Much better and faster.

With the amount of info out on the net and on BBS's like this one there is a lot of help out there, even for the beginner

To that I say AMEN. More so to this BBS.

Just as long as those reading posts such as this one realize that there may ( not just may but more than likely will be ) differing opinions and take it as such and realize that the final decision does rest on the users shoulders.

We here on this BBS can bring only out the pros and cons and possible side effects of things.

BillyBob

 

Well Gentlemen,
I don’t think there is anything more one could hope for in answers to this question:
“do I need Applog" The resounding answer is" NO "
As Billy Bob states it is up to the User to decide if HE or SHE will accept the findings of the Members of this BBS.
I can confidently say that anyone who has been visiting this BBS on a more regular basis and followed a query like this one can follow the recommendations with full confidence.
I know I do.
Thanks to all involved
Hawk22

 

hawk22--Nah--I just could not let you have the last post.
Here is a Registry tweak from PC Magazine to delete the Applog files and prevent further logging

"Windows 98 and Me track the loading patterns of your programs and use this data to fine-tune the DEFRAG process. The benefit, however, may be canceled by the time required and the space occupied by the logged data in C:\Windows\applog. Using this tweak, you can delete the files in that folder and prevent further logging.



HKLM\software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Applets\Defrag\AppStartParams
UseProfile DWORD 0


HKLM\software\Microsoft\WindowsCurrentVersion\Run
Action: Find and delete the value whose data is the full path name of Taskmon "

This tweak comes from this article (several pages in)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,909988,00.asp

 

Welshjim:

The only "tweak" that is valid (for getting rid of Applog/Taskmon), is the one that says to remove it from the Run key.

The UseProfile one is actually telling Defrag to defrag the programs in \Applog in the order they were placed there, as opposed to their run frequency.

More Technical description in Win (8 ResKit Chapter 10 - Disks and File Systems

So what the PCMag tweak is actually doing is stopping Taskmon from maintaining the Applog files, but still causing Defrag to have to go through and analyze them. The first time this happens, defrag is still going to optimize the programs, but this time put them in the sequence that they appear in the Applog folder. Subsequent runs, defrag still has to process the info in the \Applog files and then ensure that the programs/files are on disk in that sequence. Odds will now be pretty good that they are, but if you really want to save this processing, just get rid of the \applog files.
(as the gist of this thread says!!!)