Blog: ShowSize, Articles and tips

We are about to release a new version 5 of ShowSize that officially supports Vista. ShowSize 5 is already available to paid users from the user support area. ShowSize 5 overcomes most of the limitations of ShowSize 4 on Vista (see the earlier article).

The only problem that even ShowSize 5 can’t handle is Unused Files Report as described below.

Vista breaks the “Unused Files” feature for NTFS:

On Vista, by default the “last access date” of the files are not updated on NTFS file systems. Microsoft did this to improve Vista performance on NTFS systems.

This means that the above information is useless for all the files on NTFS volumes. There is a registry tweak possible so that Vista starts updating the “last access date” of files. But even then the information won’t be useful for quite some time. For example, if you switch on this feature now you will have to wait for at least 30 days of use to get a report that shows files not used in last 30 days. Hence, it’s not a good solution as there is no way for ShowSize to determine when the tweak was made. In other words, one can never rely on Unused column or the Unused Files report. Besides this tweak might run into performance issues on Vista.

Corporate/LAN users, beware: Moreover, if many Vista systems are using files on a shared NTFS volume, some will update the last access date and some won’t depending on whether they were fixed with the registry tweak. So on a shared volume you can never be sure if the Unused Files report is useful at all.

THE HARD DECISION THAT WE MADE: Hence, it’s not possible to find a decent solution to this problem. We can at most give warning messages on Vista for NTFS volumes. But we can never be sure on shared volumes. Hence, in the newer ShowSize 5, we have entirely dropped this Unused Files report and the Used column in all the reports on Windows Vista.

Important points about running ShowSize 4 on Vista:

• Note that we have a new version ShowSize 5, about to be released, that supports Vista officially. However, if you are trying to run ShowSize 4 on Vista, it might not run unless you fix a DEP setting as described in the following steps.
   
• You should not rely on the “Unused Files Report” or the Used Column in other reports as Windows Vista breaks this feature. There is no easy solution to this problem and hence, we have disabled this report in the new ShowSize 5 on Vista. Once again, if you run ShowSize 4 on Vista, DO NOT USE the unused files report.

Details of running ShowSize 4 on Windows Vista:
(In particular, please see the last point on Unused Files, marked in red)

Please look at the following information only if you want to run ShowSize 4 on Vista. Paid users can instead get the latest pre-release version 5 from the user support area.

1. Windows DEP settings on Vista:

   If you can’t run ShowSize at all (it stops immediately) then a DEP setting can fix it. This is explained in the following steps.

   1. Click on Start–Settings–Control Panel–System
   2. Click on Advanced page tab
   3. Click on the button Settings under Performance
   4. On the Performance Options that comes up, click on the Data Execution Prevention page tab
   5. If you want to know what DEP is, please click on “How does it work” link on that page.
   6. The default setting in XP used to be “Turn on DEP for essential programs and services only.” If that setting is already used, it won’t cause a problem with other software. However, if the second setting is selected, “Turn on DEP for all programs…” then that setting might cause problems with many applications like ShowSize.

   There can be two solutions:

   • Solution 1: Click on the first setting “Turn on DEP for essential programs and services only.” This will fix similar problems with all such applications which can’t run because of DEP setting.

   • Solution 2: Or, if you do want to use DEP and would prefer to keep the second setting, you must add selected programs to the Exceptions List below it. To add ShowSize to the exception list, please follow this procedure:
     • Click on Add button below the list.
     • Browse to the folder where ShowSize is installed. This is usually the folder, c:\program files\ShowSize…\ depending on which ShowSize version you are using.
     • Select the file showsize.exe or showsizepe.exe and click on Open.
     • Click on Apply.

     If the problem you are facing is related to DEP then the problem will go away.

2. ShowSize Help on Vista:
   If you can not see ShowSize help from the Help menu then your copy of Vista does not have the old format Windows Help. Here is the link to the Microsoft web site from where you can download WinHlp32 for Windows Vista.

   WinHelp download for Vista

   Note that the web site first validates your copy of Windows before allowing the download. The update only works for Windows Vista Retail. It doesn’t seem to work for Windows Vista RC2.

3. Error report on System Disk scans:
   On Windows Vista, if you scan the system disk with ShowSize, it will work fine except that it might give a list of errors showing which files it couldn’t access for getting the compressed size. This is normal. These files are locked by Windows and ShowSize can not get compressed sizes for them. In the next version, ShowSize will have an option to ignore these errors.

4. Installing ShowSize actions on the Explorer right-click menu:

   On Windows Vista, you need to run ShowSize as administrator to install the above menus (a Tools operation). After that, you can exit and run it as normal.

5. Vista breaks the “Unused Files” feature for NTFS:

   On Vista, by default the “last access date” of the files are not updated on NTFS file systems. Microsoft did this to improve Vista performance on NTFS systems.

   This means that the above information is useless for all the files on NTFS volumes. There is a registry tweak possible so that Vista starts updating the “last access date” of files. But even then the information won’t be useful for quite some time. For example, if you switch on this feature now you will have to wait for at least 30 days of use to get a report that shows files not used in last 30 days. Hence, it’s not a good solution as there is no way for ShowSize to determine when the tweak was made. In other words, one can never rely on Unused column or the Unused Files report. Besides this tweak might run into performance issues on Vista.

   Corporate/LAN users, beware: Moreover, if many Vista systems are using files on a shared NTFS volume, some will update the last access date and some won’t depending on whether they were fixed with the registry tweak. So on a shared volume you can never be sure if the Unused Files report is useful at all.

   THE HARD DECISION THAT WE MADE: Hence, it’s not possible to find a decent solution to this problem. We can at most give warning messages on Vista for NTFS volumes. But we can never be sure on shared volumes. Hence, in the newer ShowSize 5, we have entirely dropped this Unused Files report and the Used column in all the reports on Windows Vista.

On NetWare volumes, regardless of the default cluster size, a feature called “Block Suballocation” can be enabled. This feature allows the NetWare file system to “reuse” the wasted cluster space by allowing other files to write to the “wasted” portions of existing clusters.

If you are using NetWare volumes all the time and don’t want wasted space reported at all, in ShowSize, you can remove the columns “Wasted Space” and “Size on Disk” by dragging them off the report or by using the “Columns” toolbar button.