Winpulse
v.0.5.3
v.0.4.5
Date: dec-2001

Contents.

1. Introduction.
2. Starting Winpulse.
3. Main Window.
4. Sentinels & Speeders.
5. Designer.
6. Options.
7. FAQ.
8. Contacts+Misc.

 

Introduction.

Winpulse is a system resources monitoring utility.
Primary platforms: Win2000, WinNT, WinXP
Secondary platforms: Win95,Win98, WinME (why?)

Starting Winpulse.

Unpack winpulse.zip to some directory. Winpulse directory structure contains:

  File or directory Explanation
  wpulse32.exe
Winpulse launcher
  engine32.dex
Winpulse dynamic executable engine
  awiz32.dll
"About" window shared lib
  cpuwiz32.dll
"CPU" window shared lib
  /help
Help directory
  /skins
Skins directory (not real skins, see Skins section)
  /data Data directory

To run Winpulse, invoke wpulse32.exe. Winpulse starts as a stub which will launch main module. The stub will be closed immediately after engine32 module was launched. Because Winpulse uses various command line options, stub checks for input arguments validity and dumps errors or messages to the terminal where it was invoked from. GUI part has no ability to dump data to standard output without locking it.

Command line syntax:
wpulse32.exe [flags]
As a flag you can use: '-', '--' (unix style), '/' (dos style).
As options assigning ':' or '=' can be used.
Flags are case insensitive. Order of flags is not important.
([] - arbitrary, <> - obligatory)

Flags: Description Notes
/debug=<level>

sets debug level. Debugging console will be opened.
<level>: number in the range 0...100:
0
- no debug information
10 - functions flow
20 - functions flow and major actions
100 - very verbose debugging.
Other combinations are possible, of course.

WARNING: High level of debugging may significanlty decrease performance of the system because of high intensity of dumps to debugging console (e.g. level >80 - very very intensive debugging)
/docking=<trigger> On WinXP platfrom when Winpulse works in docking mode, Desktop icons get shifted. This behaviour was reported by Winpulse user and currently this option allows to disable docking feature
Docking mode <trigger> values:
yes - docking mode enabled
no - docking mode disabled
valid values:
1,true,yes
0,false,no
/unplug=<sentinel>

Unplugs Sentinel from current session (Sentinel will not be created). Valid values for <sentinel>:
0 - Drives Sentinel
1 - CPU Sentinel
2 - Memory Sentinel
3 - FSR Sentinel
4 - Audio Sentinel
5 - System Sentinel
6 - Net Sentinel
7 - Kernel Sentinel
8 - LAN Sentinel
9 - Mail Sentinel
10 - Modem Sentinel

Multiple unplugging is supported (e.g. /unplug=1 /unplug=2)

Can be used with /unlink simultaneously
/unlink=<speeder>

Unlinks Speeder from current session (Speeder will not be created). Valid values for Speeders:
ram - Physical memory speeder
swp - Swap Space speeder
vm - Virtual memory speeder
usr - User resources speeder
gdi - GDI resources speeder
audio - Master volume speeder
wav - Wave volume speeder
clock - Clock speeder
os - OS speeder
scr - Screen resolution speeder
host - Host speeder
user - Logged user speeder
live - OS live speeder
mapi - MAPI speeder
key - Keyboard language speeder
power - Power speeder
exe - Executor speeder
thread - Thread speeder
process - Processes speeder
event - Events speeder
mutex - Mutexes speeder
semaphore - Semaphores speeder
sections - Sections speeder

Speeders' names are case sensitive.
Multiple unlinking is supported (e.g. /unlink=mapi /unlink=vm)
Unlinking is NOT supported for dynamic speeders (which are created/destroyed dynamicly during Winpulse session), such as Drive Speeders, CPU Speeders, Ping Speeders, Mail Speeders.

Can be used with /unplug simultaneously
/logfile=<log file> Debug log file where all debug information will be dumped. Takes effect only if /debug flag is specified. Default file name is DEBUG.log

 

Main Window.

Click on Winpulse image area to jump to explanation of specific Sentinel or Speeder.

 

The main Winpulse window is mouse draggable by any point with pressed left button. The window should intercept situations, when screen resolution changes and thus position itself in visible area (which does not happen often because different Win32 platfroms behave differently). By pressing right mouse button the context popup menu will appear. Standard Windows controls will process mouse clicks according to their behaviour if clicked within their area (e.g. pressing right button on Tracker will perfrom nothing :). The Winpulse window can be resized only horizontally. Vertical resizing is not possible. Window can snap to screen borders at defined distance.

Winpulse windows space is occupied by several panels or groups, which are called Sentinels. Each Sentinel contains indicators, which are named Speeders (short for 'speedometer'). Usually particular Sentinel contains the group of Speeders with the same functionality. Winpulse allows to hide and show any Speeder and any Sentinel arbitrarily. Particular Sentinel and Speeder may have its own menu options.

The Sentinels are visible as panels, delimited from each other by shaded frame. Hidden sentinel is not visible at all.

Speeders always contain:
1) Icon - 16x16x32bits image on the left border of Speeder
2) Nick - Speeder description name next to Icon. It's not the same as Speeder name, which in its turn uniquely identifies Speeder in Winpulse. Speeder unique name can be seen in Designer window
All other visual elements are arbitrary, but the main are:
1) Speeders with Gauge bar, which is situated next to the Nick. In major cases also have Free and Total indicators, which are situated below the Gauge Bar.
The Gauge bar usually shows information in percent, but not mandatory. User must refer to specific Speeder help for correct interpretation (e.g. inverse gauge or Ping Speeder)
2) Speeders with Text label. Text label is situated next to the Nick and used by Speeders to display information when Gauge is not needed.

Speeder is customizable via Designer. All visual features (icon,nick,gauge bar, free/total indicators, text label) are adjustable:
1) visibility
2) colors
Click here to see some Winpulse visual configurations...

Speeder may introduce additional visual elements.
Speeder can arbitrarily expand/shrink its height. Width is controlled by Winpulse main window.
User can adjust any Speeder height from Designer.

Both Sentinels and Speeders may share its menus to the main Winpulse menu for quick access. The Sentinels and Speeders options are accessed from Designer.

 

Sentinels & Speeders.

Sentinels contain group of Speeders with similar functionality for optimized performance and resources consumption, and also for more comprehensive look.

Sentinel Speeder Description
Drives Sentinel  

This Sentinel monitors disk drives present in the system
Only Floppy drives are not supported because of extreme system performance degradation they can inflict. Adding and removing of drives from the system is intercepted and Sentinel is updated correspondingly (e.g. new network drive mapped).
The drive options, specified in Designer window will be memorized even if drive was removed from the system. These stored options will be applied when drive is added later. It is handy in the case when you have large number of network drives, which are mounted automaticly during login. You can hide drives you don't want to monitor and next time they are added to the system at login, they won't be visible in Winpulse. On the other hand it may lead to confusion in the situation, when at some preliminary stage the user had hidden the drive D: and hid it. After a while the drive was removed from the system. Then user adds drive to the system and mounts it as D: Winpulse will intercept the drive addition but won't show it, because the options tell him the drive should be invisible. User must go to the Designer window and watch what drives are being monitored at the moment.
Issues:
1. Keep in mind that mounting to many network drives may inflict system performance, because drive information is transfered across network.
2. CD/DVD drives are processed sometimes slowly by Win32 when no media is inserted. It's not Winpulse responsibility. I assume, the same pertain to Zip/Backup drives. On my system just keeping CD-ROM in the drive was enough for Win32 to be more generous with CPU load.
3. On Win95,Win95 OSR1 the drive sizes are reported incorrectly for volumes greater than 2G. It's a limitation of Win32 on those platforms. Install OSR2 (but I'm still afraid that the limit will be 8G, however have not checked it).

 

CPU Sentinel   CPU Sentinel monitors cpu load. Multiple processors are supported (up to 32, although never heard of more then 4 cpus box).
CPU Sentinel provides Tray Gauge wich can show the load for two cpus. If the system has only one cpu, the right tray sub-gauge will be inactive (I am actually thinking about showing ram in that gauge)
The Sentinel also provides CPU Menu where user can find out what kind of processor system runs on and some additional properties, like cpu clock, family, model, stepping, type and vendor. The frequency is approximate and calculated internally for one second. It will guarantee more or less precise detection on overclocked cpus.
Issues:
1. On Win95 clones cpu load may sometimes show considerable load (up to 100%) when there is absolutely no load. It is a bug in Win32 subsystem of registry performance counters. Due to this fact, more robust and precise method is being elaborated now which is not based on registry perfromance counters.
Memory Sentinel    
  ram The Speeder monitors Random Access Memory on the system.
  swp The Speeder monitors Swap Memory on the system. It's not always equal to the swap file. When the free size of the swap approaches 0, the system may become very unstable. User must close applications which hog too much memory.
  vm The Speeder monitors Virtual Memory available to the _PROCESS_ which retrieves this information. Hence this speeder is rather useless, because it shows information specific only to Winpulse. Win32 allocates 2G of virtual space for every process, so monitoring this information in regards of the whole system is not feasible.
  free By selecting "Free Memory" in Winpulse menu it's possible to free RAM. The Speeder will be added to Memory Sentinel and will be active for a while. When it reaches 100%, it will be removed from the Sentinel.
FSR Sentinel   Free System Resources. This Sentinel is feasible only on Win95 clones, which is very limited on FSR resources. On WinNT clones FSR resources are "virtually" unlimited in comparison with Win95 even on the same box. On WinNT the gauges will be always 100%.
Keep in mind that Speeders show % of free resources, 100% - means 100% of free resources (good), 10% - 10% of free resources (very bad). It is different from all other Gauged Speeders, which show % of consumed space.
  gdi Graphics Device Interface Speeder monitors graphics resources on the system. All visual elements on Win32 system (buttons, windows, etc) are interpreted as graphics resources. When resources are close to 0%, no more "buttons" will be created
  usr This Speeder monitors system resources, often refered as USER resources. Memory heaps, threads, processes, mutexes, semaphores and some other handles are user resources.
System Sentinel    
  clock The Speeder shows current time
In Designer in Speeder Area, Clock Speeder provides capability to change time representation mask.
  os The Speeder shows Operating system
  scr The Speeder shows current screen resolution
  host The Speeder shows host name and its IP address. If IP address is not resolved, it will be 127.0.0.1
  user The Speeder shows currenly logged user name
  live The Speeder shows how long the system was live (without reboots)
In Designer in Speeder Area, Live Speeder provides capability to change time representation mask.
  mapi The Speeder monitors unread emails in INBOX folder for default user via MAPI interface. It utilizes MAPI32.DLL for access to MAPI interface. When Winpulse starts for the first time, the Dialog window will appear from MAPI Layer to choose profile to be used. By checking desired profile and selecting "Remember whatever..." it's possible to prevent MAPI to ask about profile during next Winpulse start. MAPI interface is usually used for access to Exchange server, but it's also possible to communicate with POP3 servers in this way by configuring profile correspondingly.
Mail notifications are delivired immediately after receiving by server, so no frequency is needed for the Speeder.
When new mail arrive, the Speeder will change its icon and show the number of new messages.
Issues:
1. On some boxes Winpulse does not startup and displays nasty error message box: "The procedure entry point MAPIAllocateBuffer could not be located in the dynamic link library mapi32.dll."
This error is caused by corrupted MAPI32.DLL file, which is responsible for MAPI interface. In 99% of cases, some application during installation has replaced original MAPI32.DLL with its own version, which does not comply to M$ MAPI interface. For example, Netscape Communicator and Eudora are notorious to commit such "crime". There are two workarounds:
- Run fixmapi from command line. It should replace corrupted libary with the original MAPI32 stub dll. It certainly works on Win2000.
- If a system does not have fixmapi utility, replace MAPI32.DLL explicitly. DLL can be found in Office97, Office2000, Outlook2000, Explorer 4,5,6 installations. Unpack it into Windows system directory (\system for Win95 clones, \system32 for WinNT clones)
Both workarounds should not affect functionality of MAPI applications.
- If nothing helps, unlink mapi speeder by invoking Winpulse like this:
wpulse32.exe -unlink=mapi
2. MAPI interface is very bloated. POP3 is much simplier and more quick. I'm currently working on POP3 Speeder.
3. Users, who don't use MAPI interface don't need mapi Speeder. It's possible to hide it in Designer or unlink during Winpulse start.
  key

The Speeder shows the Keyboard Language Layout for the currently selected window. The icon shows the country flag of chosen language. If the flag is European Union flag, then the Speeder could not find the resource for selected language. User can add desired resources by himself. Directory /data in Winpulse root directory contains file called keylang.ini. This file contains entries for predefined languages. The structure of the file is as following:

[Languages]
<language name>= <language id>, <language icon>

<lanuage name> - Language name. The name may contain spaces, brackets, etc and will be shown in The Speeder.
<language id> - Win32 numerical id of the language. Can be written both in hexadecimal and decimal. Win32 SDK contains all ids for supported laguages. In case you want to add your language and don't know id, write me email.
<language icon> - file name of a flag icon. All icons must be located in /data directory. File name cannot be absolute path, but only relative from /data.
For exmaple: Russian= $0419, ru.ico
The user must restart Winpulse to take effects of the changes to the file.

 

  power

The Speeder shows the Battry charge status on Laptops. On desktops the icon of the Speeder will be mains plug and the status in the Gauge Bar will be "plugged".

 

  exe

The Speeder contain small edit area where user can run application. PATH envi-variable is in effect. Started applicaitons are stored in a small stack. If nothing happened after pressing Enter, then probably executable was not found or another error occured. If meters are enabled, error will be displayed there, explaining why application could not be launched.

 

Audio Sentinel    
  audio The Speeder monitors Master Volume of the sound card. User can change volume. Left/Right Balance is processed correctly.
  wav The Speeder monitors Wave Volume of the sound card. User can change volume. Left/Right Balance is processed correctly.
  cd CD volume (disabled)
  midi MIDI volume (disabled)
Net Sentinel   Sentinel allows to add/delete hosts in Designer. When Net Sentinel is selected in Designer, the Sentinel Area will allow to enter host name and lag time. Host name can be either IP or DNS name. Lag time specifies in milliseconds the time limit which is interpreted by Ping Speeder as lag and will be painted in Alarm Level color. The Ping Speeder has it's own Timer. By selecting Ping Speeder in Designer it's possible to adjust a Frequency of pings.
  ping

The Ping Speeder monitors ping response from specified host. Ping Speeder is controlled from Designer. In Designer user can add/delete/update Ping Speeder. User can specify host to ping (can be either DNS name or IP address), lag time limit (Gauge Bar limit) and frequency of ping. It's not advised to set high frequency of ping (less 100ms), because it can degrade system performance. Usually 1000ms is more than enough. The Speeder's gauge will show the ping time to the host. If the Speeder encounters errors during ping, the gauge will show error explanation:
1. unresolved host - host DNS name could not be resolved
2. time out - there was no ping response for at least 1 sec from host. In future version timeout interval will be configurable.
0ms ping time means that the response from host took less then 1 ms (the highest resolution for ping).
Issues:
1. The Speeder utilizes ICMP.DLL library for pinging. If the library cannot be found, the ping facility will not be available.
2. Ping Speeder tries to resolve host name before starting to ping. If host cannot be resolved, it won't be pinged.
3. Ping Speeder does not support pinging hosts beyond the Firewall/Proxy if they prohibit ICMP packets. In my case even DNS resolution does not work, so I am rejected at previous stage. If the host can be resolved but Firewalls filters out ICMP packet, you will receive "time out".
The only solution I see at present is to use deprived "Tunnelled Ping", which uses UDP or TCP instead of ICMP to "ping" specified host port. For instance, in this way it's possible to "ping" generic deamons like HTTP or FTP.

Kernel Sentinel   Operating system kernel objects
  thread shows number of threads in the System
  process shows number of processes in the System
  event shows number of event queues in the System
  mutex shows number of mutex objects in the System
  semaphore shows number of semaphore objects in thr System
  sections shows number of critical section objects in the System
LAN Sentinel lan Sentinel detects all standard Network interfaces on the system and dynamicly creates Incoming and Outgoing Speeders for every interface, except "Microsoft Loopback" interface.
Speeders names are assigned dynamicly by concatenating words "in" (incoming) and "out" (outgoing) and Network interface name.
Some network adapters don't provide all perfomance information (e.g. no Bandwidth, or no outgoing traffic), as a result Speeders may show invalid information.
In Designer in Speeder Area, LAN Speeders have additional properties:
bandwidth - bandwidth limit for LAN Speeer. At first run LAN Sentinel will assign maximal bandwith of the Network interface. User can change this value. LAN generally is not exploited to its maximum bandwidth and as a result Gauge is usually at 1-10% load all the time. If users wants to restore maximum bandwidth assigned by system, 0 value should be typed in.
bytes/sec - if checked, Speeder will show traffic meters in bytes/sec instead of traditional networkds bps.

ATTENTION: Network interfaces are accessed through Performance counters and as a result this Sentinel is not available on Win95 clones.
Mail Sentinel pop3

Sentinel contains POP Speeders. POP Speeder is an interface to access POP3 mail server to retrieve information about unread mails on the server and notify user about this.
Speeder Designer and Sentinel Designer have additional properties:
user - account name of the POP3 account. The name is automaticly assigned to the POP Speeder. This is serious drawback and currently being redesigned.
pass - account password.
server - POP3 mail server IP or DNS name
port - POP3 mail server port
Frequency option is available in Designer to adjust how often account is requested. Currently the Frequency option is in milliseconds which is not very convenient for Mail. It will be changed in the future

ATTENTION: current Winpulse version does not encrypt password for storage.

RAS Sentinel ras Sentinel monitors standard Modem interface.
RAS Sentinel reuses LAN Sentinel for detecting WAN Network Interface and monitoring its traffic.
All features and functionality are identical to LAN Sentinel.
Not available on Win95 clones

 

Designer.
Click on image area to jump to explanation.

Snap 1. Snap 2.

Designer allows to configure Sentinels and Speeders. Designer window has several areas:

Area Description
menu Designer menu:
Refresh - refreshes Tree of Sentinels and Speeder in Area 1.
Hide - hides currenlty selected Sentinel or Speeder
Show - shows currenlty selected Sentinel or Speeder
Destroy - destroys currently selected Speeder. Only editable Speeders can be destroyed (e.g. Ping Speeder, Mail Speeder). If Speeder does not support destruction, this menu will be disabled
Add - adds new Speeder to Sentinel. editable Speeders can be added (e.g. Ping Speeder, Mail Speeder). If Speeder does not support addition, this menu will be disabled
Update - updates Speeder's properties from Area 4. Only this area requires special actions to take effect, because it's common for Sentinel and Speeder. I'm currently elaborating how to get rid of such behaviour and make it adjustable "on-fly".
up - moves currenlty selected Speeder or Sentinel up in Winpulse window
down - moves currently selected Speeder or Sentinel up in Winpulse window.
1 Hierarchical tree of Sentinels and Speeders. Speeders names are not the names you see in Winpulse main window. These are unique internal names. Multiple selection is not supported (thanks to Borland...)
2 Visual properties of Speeders and Sentinels:
Hidden - hides/shows currenlty selected Sentinel or Speeder from Winpulse window (but NOT unlinked or unplugged)
Meters - hides/shows currenlty selected Speeder Free/Total labels. Can be disabled for Speeders which don't provide meters information
Named - hides/shows Speeder Nick.
Iconed - hides/shows Speeder Icon.
Nick - allows to change Speeder Nick name.
Frequency - allows to specify update "frequency" of a Speeder. Usually Speeders are updated by Major Timer, but some Speeders may have their own timers (Ping Speeder, Mail Speeder, Clock Speeder). If Speeder does not support own Frequency update, the option will be disabled. The "frequency" is specified in milliseconds.
Sentinels don't have Meters, Named, Iconed, Nick and Frequency properties.
The effect of every setting in this area is visible immediately after changing.
3 Speeder specific properties:
All Speeders have following properties (Snap 2):
width - adjusts width of gauged or text area. User can decrease/increase the size of a gauge bar or a text label. This could be helpful if the Nick is very big and is obstructed by gauge area.
height - adjusts height of Speeders gauge area (gauge bar or text label). This could be useful if gauge bar is in Spectrum or Oscillo mode and too small to see anything.

Speeder which have Gauge bar additionally have following properties (Snap 1)
Tolerable- sets the color and percentage of tolerable level. If Free value of a Speeder does not exceed Tolerable level, it's Gauge color will change to a chosen one.
Low level - sets the color and percentage of low level. If Free value of a Speeder does not exceed Low level, it's Gauge color will change to a chosen one.
Alarm level - sets the color and percentage of alarm level. If Free value of a Speeder exceeds Low level, it's Gauge color will change to a chosen one. 100% is alarm level as well. This color is used for representing Error Information in Speeder
Stasis level - sets the color of Speeders, which Free/Total values are not changed and updated and always remain static (DVD-ROM Speeders). This color is also used for representing Status Information in Speeder.
Back color - sets backgroud color of Gauge Bar
Font color - sets font color of text in Gauge Bar. Please mind, that in Bar style of Gauge, font color is ignored and color is automaticly calculated (xor)
Style - sets a style of Gauge Bar:
1) Bar - Gauge bar shows instant value
2) Spectrum - Gauge bar shows history of values in Spectrum-like graph
3) Oscillograph - Gauge bar shows history of values in Oscillograph-like graph.
Art - sets additional visual option of a Gauge bar:
1) shadow - Gauge bar will have shaded borders
2) BeOS - a-la BeOS style (single line borders, simple and nice)
Tray - assigns selected Speeder to Tray icon. Tray gauge icon has two bars and Speeder can be assigned to either bars. If some Speeder is assigned to the bar being chosen, the old Speeder will be automaticly deassigned from TRay bar and new Speeder will take possession of the Tray bar. Tray icons are added/deleted in Options window.

The effect of every setting is visible immediately after changing.
4

Sentinel Designer area. If Sentinel supports its own design features, this area will show controls to edit selected Sentinel.
If user selects editable Sentinel, Add button will be enabled to add new Speeder to the Sentinel.
If user selects Speeder under editable Sentinel, Add, Destroy and Update buttons will be enabled to permit following actions:
Add - adds new Speeder with properties of the currently selected Speeder
.
Destroy - destroys currenlty selected Speeder
Update - updates currenlty selected Speeder properties from this Area
User must press Update button in order the changes to take effect.

5 Speeder Designer area. Speeders may provide their own editing capabilities. In this case the area will show controls to edit selected Speeder. Refer to specific Speeder to see what properties can be changed.

 

Options.
Click on image area to jump to explanation.

Winpulse main options are stored in registry in Current User hive. Hence Winpulse options are not shared among different users. This is convenient for machinces which are used by different users.
Options window has 2 main areas:
Area 1 - tree of Options Groups. Option Group can have its own subgroups (e.g. tray)
Area 2 - page with currenly selected Options Group properties.
All options take effect immediately.

Options Group Description
general

Contains general options:
Autostart with Windows - Winpulse will be launched every time user logs in global context (Win2000 allows to login in the current context)
Stay on top - Winpulse window will be top-most window
(Taskbar with "Always on top" option will override Winpulse).
Dock - If this option is enabled, Winpulse window when stuck to left or right screen border will be adjusting Desktop Working Area to Winpulse borders. When Winpulse is docked, all other windows should be limited in their maximuzed size to Winpulse borders (buggy, does not work on WinXP)
Update - "frequency" of major Winpulse timer in milliseconds. It's highly unadvised to set frequency lower than 500 ms, because of significant performance degradation. 1 sec is optimal and very efficient.
Shortcut - system wide key shortcut to Hide/Show Winpulse window. Equivalent to "Hide" popup menu.
Stick at - sets the distance in pixels at which Winpulse window adheres to screen borders.

tray
Tray gauge editor. User can add Tray icons. In Designer window it's possible to assign Speeder to Tray bars.
Buttons:
add - adds new Tray Icon
del - deletes selected Tray Icon.
When Tray icon is selected in Area 1, its Load and Free colors can be adjusted for both Bars.
colors

Contains properties to change the look of Winpulse window:
Transparency
- track gauge allows to change translucency of Winpulse window. Win95 clones (Win95,98,ME) do NOT support transluceny and for these platforms the option is disabled.
Background - changes background color of Winpulse.

Skins.

When Winpulse starts it tries to read file "default.bmp" from /skins directory. If the file is not found, internal icons will be used for Speeders. User can use his own icons by copying default.bmp file into /skins directory and restarting Winpulse.
Skins file is a usual Win32 bmp file where all icons follow each other without gap horizontally. Transaprency color of every icon is the most left-bottom pixel of the image. Here is an example of the default skin:

Icons indexes are used by Speeders to assign icon to itself:

Icon Index Speeder
0 CPU Speeder
1 RAM and VM Speeders
2 Swap Speeder
3 GDI Resources Speeder
4 USER Resources Speeder
5 Clock Speeder
6 Audio Speeder
7 Live Speeder
8 OS Speeder
9 User Speeder
10 Host Speeder
11 Screen Speeder
12 Ping Speeder
13 RAS in and out Speeders
14 MAPI "email recieved" Speeder
15 MAPI and POP "empty" Speeder
16 Key Speeder unknown language
17 Exe Speeder
18 POP "email received" Speeder
19 Power Speeder AC
20 Power Speeder DC
21 LAN Speeder Incoming traffic
22 LAN Speeder Outgoing traffic
23 Kernel Speeders (all)

FAQ.

Q1. Winpulse does not startup and displays nasty error message box: "The procedure entry point MAPIAllocateBuffer could not be located in the dynamic link library mapi32.dll."
A1. This error is caused by corrupted MAPI32.DLL file, which is responsible for MAPI interface. In 99% of cases, some application during installation has replaced original MAPI32.DLL with its own version, which does not comply to M$ MAPI interface. For example, Netscape Communicator and Eudora are notorious to commit such "crime". There are two workarounds:
- Run fixmapi from command line. It should replace corrupted libary with the original MAPI32 stub dll. It certainly works on Win2000.
- If a system does not have fixmapi utility, replace MAPI32.DLL explicitly. DLL can be found in Office97, Office2000, Outlook2000, Explorer 4,5,6 installations. Unpack it into Windows system directory (\system for Win95 clones, \system32 for WinNT clones)
Both workarounds should not affect functionality of MAPI applications.
- If nothing helps, unlink mapi speeder by invoking Winpulse like this:
wpulse32.exe -unlink=mapi

Q2. Winpulse crashes/hangs ?!
A2. Try to run Winpulse from command line with /unplug swtiches to detect which Sentinel causes crash. The easiest way is to unplug all Sentinels except one. When Winpulse runs successfully, plug another Sentinel. For instance:
wpulse32.exe -unplug=1 -unplug=2 -unplug=3 -unplug=4 -unplug=5 -unplug=6
This command will run Winpulse only with Drives Sentinel. Let's assume it works, now enter:
wpulse32.exe -unplug=2 -unplug=3 -unplug=4 -unplug=5 -unplug=6
Let's assume that after running:
wpulse32.exe -unplug=6, Winpulse crashes. So now it's clear that System Sentinel crashes. Let's dive deeper into investigation by unlinking Speeders which belong to System Sentinel with the switch /unlink.
wpulse32.exe -unlink=os -unlink=scr -unlink=host -unlink=user -unlink=live -unlink=mapi -unlink=key
In this way we run Winpulse only with Clock Speeder in System Sentinel. Assume it is ok. Now:
wpulse32.exe -unlink=scr -unlink=host -unlink=user -unlink=live -unlink=mapi -unlink=key
Still fine, and after:
wpulse32.exe -unlink=key, Winpulse crashes or hangs
Now the perpetrator is detected - MAPI Speeder. Run Winpuse as the last time but with additional switch:
wpulse32.exe -unlink=key -debug=100
And send me email with attached DEBUG.log file. I'll try to fix it.

Q3. Where are NT counters ?
A3. Being debugged.

Q4. Your program is a total crap !
A4. Very likely.

Q5. Why does it take so long to implement very easy feature I asked for ?
A5. I have very popular excuse - very limited free time :) Moreover, I'm not very smart and pretty slow.

Q6. What does UA stand for in domain name ?
A6. Ukraine

Q7. What a hell is aka ?
A7. My directory in /home/users.

Q8. What language is it written in ?
A8. delphi + some code in C.

Q8. Development platform ?
A8. PIII-866, 128M, Win2000, 4M Intel82815 graph. card (total crap), 9.4G HDD

 

Contacts+Misc.

developers: dev@aka.com.ua
bugs and help: info@aka.com.ua
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Winpulse primary platform is WinNT (Win2000, WinXP). Win95 clones (Win95,Win98, WinME) are supported but some functionality will not be available. Currently I perform very limited testing on Win98 (checking that Winpulse at least does not crash :) In simple words: Win95 clones must die...

Credits.
Special thanks:
- LES TINAMOUS (a.k.a. Patrice and Maryvonne RONDARD) for french translation of the help for Winpulse 0.4.5.
- Don Woodall for numerous mistakes corrections on /dev page.

During development I've used several free public components as a startup for my own. Some have been changed so heavily that only author text credits remained. Thank you guys for excellent work.


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