CHKFILES Version 1.5a by Ron V. Webber Release date: June 17, 1998 http://www.lightlink.com/ym ym@lightlink.com stochastic@kagi.com Copyright 1998, Stochastic Systems What is CHKFILES? CHKFILES is a program that keeps track of the name, time, date, size, and checksum of every file in every path that you select (which could be every path on your hard drive). You can select paths either recursively (where selecting "C:\" will select every path on partition C) or non-recursively (where selecting "C:\" will only select the root path of partition C). On subsequent runs CHKFILES will update its information and tell you what has been added, changed, or deleted since the last run. It will also tell you if any files have been corrupted. If a file has a different time, date, or size, it will be listed as having been changed, and a new checksum will be calculated and stored. For every file that has not changed time, date, or size, the current checksum will be calculated and compared with the old checksum. If these are different, the file will be listed as bad. The old checksum on a bad file will be kept so that you can check the file again later once you have fixed it. CHKFILES can store the information about every file in two different ways: The "One File" method stores all the information in one main file, named CHKFILES.ALL, which is stored in the same path as the CHKFILES program. The "Every Path" method stores the information for each individual path in that path in a file named CHKFILES.CHK. If you choose to use individual CHKFILES.CHK files for each path, the information remains valid even if you move it and all the files to another path, but you won't be able to tell if an entire path has been deleted since the CHKFILES.CHK file for that path would have been deleted as well. If you choose to use one CHKFILES.ALL file, then you will be able to tell when paths have been deleted, but if all the files in a path are moved to a different path they won't be checked. (They would be listed twice: Once as having been deleted from their original path and once as being new files in their new path.) The "Every Path" method is good if you want to check files that are going to be moved to a new partition and you want to make sure they got there without any corruption. The "One File" method is good if you want to have one file that you can copy to a safe location and use later to check on any corruption. You can also use the "One File" method to check files on a device such as a CD-ROM. The CHKFILES.CHK and CHKFILES.ALL files are in pure ASCII format, so you can print or edit them or use them for other purposes. They also compress quite nicely, which is especially good if you want to store the CHKFILES.ALL file offline somewhere. Starting with version 1.5, the file format has been changed slightly to make the files easier to import into spreadsheet programs. Tabs have been used to seperate the fields on each line, and a header line has been added that CHKFILES uses to determine the format of the file. Files in the older format are automatically converted to the new format when you run CHKFILES. Older versions of CHKFILES can not read the new format. ========================================== Who can use CHKFILES? CHKFILES is released as shareware and is licensed for individual evaluation. Individuals may use CHKFILES for evaluation on their personal computers. If they keep using it, they are expected to pay for it. (See the final section, "How do I pay for CHKFILES".) Business, Commercial, Educational, Institutional, Corporate, or Government use of the shareware version of CHKFILES is not allowed. Contact Stochastic Systems if you wish to include a special version of CHKFILES with some commercial product. The only exception to this is that vendors of shareware programs may include the CHKFILES.EXE program, this text file, and the registration program as a shareware package being distributed. This means that you can include the CHKFILES package on a disk of other shareware that you are selling, but you can not use this version of CHKFILES as a file checking program to check for corruption in the files on the disk of shareware that you are selling. If you received CHKFILES from a shareware distributor, it was NOT registered by that distributor and you are still expected to register if you continue to use it. A special version of CHKFILES is available for commercial distribution. This commercial version is only available directly from Stochastic Systems and is customized with a special licensing file for each commercial licensee. This licensing file also contains the number of copies you are allowed to use at any one time. The commercial version does not work without the licensing file. The commercial version states on the main screen the name of the licensee (usually a company or institution or a specific department) along with the number of licensed copies. Special "commercial only" features may exist. Contact Stochastic Systems for commercial licensing information. CHKFILES is distributed "AS-IS". No warrantee is expressed or implied, including fitness for any purpose. Stochastic Systems will not be responsible for any damage caused by the use, misuse, or abuse of CHKFILES. ========================================== Why should I use CHKFILES? Do you run your system with VERIFY turned OFF to save time? When you do a tape backup, do you leave the auto-compare turned off? If you answered yes to these questions, then you probably can't be bothered with a utility that, if your system is working 100% perfectly, may be just a waste of time. BUT... if you would rather have some peace of mind, read on! Situation 1a: You have a beautifully designed Summer Solstice Card on your computer that you use every year during that hurried summer holiday season. Sometime in August, after the holidays are over, this file is corrupted by that game you downloaded, tried once, and then erased. Since you won't need Solstice Cards until next June, you don't notice the corruption. You do your daily backups, your weekly backups, and your monthly backups. Eventually, this corrupted file gets backed up to all of your tapes. Next June, when you go to mail merge your database with your wonderful card, you notice the corruption. You search all of your tapes and disks, and all you can find is the corrupted file. Too bad you didn't have any way to know that it had been corrupted before you overwrote all your good backup copies! If you had used CHKFILES at least once before the file had been corrupted, then the first time you used it after the file had been corrupted it would have warned you about it, in time to retrieve a good version from your backup tape. Situation 1b: Instead of being corrupted, the file was somehow deleted. CHKFILES, by keeping track of what files are supposed to be in the directory, would tell you that the file had been deleted the next time you ran it. Situation 2a: While you were away from your desk at work, your boss, needing to write a quick note, used your computer to type in and print out a message to the accountant about how wonderful your work was. The file is accidentally stored deep inside the directory that holds all of your fonts. (You happened to be working on font editing before you were called away from your desk, and your boss couldn't be bothered to change directories before he saved the note.) Without CHKFILES, you never would have found this note. With CHKFILES, you see that one of the new files on your computer is a text file inside the font directory. That looks strange, so you look at the file and learn that now would be a great time to ask for a raise! Situation 2b: Instead of being a file that you didn't expect to be there, it is a file that you wrote containing important client information, but you forgot where you stored it. By using CHKFILES, you can get a list of all the new files on your computer and easily find what you need. Situation 3: You just downloaded a complex program that will install all sorts of files all over your system. By running CHKFILES before and after installing this program, you can tell exactly what files this program added, changed, or deleted. This information will be very useful when you want to remove this program from your system. Situation 4: Your brother-in-law is constantly messing with his computer and then calling you to fix it. By running CHKFILES on his computer before he messes with it, you can then run it afterwards to see just what he has deleted so you can get him up and running much faster. ========================================== Which version of CHKFILES should I use? This release is version 1.5a. It is only available in a 32-bit version for use with Windows 95, Windows NT (tested on 3.51 and 4.0), and later operating systems. This version will not run properly in Windows 3.1 with Win32s. (It will not run at all without Win32s.) Previous versions may still be available for 16-bit environments. See the Stochastic Systems website at www.lightlink.com/ym for more information. If there is enough demand from registered users, there may be a 16-bit version of 1.5a, but it is unlikely at this point. Starting with version 1.5, the file format was changed slightly. Files created with version 1.5 or higher will not work with version 1.4 or lower versions of CHKFILES. When using the "one file" option, the CHKFILES.ALL file will be updated to the new format the first time you run the new program, and will then be incompatable with older versions. When using the "each path" option, older format CHKFILES.CHK files will be updated to the new format whenever any of the information in them is changed (any files are added, deleted, or changed in the directory), and will then be incompatable with older versions. If nothing changes in a directory, the older format CHKFILES.CHK file will be unmodified. (This was done so that you could continue to check older CDs with embedded CHKFILES.CHK files in them. If nothing changed on the CD, no attempt would be made to overwrite the old format CHKFILES.CHK file, so there would be no error messages. If anything changed, then the changes would be noted and there would also be an error message about not being able to write the new CHKFILES.CHK file to the CD.) ========================================== How do I use CHKFILES? CHKFILES.EXE is a self-contained program. There are no support files required. CHKFILES will create a CHKFILES.PTH file in the same path as the executable file if you use the "Save Paths" option. It will also store the CHKFILES.ALL file in the same path if you are using the "One File" option, or it will store a CHKFILES.CHK file in every path it checks if you use the "Every Path" option. To run CHKFILES, either use the "Run" function in program manager, double-click on it from file manager or explorer, or assign it to a program group in program manager. In Windows 95 and NT 4.0 you can also put a shortcut to CHKFILES.EXE on your desktop or drag it to the start menu. When CHKFILES runs, it first looks for a CHKFILES.PTH file in the same path. If it finds this file, it will attempt to open it and read the last paths and settings that were used. If there is no CHKFILES.PTH file, which there won't be the first time you run CHKFILES, the program will come up with no paths selected and default to "Recursive" and "Every Path" modes. If you want to save the paths that you select so that they will be there the next time you run CHKFILES, make sure that the "Save Paths" box is checked before you click on "Begin". The "Save Paths" box is checked by default. If you want to select every path on your C drive, select the C drive in the drive select box (upper left), click on the "<..>" entry in the directory select box until the root directory is displayed, and then click on the "Add Path" button. An entry for "C:\" should appear in paths list box. Make sure that the "Recursive" box is checked. When you change drives in the drive select box, the directory box will be updated to show the subdirectories that are in the current path on that drive. The current path is shown at the top of the screen. The "Add Path" button adds the current path to the path list box. If the recursive box is checked, any path that is included inside another already selected path will be removed from the list box. Duplicate paths are also removed. Paths are shown sorted alphabetically. This sorting includes all the characters in the path, including the final "\". If you click on the recursive box when it is not checked, it will become checked and any now-redundant paths will be removed from the list box. If you click on the recursive box when it is checked, it will become clear and all paths in the list box will be automatically expanded to show all paths inside of them. This could take a few seconds if you have many paths on your hard drive(s). You can click on the recursive box while it is expanding the lists and it will stop expanding and go back to the recursive path list. This is useful if you have many paths on your hard drive and you clicked the recursive button by accident. If you have too many paths on your hard drive, and the list box fills up, you will receive an error message saying that the list box is full. This means that not all of the paths could be expanded. If you click "Begin" with this incomplete list in the list box, not all of the paths will be checked. (In tests with Windows 3.1, it required over 1000 nested directories to fill up the list box. Windows 95 has an even higher limit.) If you click on the recursive box again, the list will be compressed back down. You can then click "Begin". When you click "Begin" with the recursive box checked, the list of paths is expanded as they are being checked, and paths are removed from the list box once they are checked to make room as later paths are expanded. This increases the number of paths that can be checked successfully. If there are still too many paths to fit into the list box, you will get a message in the error box that will tell you which path was being expanded when the list box got full. Checking will continue, but some paths may not be checked fully. (A drive with over 2000 nested directories checked perfectly, so this limitation probably won't matter much.) To remove a path from the path list, simply click on it. Path delete is disabled while the path list is expanding through the use of the Recursive box. If you want to quit from CHKFILES without checking any files, click the "Quit" button. Any changes you made to the path list will be ignored. Once you have all the paths set up the way you want them, click the "Begin" button. If the "Save Paths" button is checked when you click on the "Begin" button, the paths and recursive state will be stored in the CHKFILES.PTH file located in the same path as the CHKFILES.EXE file. If the "Recursive" box is checked when you click the "Begin" button, all the paths in the list box will be expanded to include all subdirectories. Each subdirectory is expanded as it is being checked, so expansion doesn't delay the start of checking. Before starting the actual file checking, the screen will be reconfigured to show five empty lists. The caption of the window will show the name of the current path being checked. The first list shows the new paths being checked and the new files in old paths. The second list shows the names of all files deleted from old paths since CHKFILES was last run. If you use the "One File" option, this list will also show any paths that were present the last time CHKFILES was run but are not currently present. The third list shows the names of files that have changed since CHKFILES was last run. If the line with the file name starts with "L!:", this means that the file has changed in length but not time or date. If the file changed in time and/or date, the file name will be listed without any prefix. (Normally, when a file changes the time changes as well. It is somewhat unusual for a file to change in size without changing time or date, which is why this is flagged so you can know what is going on.) The fourth list box shows the names of any files that are "bad". A "bad" file is defined as one that has a changed checksum but not a changed time, date, or size. "Bad" files will not be updated in the CHKFILES.CHK or CHKFILES.ALL file, so if a file shows up as "bad", the old checksum of the file will remain in the CHKFILES.CHK or CHKFILES.ALL file and not be updated to the checksum of the file as it now stands. This is so you can restore this file from your backup (you DID keep a backup, didn't you?) and then re-run CHKFILES to make sure that your backup was good. In the odd case where the file was changed intentionally somehow without changing the time, date, or size, and you don't want to do anything about it, then you will just have to ignore the "bad" reading. The fifth list box shows any errors that happened during the running of the CHKFILES program. This can include one of the other four list boxes running out of memory due to too many messages. If the error list box ever runs out of memory due to too many error messages, you will be shown a message to that effect and then the checking procedure will abort. During the check procedure, you can click on the "Abort" button. This will abort the procedure after the current file is finished (which can take a few seconds if the current file is large). The current path being worked on will not be updated. If you are using the "Each Path" method, and the current path is a new one, then no CHKFILES.CHK file will be created in this path. If the current path is an old one, then the CHKFILES.CHK file will not be updated. All previously checked paths will have been finished correctly. If you are using the "One File" method, then the original CHKFILES.ALL file will remain intact. You can look through the results on the screen, but no information will be saved from this run. When the last path is checked (or the abort button is pressed), the bottom of the screen will show some statistics, which will include the total number of files checked, the number of new files, number of deleted files, number of bad files, number of updated files, total number of bytes checked, time it took to check these files, number of bytes per second, and total number of paths checked. Note that the total number of paths includes empty paths. An empty path will not have a CHKFILES.CHK file put in it or will not be entered in the CHKFILES.ALL file. If a path has only a CHKFILES.CHK file in it (all other files having been deleted) the files that the CHKFILES.CHK file says should be there will be listed as having been deleted and the CHKFILES.CHK file will be deleted, leaving an empty directory. When using the "One File" method, a path that used to have some files in it that is now empty will have those files listed as being deleted but the now-empty directory will still be listed in the CHKFILES.ALL file. Note that this is different from the case where the entire directory was deleted, which will only result in a single message saying that all the files in that directory were deleted rather than individual messages for each file. If you then delete this now-empty directory and run CHKFILES again in "One File" mode, it will report that this directory has been deleted. (If the directory never contained any files then it would never be stored and so deleting it would never be noticed.) When the "Done" button appears, all checking is finished. Clicking on the "Done" button will end the program. CHKFILES was written to be very "multi-tasking friendly". You can run CHKFILES in the background, minimized if you like, while you run other things. You shouldn't be changing, creating, or deleting files in the paths that CHKFILES is looking at, but you can certainly play Solitaire while checking your files. Since CHKFILES is using the hard disk controller quite a bit, any program you use that accesses the hard disk will be slowed down somewhat and will also slow down CHKFILES. (Starting with version 1.5a, minimizing actually works!) ========================================== When should I use CHKFILES? Any time you want to! _I_ use CHKFILES at the following times: - Before a backup, so the backup will contain updated CHKFILES.CHK files, so I know if any files are bad or have been deleted so I can restore them before I do my backup, and so I can see if there are any new files that I don't need and want to delete so they don't waste space on my backup. - After defragmenting, so I know if any files were corrupted by the process. I always backup before defragmenting, and I always run CHKFILES before backing up, so I know that the files weren't corrupt before defragmenting. - After moving large blocks of files from one partition to another or to a new hard drive. When I bought a larger hard drive, I ran CHKFILES (and backup), then copied all the files over to the new hard drive, and then ran CHKFILES again before deleting the old hard drive. When do other people use CHKFILES: One user downloads and tries out lots of shareware programs. He uses CHKFILES to find out what files have been added to his system by these programs, which makes it easier for him to clean up his system. If you find an interesting use, please let me know! What do other people like best about CHKFILES: One registered user had inadvertently deleted some important files from his system. CHKFILES let him know that these files had been deleted, and he was able to restore them from his backup. ========================================== Are there interactions between CHKFILES and the operating system? Because of they way CHKFILES can leave a CHKFILES.CHK file in every directory that you check, this can interact with some of the "special" directories that are used by the Windows 95 and NT 4.0 operating system. If you use CHKFILES to check all the paths in your WINDOWS directory, and use the "Each Path" option, you may notice that all the entries in your start menu have a CHKFILES.CHK file added to them. This is because the start menu is stored in a directory structure which is normally filled with the links that point to the programs you want to run when you click on items in the start menu. Since this is stored like any other directory structure, CHKFILES will check these link files and place a CHKFILES.CHK file in each path. After running CHKFILES, the start menu will show these CHKFILES.CHK files in the menu. If you want to remove these from the start menu you can simply set the CHKFILES.CHK files as Hidden. There are many ways to do this: You can use the explorer, the "Advanced" editing in the "Start Menu Programs" section of the "Taskbar Properties", or the old file manager. All you need to do is go into the subdirectories of the "Start Menu" directory (located in your Windows directory) and find all the CHKFILES.CHK files. For each file select "properties" and then click on the "Hidden" box and then click on "Apply". Hiding the CHKFILES.CHK file will only stop it from showing up in the Start menu, and maybe in the explorer. It won't stop it from being found by CHKFILES and used to check the status of the other files in the directory. Starting with version 1.3, CHKFILES can find a hidden CHKFILES.CHK file. The file will remain hidden even when it has been updated so you won't have to go back and hide it again. If you remove all the other items from the directory then the CHKFILES.CHK file will be deleted the next time CHKFILES is run. If you then add files back to that directory, a new CHKFILES.CHK file will be created which will not be hidden, so you will need to hide it again. If you have any program shortcuts on your desktop, you will find that CHKFILES will create a CHKFILES.CHK file on the desktop when run in "Every Path" mode. This is because all the shortcuts are stored in a directory called "Desktop", and CHKFILES checks this directory just like all the others. The easiest solution, if you want to continue running in "Every Path" mode, is to simply delete this CHKFILES.CHK file from your desktop after you run CHKFILES. You can easily drag this file to the Recycle Bin. Marking this file as "Hidden" doesn't seem to make it disappear from the desktop. You could also run in "One File" mode. A future version of CHKFILES may have an "exclude" list that will allow you to select all directories and then exclude certain directories such as the start menu and the desktop. ========================================== Does CHKFILES work under Windows NT? Yes. Version 1.4a, fixed an incompatability problem with NT. It has been tested with NT 3.51 and NT 4.0 (both with and without service pack 3) and it seems to work just fine. Note that if you try to check directories for which you do not have permission, this will cause an error message and the directory will be skipped. It is probably best to run in Administrator mode. ========================================== Can I run older versions of CHKFILES on the same computer? Yes, as long as they are not checking the same directories, or you use the "one file" option with one of the versions. Previous versions used a different file format. This version will automatically update this format, and make the file unreadable by the older version. CHKFILES will not overwrite a CHKFILES.CHK file that it can not read, so any directory with such a file in it will not be checked. Also remember that the 16-bit version doesn't recognize the long versions of file names, so if you are using Windows 95 and alternate between older 16-bit and 32-bit versions you may see the 16-bit version reporting all your files with long names as being deleted and the short name versions of these files listed as new. Then when you run the 32-bit version, it will report that the short name versions have been deleted and the long name versions will be listed as new. This happens in "Every Path" mode because both versions use the same CHKFILES.CHK files for their information. If you use "One File" mode, it would be better to put the two versions in separate paths so that they would use their own versions of the CHKFILES.ALL file. If you keep both programs in the same path, they would not only cause false deleted/new reports on files, but also on whole paths that contained at least one long name. ========================================== Can I run in both "One File" and "Every Path" mode on the same computer? Yes. The two modes don't interfere with one another, though you will see listings for new and changed CHKFILES.CHK files in every path when you run in "One File" mode, and you will see listings for a new or changed CHKFILES.ALL file when you run in "Every Path" mode. When CHKFILES runs in "One File" mode, it ignores the files CHKFILES.ALL and CHKFILES.TMP in the path where it is running from. (If you have files with these names in other paths it will process them just like any other file.) It will also process any CHKFILES.CHK files in any path just like any other file. When CHKFILES runs in "Every Path" mode, it ignores any file named CHKFILES.CHK in any path, since that is where it stores its information, but it doesn't ignore the CHKFILES.ALL or CHKFILES.TMP files. Note that the CHKFILES.TMP file will normally only exist while CHKFILES is running in "One File" mode. It automatically deletes this temporary file when it is done running. If your system crashes during a run, this file may still exist, but it will be deleted the next time you run CHKFILES in "One File" mode. ========================================== Why did I write CHKFILES? Because I wanted a program that would do this sort of thing and I couldn't find one. There may be some other program out there that does the exact same thing, but I don't know of one that works in exactly the same way. I also wanted something fairly easy to write that I could use to try out the shareware market. A well-known anti-virus program from a well-known software company does something like CHKFILES - it creates a small file in every path with checksums in it - but it didn't do this in the way I wanted it to, wouldn't give me the information I wanted, and I couldn't get it to do only the paths I wanted. It also seemed to only calculate checksums on executable files, and I wanted to check all the files. (It uses the checksums to see if an executable file has been modified by a virus. I wanted to use checksums to see if files had been corrupted.) Many years ago I attended a talk by a programmer who was describing his new backup program. It was called the "GOOD" backup program, and he made a strong case about always doing a checksum of every file and checking each file before storing it to the backup. He used the story of a corrupt file that was used only once a year not being discovered until it had been copied to all the backup disks, thus making recovery impossibly. I bought a copy of his program, used it religiously, and was very glad every time it enabled me to find a corrupt file and recover from it. This was for a different computer system, and the "GOOD" backup program was not a big seller, but it made a big impression on me. When I started using Windows, I wanted the same sort of protection, but I couldn't find it. I toyed with the idea of writing my own version of "GOOD", but since tape backup was so much more convenient, I decided to write CHKFILES to add the protection I wanted without having to rewrite the entire backup program. The first version was done in Visual Basic version 3. It worked, but it was slow doing the checksums on the files and had some problems with certain "unusual" date combinations. I then moved the checksum routine to a DLL written in Turbo C++ 3.1, and that sped things up quite a bit. (The checksum routine is now so fast on a modern computer that the slow part is reading the file off of the hard drive. I was thinking of optimizing the checksum routine in assembly language, but that wouldn't make much difference.) When I thought about releasing CHKFILES as shareware, I wanted it to be a self-contained executable without requiring any external DLL's. For this reason I translated it into Turbo C++. (I also wanted to have a project so I could learn Windows programming in C++.) I then updated to Borland C++ version 4.0, which allows the program to easily release time to other tasks when it is busy doing something complicated. This allowed me to play Freecell while the files were being checked. This current version is written in Borland C++ version 5.0, which allows the program to use the "look and feel" of Windows 95 without having any extra DLL files required. The concept and basic structure of CHKFILES seems very solid. I have been using it on multiple machines for over 5 years now. The C++ version also seems very solid, though there are a few areas that are not fully "idiot-proof". See the next section. ========================================== How dangerous is CHKFILES: I have taken many precautions to avoid potentially dangerous situations. If you are using the "Every Path" mode and a path already contains a file named CHKFILES.CHK, but it is not a file that was created by this program - say for some strange reason you saved your favorite apple pie recipe in a file of this name - you will get an error message that this path can't be processed and your pie recipe will not be touched. (If your pie recipe file happens to be in the same format as a CHKFILES.CHK is supposed to be in, then it will get modified.) When using the "One File" mode, CHKFILES uses a temporary file called "CHKFILES.TMP" and creates or overwrites a file called "CHKFILES.ALL". When you save paths, it creates or overwrites a file called "CHKFILES.PTH". It does not check to see if these files may actually contain something you want to keep, but it only does this in the path that the CHKFILES.EXE program is running in, so you are pretty safe. If you must use files with these names, put the CHKFILES.EXE program in a different path. If your hard drive is so full that it doesn't have room for the CHKFILES.CHK or CHKFILES.ALL files, the program may crash, but it shouldn't do any damage (other than filling up what little space you had left). When using the "Every Path" option, the contents of the CHKFILES.CHK file that is being created or updated is kept in memory until the entire path is finished, and then the file is created and re-written. If the system crashes during the path checking, the old CHKFILES.CHK file will remain intact. If the system crashes during the short time that the CHKFILES.CHK file is being written, it is possible that a corrupt or incomplete CHKFILES.CHK file will be in the path. In this case, this path may give an error message the next time you try to check it. The corrupt CHKFILES.CHK file will not be deleted automatically, because the program doesn't know if this corrupt file is really a corrupt file or your pie recipe. You would then have to manually delete this corrupt file and recheck that path. When using the "One File" option, the contents of the CHKFILES.ALL file that is being created is stored as CHKFILES.TMP. This is because the old CHKFILES.ALL file is read as each path is checked. If the system crashes during checking, the old CHKFILES.ALL file will remain intact and the CHKFILES.TMP file may remain in the path. The CHKFILES.TMP file will be overwritten when CHKFILES is next run. When the checking is done, the old CHKFILES.ALL file is deleted and the CHKFILES.TMP file is renamed to CHKFILES.ALL. It is unlikely that any corruption of the CHKFILES.ALL file could happen. There may be limitations on the number of paths that you can check in one run of CHKFILES. The paths are stored in a standard Windows list box, and there may be limits on how much can be stored in a list box. In Windows 3.x, these list boxes couldn't hold more than 32K of text. Assuming 32 characters in the average path, this means you couldn't check more than 1000 paths in one run. You could, however, run CHKFILES multiple times with different sets of paths. Only one user has ever reported hitting this limit, and he was using an older version of CHKFILES. Starting with version 1.3, the paths are expanded while they are being checked, and paths that have been checked are removed from the list to free up space. If you had all 1000 subdirectories in the same directory, you would still have this limit. If you had these directories nested within one another (a more likely situation) then you probably wouldn't hit this limit. Windows 95 expands the memory limit on list boxes so it is very unlikely that youy will see any limitations when running CHKFILES under Windows 95. Because of the same listbox limitation, if you have too many new, changed, deleted, or bad files, the list boxes may overflow during checking. (This is one reason when an entire path is new it only generates one line saying "All files in path X" rather than a line for each new file.) If, for example, you have thousands of picture files in multiple directories that have already been checked, and then you run all of these picture files through a program that creates thumbnail files for each picture, you could end up with so many new files in old paths that the "new files" list box would fill up. This _has_ happened to me, before I switched to Windows 95. In this case, the list box that filled up would stop accepting any more information and an error message would be added to the error list box stating that the "new files" list box was full (or whatever box happened to fill up). Once this error message is added to the error list box, no more attempts are made to add information to the full list box, so you won't get multiple error messages about the same problem. Checking will continue so that all the selected paths will be checked, and all you will lose is the notification about more files of the type that caused the list box to fill up. ========================================== What should I not bother complaining about: CHKFILES was designed to be a self-contained executable. As such, it doesn't use or need any external files (except the CHKFILES.PTH file to store the paths and the one CHKFILES.ALL file or the multiple CHKFILES.CHK files, but it creates these for you). Because of this goal, CHKFILES only uses the standard system buttons. Starting with Windows 95, this now includes "3D" buttons, but does not include some of the newer features. CHKFILES was designed to be easy for ME to use. I use a mouse to run it. I realize that someone who tries to use the keyboard will have a very hard time of it. Specifically, with the keyboard it is not possible to select individual items in the directory and paths list boxes. Since I didn't want to have to double-click on items with the mouse to select them, that meant that keyboard use would be restricted. Sorry. (The earlier version in Visual Basic required double clicking, and I didn't like that.) Windows is hard enough to use with just a keyboard that I figure that not enough people will need to use the keyboard to make it worth while. If this causes anyone real problems, please let me know. I have some ideas on what to do about this, but if no one needs it, I won't bother with it. ========================================== What is in the future for CHKFILES: CHKFILES is shareware. This was my first venture into Windows-based shareware, though I have a different shareware program on another platform and have actually received some payments for it (though not that many). (This other program, Rapsheet, is now available in Windows.) I am not expecting to get rich from this program, but if I make enough I will keep supporting it and do some other programs. There are some enhancements that I plan on adding to CHKFILES, and I will continue to fix bugs or limitations as they come up. How much work I put into upgrades will depend on the response I get. Some of the plans I have include adding things that happen when you click on files after the checksum phase is over (or possibly during it). For instance, if you clicked on a file marked "Bad" you could get the option of marking the file as good and updating the CHKFILES.CHK or CHKFILES.ALL file. If you got an error saying that a CHKFILES.CHK file was corrupted so it couldn't process a path, you would get an option to delete the CHKFILES.CHK file and reprocess that path. If you got an error due to an overflowing list box, it could pause for you to read all the list boxes and then clear their contents and continue. So far, none of these things have been requested by registered users. The features I have added have mainly been ones that users have requested. If you have other things you would like, let me know. ========================================== Can I use CHKFILES commercially or in an educational or governmental institution? The shareware release of CHKFILES is only for individual use. If you wish to license a special version of CHKFILES for your business or other institution, contact me at the address given below. The commercial licensing rate is quite reasonable, and there are quantity discounts. The special version would have your business or institution name clearly visible to the user. ========================================== How do I pay for CHKFILES: If you like CHKFILES, use it and share it with your friends. If you find that you use it regularly, I would expect you to register it. The registration fee is US$15. Starting with version 1.5, registration is being handled by Kagi. Registration can be done by email, fax, phone, or mail. Run the included REGISTER program and fill out the form. If you are a U.S. resident and wish to register by check or money order, you can still register directly with Stochastic Systems. There is a slight discount for doing this. If you want to register by credit card, you will have to use Kagi. When you register, you should provide a user name. This name should be the name of the registered user (personal name, not a business name or "handle"), must be 20 characters or less, and should consist only of printable ascii characters, such as those that you can type from the US standard keyboard. Please do not use accented letters, as this can mess up the registration process. This name will be used to generate a unique registration key number that will be sent back to you. When you click on the Register button on the startup screen, you will be presented with a form that will ask for the user name and key number. When you enter your valid user name and key number, the program will generate a file called CHKFILES.SER which will contain this name and key number (so the program won't have to ask you again) and from then on when you run CHKFILES it will not show the startup screen any more. (The startup screen is still available - you can get to it from the upper-right hand icon on the main screen before you click on the Begin button.) The main screen will show your user name and state that the program is registered to you. To remove the registration from the program, simply delete the CHKFILES.SER file. For fastest response, include your email address with your registration order. In the future there may be some new features that are only activated by the registration key, such as being able to save a text file that lists the contents of the list boxes at the end of the test. If you registered CHKFILES before March of 1998 (when version 1.5 was released) and would like a registration number, please send me email. If you registered an older version of CHKFILES, but did so after March 1998, you can upgrade to a current registration for the difference between your originally registration fee and the current fee of $15. Upgrades must be done directly with Stochastic Systems, so please contact Stochastic Systems first to verify your registration status. You are allowed 30 days to evaluate CHKFILES. If you do not want to register it after that time, you should delete all copies of CHKFILES and all of the CHKFILES.CHK and CHKFILES.ALL files from your computer system. If you are a US resident and wish to register by check or money order, you may mail your money (payable to Stochastic Systems) to: Ron V. Webber Stochastic Systems P.O. Box 925 Dryden, NY 13053 USA Please use the REGISTER program, select "US Check or Money Order" for the payment type, print out the form, and send it with your payment. For non-US residents, or those who wish to register using a credit card, please use the REGISTER program and following the instructions for registering through kagi. I can be reached by email at: ym@lightlink.com I can also be reached at: stochastic@kagi.com The second email address should remain valid even if I change servers. You can also reach me at my web page: http://www.lightlink.com/ym The web page has a link to the latest version of CHKFILES and also has links to any other shareware programs I may have released. I am interested in knowing who is using CHKFILES. If you find an interesting use that I didn't think of, let me know by email. If you have sent me money, let me know that it is on the way. If you register by email or web access through Kagi, they will let me know that you have registered, so you don't have to bother sending me email directly, though you still could. If you find a bug or could recommend a new feature, let me know. If you think it is stupid and a waste of your time, don't bother to let me know. I would also be interested in hearing ideas for more projects, job offers, donations, praise, etc.. Sorry, marriage proposals will no longer be accepted. (My wife wouldn't like that!) ========================================== Revision history: Version 1.5a fixes a problem with the statistics given at the end of the run if you have more than 4G (4,294,967,295) total bytes in files that were checked. The byte count would wrap around back to zero and so would give a much smaller number. This would also affect the statistic about how many bytes per second were checked. This would not cause any problem with the CHKFILES.CHK or CHKFILES.ALL files. Also, you can now minimize the program when it is running. Version 1.5 added registration keys to turn off the startup screen and also changed the file format to make the files easier to load into spreadsheets. If you abort a "one file" run, it will no longer list all the remaining paths as being deleted. Some of the list boxes had their sizes changed slightly to accomodate more lines of text (they were slightly too short to allow 5 lines). This version also is the first one to allow on-line regstration through Kagi. Version 1.4a fixed an incompatibility problem with Windows NT. NT sorts list boxes in a different way from 95. CheckFiles relies on the directory list box always having the ".." entry as the first entry (unless it isn't there at all). In earlier versions I found a problem with people who had a directory that would sort to before the "..", such as a directory beginning with a "#" character. I solved this problem by turning the ".." entry into "<..>" and having all the other entries begin with "[". "<" should always sort to before "[", and it does this in every version of Windows I had tested it on, until I tried it on Windows NT. For some reason, Windows NT sorts "[" before "<", which messed everything up. This version solves this by adding a space before the "<". Space always sorts to before any other character, so this works in all versions of Windows. Version 1.4a is also the first version to use version 5 of Borland C++. Previous versions used version 4. This allows the program to be listed as a real Windows 95 program, which makes Windows 95 show it with the 3-d buttons and gray background. In other words, it finally has the "look" of a Windows 95 program. This means that it will not look right in older versions of Windows. I also fixed a problem with the one-file option that related to the strange sorting method. If you had a directory that began with a strange character (like "~"), the order the directories would be stored in the CHKFILES.ALL file would not be in ASCII order but in the order that Windows puts them in. This would cause a problem if you added this directory to one with other directories - you would be told that all the other directories had been deleted and then these same directories would be listed as "new". No one has complained of this problem, and I only found it by accident, but it is now fixed. Version 1.4 finally fixed the last (?) incompatibility with Win32, and is the first release to have both 16-bit and 32-bit versions. (The last problem was the way Win32 stored volume names, which is quite different from the way 16-bit Windows does it.) The "<..>" entry was removed from the directory list for root directories. This would only show up on networked drives that look like root directories but are actually subdirectories on other computers. The "One File" option was added to store all information in a master file called CHKFILES.ALL. This was requested by some users. The main screen now shows the copyright notice, which was previously only on the startup screen. This is needed for commercially licensed versions that do not have the startup screen. The CHKFILES icon on the main screen now brings up licensing information. Version 1.3a corrected a bug that was reported by a user. If you have a subdirectory whose first character is one of the following non-alphanumeric characters: !"#$%&'()+,- then when the recursive search would lock up, which could cause a general protection fault. The reason for this is that the program always assumes that the first entry in the subdirectory list is the ".." sequence, which marks the way back up the directory tree. Since the subdirectory list is a sorted list and the characters given above come before the "." character in the normal character set, this would stop the ".." entry from being the first one in the list. The solution was to change the first entry from "[..]" to "<..>". Since the "<" character comes before "[" in the character set, "<..>" would always sort to before "[anything]", which solves the problem. Version 1.3 Changes: Changed the way information was stored internally, resulting in a slightly smaller program than 1.2, even with more features! The most visible change is that the path expansion when you click "Begin" is now done during the checking phase. Previously, when you clicked "Begin", all the paths would expand first, and then the checking phase would start. This caused a delay before checking started and meant that you couldn't check more paths than would fit into a list box. By expanding paths as they are checked and removing checked paths from the list box, many more paths can be checked. (If you have two directories, each with 500 subdirectories in them, the older version might not be able to fit all 1000 paths into the list box. Version 1.3 will expand the first 500 subdirectories, check and remove each of them from the list box, and then have plenty of room to expand the second set of directories. Expanding paths by clicking on the "Recursive" box will still have the original limitation, but it now has an error message telling you that not all paths could be expanded and that you should click the "Recursive" box again to compress the paths before clicking "Begin" to start checking. Each path now ends in a final backslash. Before, only root directories ("C:\") would have the final backslash. This modification allows the paths to be sorted better and aids in the proper collapse of expanded path lists. The CHKFILES.PTH file still stores the paths without the final backslash, except for root directories, in order to maintain compatibility with older versions. Files which have a date after 2079 will now have their dates stored using the full four digits. Previously, only the last two digits of the date would be stored in the CHKFILES.CHK file - 80 to 99 representing 1980 through 1999 and 0 to 79 representing 2000 through 2079. It is possible to set the date on the computer as high as 2099, and if you had any file with such a date on it the program would always report that the file had changed. For example, a file that thought it was created in 2083 would previously have the date recorded as "83", which would be confused with 1983. If the CHKFILES.CHK file is marked "Hidden", it will still be found and updated while remaining hidden. Previously, if the CHKFILES.CHK file was hidden, the program would not find it and would treat the path as a new one, though when it tried to create a new CHKFILES.CHK file in the path is would overwrite the hidden one and the new file would retain the hidden attribute of the older file, thus the CHKFILES.CHK file would remain hidden but the files would not be checked and the path would constantly be listed as new. This feature was added because of the way Windows '95 stores the task bar start menu. The menu is stored as a nested directory structure in the "Start Menu" directory (usually STARTM~1 in short file names). Any files found inside this "Start Menu" directory will be shown in the start menu, and this includes the CHKFILES.CHK files. Since you wouldn't normally want to see the CHKFILES.CHK files in your start menu, you can now make these files hidden (using the Explorer or File Manager) so that they won't show up on the start menu but will continue to protect the files in the start menu. Version 1.2 changed how some of the internal disk routines worked, trying to eliminate any that don't work with Win32. This is in preparation for a 32-bit version that will handle the long file names of 95 and NT. This version also will recognize subdirectories and files that are marked "System" (but not those marked "Hidden"), which the previous versions would ignore. Note that this still doesn't work with long file names since it is still a 16-bit application. If I compile it as a 32-bit application, which I have done in unreleased tests, it works with long file names, but some other things don't work properly. Version 1.1 translated characters from DOS text to Windows ANSI text. This would only show up on files with non-standard characters such as the one-half symbol. Version 1.0a corrected a minor bug that would cause the first subdirectory on any given partition to be skipped if you operated in Recursive mode. Version 1.0 was released for about 2 hours and no one ever used it. ========================================== Other products from Stochastic Systems: RapSheet Time Logger. Helps you to keep track of how much time you spend doing various tasks. It can be used to determine a breakdown of your time spent doing various types of things on your computer, which is useful (and required) for those who plan on deducting some of their computer expense from their taxes. It can also be used to keep track of any other time based activities. Available NOW from the Stochastic Systems home page and from major shareware distributors. Coming Soon (maybe): The Too Many Notes Tune Editor. At the forefront of CAMP (Computer Aided Music Performance). Allows you to create musical performances that sound exactly the way you would have played them if you had the talent to play them that way. Requires the ability to read music and a sense of rhythm, but not necessarily at the same time (or by the same person).