Latest News & How To Guides

False positives!

– March 27, 2013Posted in: How to eliminate Workflow Interruptions

As a couple of customers have noted, a recent release of virus definitions for Symantec’s antivirus offerings has generated a false positive for version 4.5.2 of PTFB Pro’s installation package. We’ve reported this to Symantec and they’ve replied, say that they’ll be including a fix in their next release of virus definitions. In the meantime, we’ve put up a new release of PTFB Pro, v4.5.4.0.

The only difference between this release and 4.5.2 is that it has a newer version of the installer engine we use. This change is apparently enough to avoid the false positive from the faulty virus definitions, but if you’re already running 4.5.2 there’s no need to upgrade.

So to sum up: the original 4.5.2 release is virus free, as Symantec’s virus definition update will soon confirm, but if you prefer not to wait for that you can grab v4.5.4.0 from our site which gets a clean bill of health even with the faulty virus definitions.

For more details about false positives please check out at this wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivirus_software, specifically the section titled “Problems caused by false positives”. It contains a potted history of some of the costlier mistakes by anti-virus products thus far.

PTFB Pro and high DPI on Windows 8, 7 and Vista

– November 2, 2012Posted in: News

It’s becoming increasingly common for people to use the font and user-interface scaling option built into Windows 7 & 8 to make everything more readable. This scaling is also known as “high dpi” or “high dots per inch” mode, but whatever you want to call it, it’s a boon if you have a high resolution monitor that makes everything on screen seem uncomfortably small, or if your vision is less than perfect. PTFB Pro has now been updated specifically for high DPI systems to make sure that it looks it best and keeps on pressing the right buttons.

If you’re running a version of PTFB Pro prior to v4.5.1.0 and are using or intend to use high DPI mode, please stop by our download page and grab the latest release. If you want to know more about high DPI mode, including a little tip on how to get older programs play well with it, please take a look at the following article in PTFB Pro’s Help Desk:

http://www.tlhouse.co.uk/supportv4/index.php?/ptfb/Knowledgebase/Article/View/66/0/ptfb-pro-and-high-dpi-on-windows-8-7-and-vista

Finally, please note that our first release with the high DPI changes – version 4.5.0.0 – had a bug in it that resulted in messed up graphics and crashes on some systems. That release was only out for a few days before we fixed it, but if you do have v4.5.0.0, please update to v4.5.1.0 (or later) as soon as possible.

 

How to automatically restart a program that is suddenly locked into high cpu usage

– September 17, 2012Posted in: Keep vital programs running 24/7

From time to time Windows programs can misbehave in a variety of ways. They may exit silently or suffer an in-your-face crash, they may suddenly become unresponsive, or they may get locked into a state where they’re consuming ridiculously high cpu without actually doing what they’re supposed to. In the absence of a newer bug-fixed version of the program in question, usually the only remedy for these problems is to terminate the program in question (if it’s still running) then relaunch it. That’s fine – if irritating – in cases where someone’s on hand to nursemaid the unstable program, but in cases where the computer has to work unattended it can mean hours of disrupted service and lost work. Fortunately PTFB Pro is able to help with all of the above failures.

In the case of silent exits / crashes, use a ProgMon (program monitor) macro item to automatically relaunch the program or process any time it is found not to be running, and use PTFB Pro’s regular Single Press or Macro items to dismiss the associated Windows messages (e.g. “X program has stopped working”). For unresponsive or pathological high cpu usage cases, use a single ProgMon macro as described below.

  1. Create a new ProgMon macro.  There numerous ways to do this, e.g. click on New Macro then choose ProgMon Macro, associate a hotkey with the New ProgMon macro function and use that etc.
  2. A wizard will now guide you through configuration of the new macro. The first task is to indicate which program to keep an eye on. The wizard shows you a list of all the currently running processes. If the target program is in the list, just select it (failing that you can still enter its details directly).
  3. The next page of the wizard lets you specify what actions to perform on the program or process, and when to carry them out:RestartHiCPU
  4. If you want to restart the program when it becomes locked into high cpu usage, select the “Restart the program only if it is misbehaving” and tick the “Exceeds cpu utilization” box, and optionally the “Not Responding” box too.

    You can now set the maximum cpu usage that will be tolerated. A good rule of thumb here is to pick a value slightly below the cpu usage shown in Task Manager when the program is misbehaving.

    You may also notice that you can configure the time period in minutes between each check on the program’s status, and set the number of consecutive “bad states” that must be seen before the program is restarted. Together these two values help set the tolerance for the symptoms of the misbehaving program; if it legitimately exhibits high cpu or becomes unresponsive for a brief periods then recovers, set a less frequent check period and require more than one consecutive bad states, and PTFB Pro will only take action when the program has truly entered an unrecoverable state of ill-health.

  5. The rest of the wizard deals with how to terminate the program and how to relaunch it. Unless you have specific requirements here, you can just take the defaults.

Once you’ve configured the new ProgMon item to your satisfaction, just hit “Start Watching” on PTFB Pro’s main screen to start monitoring and as/when necessary restart the target program.

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