Man Alive, Talk About Backward . . .

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Taja M

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Heeeerrreees JOHNNY!!!

Hey, can anyone send me the Palm 4.1.4 "HELP" file? I went through and wiped all the .hlp and .cnt files from the PC, because I know HOW MY STUFF WORKS, and now I can hotsync but Palm Desktop won't open up without having the help file. It told me that when after twice hitting TaskManager and killing the Palm EXE because it was FROZEN and wouldn't close, I hit "HELP" button, ironically.

It's the same thing if you get rid of those silly "image sample examples" or whatever they are -- the program won't open! Ridiculous.

I'd really rather not reinstall the whole desktop (perhaps it has a "repair" option, so that a 23k help file can START the program) - come to think of it, you might not know which one to send since I think there's a "help" file for every "department," isn't there? Datebook, address . . . .

Jesus I'll just reload it. God what a pain . . . and people wonder why they're having trouble hotsyncing and Palm wonder why people go to "PInstall" and alternate conduits . . . My God, where's Heather Cullen . . . . the humanity . . . . . I'm gonna follow up on DrBaer's suggestion about that "choose a sync" or whatever he was recommending some time back . . . tonight's the night!!
 
OK, addendum . . . there is a "repair" option on the 4.1.4 install, which I chose. It restored the help files, but knocked out one conduit (AN Action Pro, a way to see Agendus icons on the desktop). Uninstalled and reinstalled that conduit only; all works fine. My only concern is that 200-400k of help files are now not contiguous on the hard drive (despite defragging of directories and hard drive, you never get that "folder" in the right place amongst the other Palm stuff). Still, it doesn't seem to slow anything down . . . I'm certainly not in the mood to uninstall the whole thing and reinstall - you'd still have more fragmentation since the "conduit files"/archive/backup aren't touched in the uninstall anyway . . . you just end up with more stuff in more places! Only "clean" way would be dump everything, defrag, and then reinstall and defrag again. Yikes.

OK, lesson learned - you can delete EVERY .hlp and .cnt ("table of contents" file) from your PC EXCEPT Palm Desktop, apparently. If you happen to do a search for ".htm" and knock out all those silly html "come to our website" files, there's an odd one you should NOT delete and that's the Firefox .htm (1k) -- or else the FX won't open.

Good Lord . . . . there's no such thing as "spratting" the Palm desktop . . . . .
 
Paul,
Man, I think you are getting tunnel vision about your "running a clean machine" project. There are times that I've used Help files for program I know very well when there was some obscure option I couldn't remember. With the capacity and speed of hard drives today, doing all this housecleaning will not only lead to problems like you just had, which take time and frustration to solve, but I think you're doing a lot of work for minimal gain. I've worked with clients that had never done a defrag in the life of their machines and still had all the AOL and other junk that comes with new machines still installed. In the real world, like opening Excel or Outlook, the difference between their machines, which would be a disaster to you, and my machine, which is kept pretty clean, is a difference of milliseconds in most cases and maybe two seconds in the worst cases I've seen.

Your call about how much time and effort you want to spend on things like this but I think you may have already passed the point of diminishing returns. :)
 
"I cleaneth too much" is probably a fair statement Jim - these are the files for reference by the way, totalling 2MB:



I just don't understand the principle of the thing - if you don't need them, why would help files cause non-opening? It's not like I'm picking every other .dll and saying "well that one can't count;" - every other program's help file can be deleted.

I run quite a few programs on Win2K - and with a 20MB hard drive (supposedly leaving 18.6 available before you do ANYTHING else) have 18.1 still FREE. I uninstalled Internet Explorer, NET Meeting, address book, outlook, handicapped options, games, MS Agent, Java Virtual Machine, 300 MB of security upgrades no longer needed because I got rid of the REAL security leaks (named!) - and now my PC boots up in 11 seconds, NEVER crashes and flies through tasks.

I also "disconnected" or switched to manual/disabled around a dozen startup services - gained 52MB of RAM at startup. I had 384 MB of Ram-Bus to start with, 232 remaining after "boot." That's now 284-285 fully "started." I see those as more than minimal gains, and demonstrate that to myself in daily use. The trouble is, people are buying computers and larger OS's they think are more powerful, not realizing the OS is taking up more and more of it just to switch on. My machine is as close to Linux as you can get without Linux, and a lot more secure. I still like Microsoft stuff, and am not a "Gates basher," but you can improve things to your liking. Windows doesn't mind you removing ITS help files!

Still, you're right about hitting "diminishing returns" after a point; I think I'd have to literally hack-saw sections of the hard drive off now to save "any more." I just don't see how taking out parts of Windows does wonders and removing unused help files prevents a program from opening - it's bad architecture if you ask me. They should be checkable boxes on an install disk.

Yes, I think I'm "done," as the time and effort you talk about does add up after a while. I posted here to pass along some advice to anyone thinking like me that 2MB in help files might be unnecessary. I remember the 8MB PDF on the original install disk - ridiculous. That can be safely deleted, by the way!

I appreciate the input and hear it often . . . and found the comment about only adding fractions of a second very interesting. I would have thought it added up to more than that, especially cumulatively.
 
Paul,
I think the issue with help files and the newer versions of the Palm desktop is that help files are dynamic. e.g., there are hyperlinks embedded into the desktop that take you to a help topic without having to open the help file separately. The desktop checks for the existence of the help files on opening. If they aren't there, it won't open. It would be nice if developers gave users more detailed error messages but, if pigs had wings, they could fly too. :)

With all the RAM you already regained from picking the low hanging fruit, anything else is going to get incrementally smaller and more prone to causing problems like the one you had. I'd just be happy with what you've done so far and not get obsessed about that last couple of megs of RAM.
 
:p Paul, you quack me up in your cleaning....hey when you are bored...you are welcome to come to my house and clean here....there is always something to clean here...and we are very forgiving if things are deleted....errr, accidentally thrown away.
 
Quack me up! Cool. Thanks to Jim for the help and Carol for the humor!

Not to beat a dead horse to death, but while I may have to have the help files . . . I copied and moved PhotoDesktop to Docs and deleted the whole folder. Palm Desktop opens just fine and since I use AcidImage for photos, don't need Photo Desktop.

That eliminated 11 MEG. One way or the other P/Dtop is getting smaller than it's 52MB behemoth & wasteful size! Sorry . . . can't help it . . . must eliminate waste . . . the folks in the labcoats said I was to do what put me in a happy place . . .aaaaahh! Hey . . . . what's that smoke . . . . ?
 
"must eliminate waste" he said in a robotic monotone voice....the next thing we may hear is "Danger Will Robinson, Danger"...or even a message from the Borg on Star Trek The Next Generation...."Resistance is futile." :eek:
Carol
 
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