t.s.lim

Very funny!

I just come across this discussion (in the last reply message): http://www.howtofixc...vel-272499.html

Ha! A free script program AutoIt (http://www.autoitscr...om/site/autoit/) can do so easily and yet my paid ME Pro can't. Sarcastic enough!

What an extraordinarily stupid response this is. If a facility is provided in order that you may request a new feature, and you choose to ignore that facility, then why on earth would you expect anyone to take any notice of you; to say nothing about the remarkable lack of manners you choose to exhibit.

... why ? ....

Because I love to do so. So what?

Ha! (1 time)

This is a user-to-user forum. Can't remember when I last saw a contributon from Insight. But in any case, new features should be requested as described in the post at the top of this page, headed Reporting bugs and requesting features.

 

--

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Let me reply for this kind of reminder once and for all:

I understand there is a toilet in my house that I can comfortably shxt there, however I reserve my right to shxt in a public toilet (so that more people get the smell).

Again, thanks whoever trying to remind me for the above matter.

You are free to keep on the bullshxt to kill this forum, when this forum is die, so as the product.

I use a macro: (activated when multimedia player programs are closed)

Audio Mute

Audio Volume: Turn On Full

Repeat Start (Repeat 10 times)

Audio Volume: Move Down

End Repeat

Audio Unmute

To restore system master volume upon the closing of few media players that I normally use to play video or musics.

MEP also has similar functions to control "MIDI" but it does not have any function to control "WAV".

Many multimedia players in the market (this include media player classic) actually change the "WAV" volume, so please add those WAV functions, so that I can have something like:

Audio Mute

WAV Volume: Turn On Full

Repeat Start (Repeat 10 times)

WAV Volume: Move Down

End Repeat

Audio Unmute

Hi Cory,

Thanks for you input.

For what I want to achieve (as in the very first post of this thread), In fact I am currently using a macro similar to what you have suggested.

MEP really have to improve its scheduling features to make it more flexible (and thus covers more cases). FYI, I am among those few that keep pressing Insight since ME3 (backtrace to year 2002) for the ability to schedule a macro run once and only once but not at a particular point of time which ends up as the MEP's "If the activation was missed, run at the next available time" feature.

I strongly believe my suggestion on how to enhance the MEP schedule feature in the other thread, if implemented will make MEP much more powerful.

 

It does say you should use the feature request forum and coming from a moderator I take that to also mean you should not do the opposite. I think the reasoning here is that there is no point posting a feature request here to users who can not implement such a feature request for you. And if your sole goal is to bash MEP then you're the hostile one.

 

Common sense tells, if my goal is to bash MEP, I won't be so stupid to register MEP in the first place.

 

But the one thing I do find constructive is when a user is anticipating making a feature request to ISS, and states so, and asks the community for input and is willing to listen to that input. Then makes a feature request based on that input. Well that's a different matter and I encourage that. And personally I think a few more scheduling options would be useful. Quarterly would be nice for instance.

 

 

Base on my personal experience, a "Suggestion" forum (I wonder why there isn't one here) is always the best place to quickly find out how rich/lack of a utility features (particularly when one need to evaluate and choose one among several competitive products). And how well the response of the author (or a representative from the developer) to user suggestions is a good indicator of how much they care about user needs (which I think is the major factor determining the future of a product). I often find it mush more interesting to read discussion in user suggestion forum than a bug report forum.

Request a feature

That link never says I shouldn't post suggestion here.

I hereby, would like to invit any moderator to clarify this point: Can I, as a registered user of MEP post my request of new feature here instead of using that link.

Btw, I have never come across such a hostile forum where user can openly demands others to stop suggesting something simply because it is not his interest, wtfk!

Hi,

 

 

Easiest for you perhaps? Certainly not easiest for Insight,and entirely unnecessary.

 

How do you know?

 

Simply create 2 scheduled macros according to your criteria above, then have the body of logic in a 3rd macro that is run by either of the other 2 macros. I wish you'd stop making facile requests for features that are unnecessary,

 

In my example, I want to run a monthly schedule macro only when my system is idle. (The AND case). The trick you have suggested won't work and even if it work, I think creating 3 macros to schedule a single task is not the answer, that way is unnecessarily troublesome, inefficient and unwise.

 

In any case, this isn't the place for requests for new features - Insight provides an alternative method for this, if you could only take the time to discover.

Just point me to the place where the forum rule says I should not make any feature request here and I will shut up and leave.

Hi,

How about allowing multiple "Schedule" activation of a macro?

I mean something like I can schedule my macro to run

1. Monthly

and/or

2. When the system has been idle for x minutes

(i.e. if it is a AND, I can have a monthly macro to run only when my system is idle, the possibility is unlimited... and hence flexible)

I wish MEP to be more flexible with its time-scheduling features and the easiest way I can see is to allow multiple time-schedules (those that currently provided by MEP) whose condition are joined with a Boolean "AND" or "OR".

I don't think you understand how a scheduler works.

 

I think I do.

 

A scheduler is designed to initiate a specified task at its first appointed time, then reschedule the task so that it will be able to run at its next appointed time, if relevant. Once the task has been started [and rescheduled], the scheduler has completed its job. It does not hang around, waiting for the task to complete and report back its success or failure.

 

 

My definition is simpler, anything I plan to do at certain time is considered being scheduled.

 

 

Once you understand that, then you can see that a task is therefore either to run once only, or to run repeatedly at various intervals. If the task is to run once, then that task's next run time is Never. In the case of Windows startup tasks, they are presumably scheduled to run each time Windows boots, and it is the task's responsibility to "delete" itself when it has run successfully. In your particular case, the job failed and so remained to be run again next time Windows was restarted.

In fact I am aware that a bit is set in boot sector to summon chkdsk when Windows bootup simply because Norton Ghost prompt me about that (bit 446) while I attempt to create a backup image of my HDD.

My wrong assumption is "what" launch the chkdsk program (after detecting the marked bit), I assume it is Windows Scheduler and I was wrong! Don't blamed me, I have been bombard with the "power" of Windows Scheduler all this while...

 

 

And if you think about that strategy for a moment, then you will see that the key requirement for the chkdsk task was to complete successfully, because until that happened, there was no guarantee that your disks were in good order. In the circumstances you describe, you really have no idea what state your disks are in because of that recurring BSOD. For the continued health of your system I really think you need to get to the bottom of that issue and resolve it properly.

If you read again my previous post, you should notice 2 things:

1. I am aware of bad sectors (start to develop) on my WinXP HDD before I scheduled a chkdsk /r

2. I don't expect chkdsk to clear the bad sectors for me (since that is impossible), I only want it to reallocate as much good data from the bad sector area to healthy spots on that HDD.

From 2. you should see that, sometime, the purpose of running chkdsk could mean to cut down losses instead of cure a storage problem absolutely. If you agree with me on this point, then you should agree also, if chkdsk /r always fails with the same cause then blindly repeating it is simply UNWISE.

Just imagine if MEP is being used to launch chkdsk /r, it is easy to code such that it won't foolishly repeat the launch indefinitrly, right? The same thing can't be done (and is currently NOT done) by Windows Scheduler.

Hence, generally spesking, MEP is better than Windows Scheduler in launching anything. The claim that the latter is more powerful could not be TRUE,

I think you are being a bit unfair on Windows Scheduler there though. If you read the following link it explains how chkdsk is fired up on startup.

 

Microsoft Support

I admit I have assumed it is a Window Schedule that fires up chkdsk /r and I have not searched on-line for the fact what indeed was going on behind that.

But isn't it funny that when I boot WinXP up under safe mode and issue a "schtasks /delete *" command, it stops the blue screen (as mentioned in my previous post) and I can boot normally into Windows from there on?

Btw, thanks for the link to explain how chkdsk is scheduled... again I presume MS couldn't be wrong in explaining how their products work. .. um... to be fair, that link really supports what I have claimed, even MS thenselve can't scheduled chkdsk with Window Scheduler, so it is not that POWERFUL.

Speaking of Windows Scheduler, I would like to share with you my recent experience of its power...

My Windows XP HDD has started to develop "bad sector" just few days ago. I am lucky that I have 3 logical drives on that HDD and bad sector has not developed in C: drive where my Windows XP resites (that is why I can still boot up my Windows)

I actually confirm on its problem when I try to create an image backup using Norton Ghost (and I was warned about bad sector) that immediately explains to me why one of my Steam game keep having corrupted game files and required me to reload.

My plan is to brute-force a backup using Norton Ghost's -FRO -SURE switches then restore the my Windows XP to a new replacement.HDD. But before that I try to chkdsk /r on the logical drive where my Steam game resites (I hope it will reallocate as much as possible, data from the bad sector area before I backup). Almost as it always will, I was prompted to schedule the check because Chkdsk needs absolute access right while doing its task, I answer 'Yes' (so scheduled the HDD chkdsk... see what happen next)

Upon rebooting my WinXP, I notice my HDD indicator blinking intensively (chkdsk is working hard to find and reallocate bad sector data, I know it), and then wtfck, I got a blue screen with error: "c000021a unknow Hard error". i.e. chkdsk /r has triggered a blue screen ... the funny thing is, if I reboot my PC after seeing the blue screen, the same event sequence repeats (reboot-> Chkdsk/r -> blue screen),

My Goodness...I now can't even boot up my WinXP because Windows has scheduled to complete chkdsk/r on its next boot up, but that task can never be completed without triggering a blue screen in the mid. So, now what? Why me? $^$*638^%&$^#^ ...

Since I am posting in this forum again, as of this writing, sure, I have the above solved. But "how I solved the above" is not my intention of this message. My point is why can't Window scheduler just switch off the chkdsk /r task after it fails to complete in its very first try? Window scheduler is not that POWERFUL, right?

Really? Have you looked at the Windows (7) Scheduler? You can schedule tasks to run even when the user isn't logged on (try that with MEP and see what happens ), there's a plethora of events you can use, etc., etc. As I said, it's far more powerful than MEP's, but, for the most part, I think MEP's scheduler is adequate for its purpose.

Strictly speaking, I don't consider what you have mentioned as "powerful" scheduling ability. It is just a matter of what a "window service" can do while an ordinary window program can NOT. MEP is a window program which runs only after Windows is up running as usual, you can't expect it to do anything for you while it is not even running... It is just like, you can't claim that a magic wizard is more powerful than an ordinary doctor for a doctor can't ressurect a dead. (he can't because that is not in his job scope)

Just for your info, Windows service, including your most admired Windows scheduler required a login (otherwise it forfeits Windows security requirement), though you can make the login implicit (in a layman term an auto or unattended login). There is, for example, backup program that uses a service to login (MS Server 2008) and carry out backup job event before any user has login. (But you have to specify a user name and password to let it run under the user account). If your Win7's scheduler really let something occurs even without needing anyone to login, don't be happy yet, think about security,,, think it hard, do you really want that?

The Windows scheduler is much more sophiticated and powerful than MEP's, and includes the ability to turn on a sleeping computer.

That can be true if you are comparing it to just MEP's activation Schedule feature. If you consider the codes in a macro of MEP, then I don't see anything else (besides your turn on sleeping computer) that can be done by Window Scheduler but a MEP macro.

What I am requesting is to make MEP's activation Schedule feature richer in its options, make it even better than general scheduler program (including Window's native scheduler), that shall save repeated scheduling codes in macros.

You can always use Windows' bult-in scheduler (which is far more sophisticated than MEP's) to fire off macros. I'll leave you to take a look at all the things you can do with the Windows scheduler - the command line you require is:

"x:\Macro Express Pro\meproc.exe" /AMyMacro

where:

- x: is the fully qualified name of your Programs folder, e.g. C:\Program Files, C:\Program Files (x86)

- MyMacro is the macro name of the macro you wish to run

 

Of course, you won't need to include in your macro any of the date stuff, though you will still have to compare the file year and month with today's year and month.

But Windows' bult-in scheduler can't set any condition which is not time/date related, right?

Since I am running MEP all the time, I don't find it a good idea to run more than one scheduler programs...

Below is the outline of a macro that should solve your problem. I have assumed you know MEP sufficiently well to turn it into real code.

 

This macro is activated via ME's scheduler:

- Schedule it to run each day at 9pm

- Tick the box "If the activation was missed, run at the next available time" (if the computer is off at the appointed time, when you next turn on the computer, the macro should run)

 

Macro Outline

- Get today's date in a text variable using format mm (tMonth)

- If tMonth is neither 03 nor 09, exit the macro (note the leading zero as we are dealing with a text variable)

- Get today's date in a text variable using format dd (tDay)

- If tDay is more than 07, exit the macro (note the leading zero as we are dealing with a text variable)

- Get today's date in a text variable using format yyyy (tYear)

- Convert tYear to integer (nYear)

- Get today's date in a text variable using format mm (tMonth)

- Convert tMonth to integer (nMonth)

- Get the file's Modified Date/Time Month and Year only (nFMonth and nFYear)

- If nYear equals nFYear AND tMonth equals nFMonth, exit the macro

- Display your reminder message

 

Notes

- I have kept this macro simple so that it does only one thing at a time (for example, we could have retrieved Today's Date only once and then extracted the various substrings needed).

- Names in parentheses simply identify specific variables used in the following line, where the first letter of the name identifies its type, e.g. t for text, n for integer.

- This macro will run each and every day, and takes an imperceptible amount of time to run, even when it displays its reminder message (only on 14 days each year).

- If the computer is not switched on at 9pm, this macro will not run: instead, it will run when you next start Macro Express. We could make this more sophisticated and have it turn on your machine at 9pm each day, but that would involve using the Windows scheduler; however, if your computer is off at 9pm on the 7th of March or the 7th of September and you don't turn your computer back on until the next day, this macro will not display any reminder for another 6 months.

- You can make your message as bright and loud as you like by using colours, fonts, etc.

Thanks for the guideline.

I somehow feel that there is still very big room for improvement in Macro Express's schedule feature. Use your guideline as example, the first two 'If'' are suppose to be in the 'Activation' portion of a macro, there should be a single 'if' (i.e. condition) checking - against the file date in codes.

If MEP provides pick Sunday ... Saturday of a week, why not add also, pick 1-24 hours of a day and pick Jan - Dec of a year?

If MEP can provide Run a macro from time X to time Y in a day, why not include also, from day X to day Y of a week and from month X to month Y of a year.

All these shall save a lot of coding if one has quite a number of scheduled macro that required any of them.

I'm slightly confused by your points 2 and 3:

 

Does this macro run only for the first 7 days of May and September at 9pm, or does it run until the specified file has a current date?

 

Also, May and September are not 6 months apart!

Sorry, that should be March not May. The macro should run for the first 7 days at 9.00 pm provided the mentioned file is absent or its date is not current. 

 

And the macro will not be able to determine when you die, either in advance or after the event   !

 

 

I mean it runs "indefinitely". 

if I die, I won't be able to know whether it is still running, I assume no one will use (thus switch ON my PC), so, that macro should stop indefinitely by then.

Questions:

1) What operaing system do you run?

2) Do you cause your computer to reboot each day? By this I mean you don't hibernate or standby your machine, or have it on all the time. What I want to find out is whether you start Macro Express each day, or whether it's already running when you start up each day (e.g. because the machine wakes from hibernation).

 

Depending on your answers, a good solution might be to have a startup macro that runs each day which handles all the logic needed to achieve your aim.

I am using Windows Xp.

I never t let my PC goes hibernate nor standby, I normally shut down my PC before I go to sleep, however, sometime I will keep it running for a few days.

Hi,

Literally, in a non-MEP context, I wish, I will be reminded by my wife every semi-annually to backup my HDD drives starting from the coming September this year. I might be lazy or could be busy by the time I am reminded by her, however I can be sure if she keep reminding me every evening (say at 9.00 P.M.) .I will have that backup done within a week. Unfortunately my wife is as forgetful as I am and I don't think she has the stamina to keep reminding me on the same thing sharply at 9.00 P.M. for 7 days. So, I hope MEP can come to help...

I want to create this macro once and for all... but I am lack of idea how to actually schedule my macro in the most efficient way.

1) I want MEP to pop me a reminder to backup my HDD drives (I will do that with Disk Image utility). -> this part I have no problem to do it myself.

2) I want the reminder to appear every day but only in the month of March and September at 9.00 PM for their first 7 days (i.e. day 1 to day 7 of these 2 months)

3) The reminder stops for the month being, as soon as I change a file 'HDD BACKUP.RMD' on my C: drive such that the year and month of its date match the date as in 2) and it then waits to remind me again 6 months later.

4) This macro repeats until I die.

So, how do I schedule the above ? What is the best way to minimize the MEP checks on whether it needs to remind me?

I use XP Pro. I'd broadly echo Paul's summary. On the plus side, some great features, like meaningfully-named variables. But too many bugs and design flaws, performance issues, and inexplicable crashes far more often than I used to get with ME3. I'm surprised to hear from Cory that it apparently runs regular tasks satisfactorily in his clients' commercial environments.

 

--

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I have it tried.

It is quite buggy (not due to conversion problem)... sigh!

What's wrong with taking a copy of your ME3 macro file before converting?

If MEP installation always converts the deault macro file of my ME3, that means, I can't unload MEP, reload and run ME3 during my trial period (because now the macro file is in new format). I want to be able to switch to using either of them when trying MEP, can I?

My take on MEP differs from Cory's. Although there are many new features in MEP (some of which are, or ought to be, very powerful and useful), several of them require some effort to learn, and in all cases you'll have to rework/rewrite your macros to take advantage of them. And you can't miss what you've never used! If your ME3 macros are all satisfactory, then I'd be inclined not to upgrade - MEP is still very buggy and doesn't seem to receive the same degree of attention from Insight as ME3 certainly used to. Many of its operations are far slower than they are in ME3, and some simply don't work properly (the worst example of this is running a macro directly from a variable; if you make use of this feature in ME3, then you should forget MEP altogether). And many of us experience an ongoing problem where MEP causes the machine to go very slowly indeed until it's terminated and restarted (and this is one of many problems Insight seems to have no interest or ability to resolve).

 

MEP is a very mixed bag.

I don't have complex macro.

My reason of using ME3 (and hopefully, in the near future MEP) beside its main capability of automate certain task with macro:

1. I also use it as a scheduler for other programs. I dislike Window's native scheduler which is not flexible enough. I also find it hard to maintain the scheduling of some of my utilities (with built-in scheduler). I want a center scheduler to schedule everybody. (MEP has interesting improvement in this area which I like)

2. I also want a center keyboard hotkey manager, instead of letting utilities compete to react to hotkeys.

3. ME is a good program to serve as a password manager, one which feed password correctly, no matter how different the password input interfaces are (among utilities that are protected by password).

In brief, it replaces the role of few utilities (which otherwise I will have to install and maintain).

and I am runnung winXP... 

again, let me ask this:

Is MEP memory hogging after using it over hours under XP?

Does MEP slow down WinXP a lot compare to ME3?

I would. For the most part MEPruns pretty well. I have a client who has about 20 users that use it all dayand for them it all works fine. And I have another client who uses it onautomated machines to do data entry all day long for a hospital and those workfine too. There are a few bugs but several have been fixed recently and othersare easily worked around. And most of the issues I have found seem to beisolated to me so I'm not certain it's really the fault of the product or atleast it would seem that my case is so isolated it's not worth worrying about.Bottom line it has some problems but I think the benefits far outweigh it. Andyou can try it for a while and if it proves to buggy you don't have to buy it.But I can say one feature like named variables far outweighs all of the currentproblems. I should say it also depends on your skill level. For simple'recorded' text type macros you may as well stay with ME3.

 

 

1. MEP consumes 2.6M on my W7-64 machine. 6.4 on the Server 2008 64bit.

 

2. I run MEP on all Windows OSs and they all run equally quickly. ME3 for some variable ops is faster and a few thing like clipboard ops are slower in MEP. But that's also because they're doing a lot more cleverness that makes it more reliable and useful IMHO.

 

 

 

 

I understand that there will be a conversion of ME3 macros if I install MEP for a trial and the conversion is irreversible...

Is the installation of MEP converts my ME3 macro file directly (making it no more ME3 format) or does it produce new MEP macro file base on the existing ME3 macro file ?

In brief, I want to be able to go back to ME3 easily, just in case...

Btw, can I try MEP in VMWare, will it work?

Hi,

I am running WinXP and ME ver3.

I am impressed by what MEP can do compare to ME when flipping through its on-line help file, so is keen to upgrade to this PRO version.

However, few posts here scares me, it looks like some of you found MEP so buggy and the extend of the MEP bugs is intolerable under Windows of Vista based engine (that includes Win7)

May I seek your opinion, since I am still stick with WinXP, should I upgrade... I mean are those bugs merely Window Vista/7 related?

1. My ME ver3 is stably consume about 11732K memory no matter how long I leave it running, I won't want to upgrade if MEP eat up more and more resources after running for a while, (sort of memory leak problem)

2. I also don't want to upgrade if MEP causes a performance impact which is much heavier than ME

Is there anyone running WinXP find MEP OK? 

We have not been able to replicate the issue here. Is there any way you can send a screen shot? If not, you should try contact Insight Software Solutions support directly at info@wintools.com.

Hi,

I have captured snapshot of my problem and I have attached it in my bug report.

Please kindly let me know the result.

For years, this is the first time ME is causing me problem and I really need to run that particular macro quite frequently.

t.s.lim

We have not been able to replicate the issue here. Is there any way you can send a screen shot? If not, you should try contact Insight Software Solutions support directly at info@wintools.com.

I will try to capture screenshot... not easy though because when the problem occurs, the whole system is like being fully occupied by unknown source, which I dare not claim is ME but strongly suspect it is.

By the way, something worth mentioned, I have taskbar set to autohide, the system tray icon for netwrok connection notification is set to motify me when it is connected. i.e. the connection icon will not be in the tray until I get connected.

May ne you can try the same way as I do, just set the system the way I have set then put a display text dialog immediately after the if dial-up connection xxxx command and see how.