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H2H Helper question


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Yesterday my H2H-Helper corrupted and crashed and dragged along with it some other applications. I decided to uninstall but there was no inherent uninstall icon and Win7 did not recognize it as ever having been installed in the first place.

So I uninstalled manually (as best I could) including file searches and registry edits (probably imperfect). CCleaner also did not locate H2H-Helper's bits and pieces.

I eventually stumbled across over 1800 files occupying more than 41 GB of my HD. They were all chat......h2hh files. It seems that H2HH continually and invisibly writes chat files in the background until you run out of space. This is viral like behaviour and lack of Win7 installation recognition is poor programming. As is its inability to clean up after itself when uninstalling. Too bad because it would be a very convenient utility.

I have decided to stop using it and have asked my opponents also not to use it because their H2HH continually sent chat files into my drop box.

So be careful!

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Yesterday my H2H-Helper corrupted and crashed and dragged along with it some other applications. I decided to uninstall but there was no inherent uninstall icon and Win7 did not recognize it as ever having been installed in the first place.

So I uninstalled manually (as best I could) including file searches and registry edits (probably imperfect). CCleaner also did not locate H2H-Helper's bits and pieces.

I eventually stumbled across over 1800 files occupying more than 41 GB of my HD. They were all chat......h2hh files. It seems that H2HH continually and invisibly writes chat files in the background until you run out of space. This is viral like behaviour and lack of Win7 installation recognition is poor programming. As is its inability to clean up after itself when uninstalling. Too bad because it would be a very convenient utility.

I have decided to stop using it and have asked my opponents also not to use it because their H2HH continually sent chat files into my drop box.

So be careful!

that is odd as if it were sending those normally I would expect my dropbox folder size to be continually growing. I have been using dropbox for years now with no real issues noted.

I do know HTHH keeps a log as it checks for messages (files) for your various games, but that is simply a log file.

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The problem seems to be a growing cache folder.

Of course I have no idea if different computer configurations respond differently.

Mine grew to over 1800 files and over 41 GB in just one week of play with not more than 12 actual real messages relayed. Some of my opponents were wondering why they were receiving chat files from me as well.

Also my program said, the file was in non-readable format. So the behaviour was very viral-like.

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I'm not massively inclined to help some person who comes out of the blue into a forum calling my work a poorly coded viral program, without even checking with me first.

Doesn't it occur to you that _hundreds_ of people are using this program just fine, and the problem might actually be on your machine, not in the program?

If some else finds a genuine unintended side effect of running H2HH, please reach out to me politely and I will do my best, as I always do, to support you. For free.

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I'm not massively inclined to help some person who comes out of the blue into a forum calling my work a poorly coded viral program, without even checking with me first.

Doesn't it occur to you that _hundreds_ of people are using this program just fine, and the problem might actually be on your machine, not in the program?

If some else finds a genuine unintended side effect of running H2HH, please reach out to me politely and I will do my best, as I always do, to support you. For free.

GAJ

If i may quote Fatty ''That's Gold'' :)

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where exactly are you finding this folder, gonna go look at my machine and see if I can find it as well.

In Users/#account name#/AppData/Local/Temp I found about 1600 folders with chat_#numbers#.h2hh files (one each) in them. The few I checked were blank outside some stuff like ""current_seq":0,"local_daylight":1,"

It totals up to about 6 megs.

Chat wasn't working with my H2HH install last time I checked, btw. (GaJ: Read my mind and dosomefink.)

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I wonder if Dropbox is (has started?) caching files in there.

H2HH certainly doesn't put these files there, so Dropbox doing so would be the only explanation I can think of - it may be part of how Dropbox helps you with undeleting files.

I'll have a poke around and see what I can find out. You would have to really go nuts with chat to build up a significant amount of files that way though: at most you would get one new small file per chat exchange.

FWIW, you can delete these files with impunity.

GaJ

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Update: I've had a look at recent changes I made to H2HH, and may have found an explanation for why a recent version of H2HH may have caused there to be more "versions" of chat files that Dropbox might feel compelled to cache. If true, this would explain Tarquelne's 1600 files.

I'll keep poking around and see if it's true, and what I can do about it.

About "chat not working" ... Tarquelne: what version of H2HH?

GaJ

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I don't use chat much... could very well be Dropbox.

It's temp files, Windows... my assumption is sheer perversity on Microsoft's part. There are files in the directory older marked with last-modified times predating this PC, the hard drive, and the OS.

Here's some actual data: When I open H2HH 2 new folders/files appear in the temp directory. FWIW, this happens even if the DB client isn't running. (Or, at least, I've exited and I don't see the DB icon anymore.)

The last directory formed was named "tmpkklgzo"

The file inside is named: "chat_36074243940227.h2hh"

And the entire contents of the file is:

{"messages":[],"local_timezone":-43200,"current_seq":0,"local_daylight":1,"local_altzone":-46800,"h2hh_version":"2.9.2","last_rendered":0}

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About "chat not working" ... Tarquelne: what version of H2HH?

GaJ

I was using 2.5.4 - never updated because other than the seldom-used chat, it was fine. (EDIT: Not sure if it was 2.5.4, but it was certainly not the latest.)

I just updated to 2.11.0. I'm not seeing the temp chat files appear. Or if they are I don't know where. :)

Chat still doesn't work. At least, in the 30 seconds since I sent a message, no one has replied. (See, this is why I just use e-mail.)

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I don't use chat much... could very well be Dropbox.

It's temp files, Windows... my assumption is sheer perversity on Microsoft's part. There are files in the directory older marked with last-modified times predating this PC, the hard drive, and the OS.

Here's some actual data: When I open H2HH 2 new folders/files appear in the temp directory. FWIW, this happens even if the DB client isn't running. (Or, at least, I've exited and I don't see the DB icon anymore.)

The last directory formed was named "tmpkklgzo"

The file inside is named: "chat_36074243940227.h2hh"

And the entire contents of the file is:

{"messages":[],"local_timezone":-43200,"current_seq":0,"local_daylight":1,"local_altzone":-46800,"h2hh_version":"2.9.2","last_rendered":0}

This is a copy of the file that H2HH _does_ put in the dropbox folder of each game that you are playing. One file per person per game. H2HH updates this file with information it needs to keep track of chat (and related things).

I'm pretty sure that if there are temp files of this nature, then it's dropbox keeping a copy for you "incase you want to undo the changes you made".

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Here's what Dropbox has to say about this topic:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/328/en

Bottom line: any files that are created should get removed again by Dropbox within 3 days.

So I'm not yet convinced I absolutely must do something. I will keep looking at the code to see if I am either updating this file far more often than I thought, or if I can reduce it even more.

GaJ

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I spent some time on this, this evening.

H2HH is very careful about when it updates anything in Dropbox. It only does it when something really changed (you or your oppo did a turn, or chatted). It is careful because apart from anything else, it's irritating to have dropbox telling you that a file changed, when nothing really is going on.

I don't think any problem is relating to H2HH/Dropbox cache interactions.

H2HH does from time to time create a temporary file, using the standard operating system calls for this (as do many programs) which it deletes after it has finished - quicker than you can even see them arrive and go. It's conceivable that a version of H2HH wasn't deleting these properly, or that some other circumstance causes them to hang around.

However, I have played around with everything I can think of to cause something like that to happen, and have not been able to.

Furthermore, the most recent versions of H2HH give a warning if they can't delete the file: they specifically check if it's gone.

The OP didn't say what version of H2HH caused him grief, and Tarqelne reports that he doesn't find these files when using 2.11.0.

So I'm concluding there might have been a bug in an older version, but everything seems right with the most recent.

Tarqelne was looking in the right place: if they're created, they are in

c:\users\your account\appdata\local\temp

So if you are paranoid, by all means keep an eye out, and let me know if you spot these not being cleaned up properly.

GaJ

PS: chat definitely works, for me, as well :)

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GaJ, I checked that folder on my Windows 7 PC and did find some H2HH chat folders, some empty, some with about 15 kb of data in them. I also found a bunch of other folders that didn't look they have anything to do with H2HH. The entire folder only totals 340MB, and since I have 1.65 terrabytes free on my 2 TB hard drive, I just left it there. :-)

H2HH chat works fine for me, and always has. I much prefer it over sending e-mails.

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Yes - there are indeed a bunch of other folders in there because as I said most applications need a temporary file at some time or other, and that's the standard place to put them.

Some applications are better than others at cleaning these up after themselves. H2HH tries to be clean.

I'm keen to confirm whether or not the H2HH ones you found are from an older version of H2HH that had a bug that we've only just discovered, or whether there's still some way H2HH is not succeding in cleaning up.

Can you delete the existing ones, make sure you are running 2.11.0, and see if anymore come back?

Thanks!

GaJ

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