A review of "AntiCrash"

Q

Split off of "sausage-dog software", I installed Windows 98 SE in a VPC 2007 virtual machine and Windows Updated it with all the critical stuff and reasonably useful secondary updates.

SDS (Since I can't spell the name of the dog), makes 4 things I'm going to bother with:

• AntiCrash
• Hare
• Zoom
• Battery Doubler

I will be reviewing them in that order.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/1-ACInstallation.png

This is the screen that show up after an installation. I'll pass over the questionable grammar ("It's the first time AntiCrash is launched on your computer").

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/2-Integrator.png

This is the "Integrator" their referring to. The other icon is the screen imaging picture I've been using to get these shots.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/3-Explanation.png

If you click "What is the Integrator?" in the image 2 before this, you'll get this short explanation. I find the "award-winning" comment a little pretentious.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/4-Menu.png

What happens when you rightclick on it. If you install other programs of theirs, their menus become enabled. I have to admit, it's an interesting setup and I've never seen it done by anyone else.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/5-About.png

It's "About" box. If you think their obsession with icons, dogs and wizards is bad here...

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/6-Apps.png

Again, an interesting and inventive setup, but I dislike their use of colorful nonstandard fonts.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/7-Mainscreen.png

What happens when you open AC proper. I find the "protecting your PC" comment interesting as I remember using this before XP even came out and WELL before Blaster and the Security Center's "Help Protect Your PC" slogan.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/8-Screen2.png

They stole that icon from MACSbug I'm pretty sure, also, "Town Patrol" is just an... INTERESTING... name for that. Also, am I the only one slightly put off by their strange UI? Last thing: I was unaware that Windows had "Kernel panics", per se.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/9-Screen3.png

I'll provide screenshots of each of these later.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/10-Screen4.png

Again, I'll run each later.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/11-Screen5.png

I have to admit, the frozen over generic window is pretty cool. I also swear that that skull and crossbones was the same one the cell phone virus used later one.

The "Check for Updates" thing is very inconsistent; in some applications it's relegated to the "About..." box.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/12-TPoptions.png

This is what happens if you click "Options..." on the 2nd screen. By default the second one isn't checked. I'm not entirely sure how the option description and elaboration agree with each other.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/13-BootSafe.png

This always gets me. What does getting booted from YIM have to do with system stability (Or does it crash YIM?). Also, this dialog as some of the WORST grammar in all their applications: "will no more be able to", "on blacklist" and a very hard to understand icon.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/14-Lifebelt.png

Wait, something opening "Windows Scrap.txt" crashed and I didn't know it? What was it and what is THIS?!

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/15-AR.png

I told you there'd be abysmal imagery. Microsoft's latest UI design for dialogs, wizards etc., as seen in Vista, is that they should avoid useless clipart or images on the side (Think of the greenish keys with lock on the left hand side of IE 5.5's ActiveX install prompts). This should demonstrate WHY: That wizard is just... questionable. I'm not even getting into the hat that he obviously cut out of cardboard.

The language however is hilarious: It's a "unique proprietary technology" with an "advanced artificial intelligence system". Finally, "unlike most hard disk scanners, AR scans everything...". Well, generally most hard disk scanners only scan the hard disk for good reason: They're hard disk scanners!

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/16-AR2.png

No that blasted wizard ISN'T going away. It defaults to through so I'm going to let it stay there.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/18-ARRInteresting.png

When you click next, this shows up. Interestingly enough, you can't cancel the main dialog box, but you can individually cancel the tests (Why?!) so you can actually cancel the whole thing...

I have no idea what this actually does, but I'm willing to bet the last one checks to see if there are any device manager/IRQ problems.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/19-ARR2.png

Again I have no idea what these actually mean. Checking drivers may be "checking to see if there are any devices disabled for the want of them".

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/20-ARRSnakeOil.png

It's their "advanced artificial intelligence system"! That magnifying glass circles around like it does in Windows 98 setup and the number at the bottom just randomly changes. As you can guess from the file name, that leaves an EXTREMELY poor taste in my mouth.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/21-ARRSnakeOil2.png

And at the end it just changes to all 0s.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/22-ARR3.png

OK, what happens here is that the Windows XP logo (I'm on 98) is revealed from the top down at a certain rate (Independent of the progress). I don't know enough programming to know what toolbox calls are or their rebuildability, but the fact that I've NEVER seen or heard them referred to elsewhere suggests this may be a hoax.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/23-ARR3a.png

This really ticked me off; not initially, but after it still did it when I had disabled the swapfile, restarted searched to ensure there wasn't a swapfile, and reran this.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/24-ARR3b.png

Again, what the Dickens is the "Windows database" ? The Registry? Why not just call it that? It better not be that "driver information database" that Windows builds whenever it "Detect new hardware".

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/24-ARR3c.png

That's way too vague to be the least bit helpful.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/25-ARR3d.png

Again, very inhelpful.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/26-ARR4.png

Now it scans the hard disk and does who knows what.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/27-ARR4.png

Nothing turned up "bad". I'm not sure what that block after "AutoRepair" is in the title of the window.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/28-SPW.png

This is the second option under screen 2 from above. I think that should be "more stable".

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/29-RLD.png

Annoyingly, you have to select a file before you can select an option.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/30-Crashlog.png

Rather annoyingly, it prevented two crashes, but didn't log them!? That irked me extremely.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/31-Test.png

From the last tab, there was a "Test" option (The one with the skull). The options were "Crash" and "Appliation freeze". I didn't try either with it disabled, it would probably just... crash!

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/32-Crash.png

When it "detects a crash", it "stabilizes" it by bringing up that little dialog box (The empty space to the left contains one of those speech bubbles with a blue "i" in it that blinks at about 1 per second) and displaying info and options. Interestingly, the option I'd think would be the most usefull ("Always do this") isn't here.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/33-Whynot.png

If you click the thing about "Town Patrol" in the previous dialog box you'll get this. Frankly I don't think that answers the question and the second sentence doesn't even belong there.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/33-Fixing.png

When you select "Recover" it gives you this. that blue bar moves back and forth along the line.

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/34-Fix.png

More bad grammar: "recommended to quit". Also, shouldn't it be "for maximum stability" ?

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/35-Test2.png

This is what happens when you select "Frozen application" from the crash wizard. I would dearly love to know how they come up with "Medium" and "87%" (!)...

Also, why can't you close or ignore it when you could with a more severe crash?

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/37-Taskman.png

This, if it actually did anything, would be a welcome replacement to Windows 9x's questionable and, in VPC, useless Task Manager. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to list tasks unless they're frozen, and even then it's questionable!

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http://wwsvr.bounceme.net/SDS/AC/36-Run.png

Another, different, "bomb" icon, as well as more bad grammar: "a crash-protected mode". Note that this didn't work out so well, as later reviews will prove.

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Questions, requests are solicited; the VM used will be available.

-Q

Ka0s

For some reason I vaguely remember AntiCrash itself, crashing without warning.

Q

Not not surprized. It seemed to be fairly fragile when the need actually arose, as will be demonstrated in my next review, when Hare crashed even while being run under the "special, crash-protected mode".

-Q

Ka0s

With the 88 bit kernel?

Q

88, or 64 (The latter of which you can't use on a real 64 bit system, or something like that).

Yes, I have pictures of that, as well as further proof of their fraudulences.

-Q