Just recently Bernhard received fan art, from a WinDirStat fan and forwarded it to me. We got the permission to put it up on the website by the author, so I am doing this now and here. The image (thumbnail below) shows the patterns of a cushion tree map, nicely shaded so it will work well as a wallpaper. And guess what, that’s what it’s meant for. It fits perfectly to a dual-monitor setup with a resolution of 1280×1024 on both screens. Seems like to appreciate its full beauty you’ll have to grab your copy 
Go ahead, right-click and choose “Save target as”:
Thanks to Mathias for sharing it with us.
// Oliver
Good news first. Development on WinDirStat has officially resumed.
Now the question. I know as a matter of fact that there is demand for a 64bit version of WinDirStat. However, since 64bit implies Unicode, there is no need to handle this specifically as long as the compatibility requirements ar Windows 2000 and above. Nevertheless, as you know we actually do have an ANSI version. My proposal would be the following:
- I’ll try to keep compatibility as much as possible, even for Windows 9x/ME.
- Emphasis will be put on Windows 2000 and above - meaning it will be native Unicode.
- The versions offered will stretch 32bit (x86) and 64bit (x64) with Unicode. ANSI may be made available separately.
- New features will only be available in the Unicode versions, but bugs will be fixed in the old one and selected features may be migrated back.
I’ll add a poll soon at this place (possibly as a new post, so people who subscribe to the RSS feed get to see it).
// Oliver
PS: Feel free to comment on this post.
STOPzilla, an antispyware is catching the most current WDS installation package as Zlob.YU. While one should never take this too light-hearted, the first reaction of the user who contacted me was of course rather in the direction of an accusation. Nothing wrong with that, if it would have turned out to be true. Not at last I am an AV researcher and developer. Although probably SF.net would be to blame if something like this happened, because all downloads run via them, this would be horrible for my reputation as well.
So, what now? First of all I want to reassure everyone, that the two download samples from different SF.net mirrors that I have taken are not infected, but still reported as Zlob.YU by STOPzilla. Since all mirrors are supposed to be in sync and I got the first report two days back, all mirrors should have the infected file version by now - if there ever was any threat. Instead the fact that only STOPzilla finds it, points to a false positive and I am going to contact the vendor about it.
Second, you need not trust me on that, instead I suggest to visit Jotti and VirusTotal, although these are also not 100% reliable in the end, the heuristics and signatures of different AV scanners are used to examine your file, which gives you a fairly good hint as to whether the file is infected or not.
// Oliver
The short answer is: yes.
The long one is: there is no reason why WDS wouldn’t be Vista compatible. However, depending on how you start it (elevated or not) you will not be able to see certain parts of the file system (which is just the point with the elevation model). Naturally WDS, running under your credentials will have the very same problem, so you should expect to find a - potentially large - chunk called
Please search this blog for further information on the
// Oliver
A user sent us the following registry script via the feedback mailing list. Thanks!
Copy and paste it into a text file and save the text file with the file extension “.reg“. Make sure to modify the path in case you have a non-english system or in case you installed WDS into a different folder. Also make sure to use double-backslashes within the double-quotes.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\WinDirStat Here]
@="Win Dir Stat (Graphical)"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\WinDirStat Here\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\WinDirStat\\windirstat.exe\" %1"
// Oliver
Today I got a complaint email, so I thought no problem, answer it friendly and things will somehow be solved. The email contained the following text:
I was told to go to Source Forge to download the WinDirStat program. Fortunately I found this website by myself via Google because when I went to SourceForge.net I was never able to find the program even after I paid my son (who is 32 years old) to find it. After about 3 hours he gave up also. But he did find some interesting programs and games NONE OF WHICH we were able to download or purchase.
In conclusion, your source forge website is to darn difficult to find anything on. And when you go to download, he takes you to multiple screens — but none do the download. I wanted to emial you at Source Forge, but can’t complain there either. Does anything work at that website. You could not pay me to go back.
Continue reading ‘Anonymous letter … download problems?!’
