Greetings Martin,

I am the VP of Engineering / Product Development for Avanquest's Utility Division. Needles to say when I saw this I wanted to immediately comment.

Turns out--it is not a bug. Let me explain.

The Memory Optimization tool as part of its process makes this change to the registry. It has been proven on some systems that doing this "clean up" speeds up the system on the next page file use (i.e. on the next boot). It is a well known tweak. Active Intelligence, if the tool is enabled, will set this registry key.

So to stop this from happening go to global settings under active intelligence and turn off memory optimization.

Sorry that you were not able to get the answer in a more direct way earlier before you became frustrated. These type of deep questions about specific registry keys can be difficult to get the answer to unless you can directly talk to the engineers about. I have such an advantage. That said--I'll work to make the communication better between support and engineering.

Thanks for your understanding.

Mark - first thank you for the quick response.  When I opened my ticket I noted that I thought it was related to the Memory Optimization (because I too know of this) - it was clear every time I ran it - it would set. 

I will check -but think I did disable such in General - however I will fully test again and post back.  To be clear do you mean the setting "System Memory" under Active Intelligence under General ?

The bigger point (and a super positive one for me) is your posting.  I am a long time SS user (and fan).  It is a really nice package that I often recommend to friends.  I can honestly tell you I opened (and still have the emails) two different tickets on this and was told - development is aware but doesn't think it needs a change.  Clearly if I can disable this behavior, then it doesn't - but this was not communicated back to me.

I am still concerned from a general user experience, as most users will not understand all of this and will simply think SS is making their PC take longer to shutdown.  It took a bit for me to realize the program was setting the clear page file.  I would humbly suggest the option should be defaulted off and a small information block appear when the function is enabled describing the added shutdown time (or the whole clear page file be broken out as an additional Optimize / Security setting).  As I see it now, and tell me if I'm wrong, if anyone runs a Memory Op one time the reg. is set to clear page file and it will not clear that setting - True / False ? (has been my experience, if I'm disabling the right setting). 

Again thanks for the post, and for hearing this issue.  I'll report back on my testing once I'm clear what to set....

Actually your comment is interesting as we do not see any noticable shutdown differences and without tipping my hand in what is in the future product--I know in our test cases this is not showing up as an issue for shutdown performance.

Please let me know if turning this off--yes I believe you are in the right place to turn it off.

Can you tell me anything about your system of note? What OS? How much memory? What hardware?

Still to test - be regarding your test cases:  I'm seeing this on XP Pro, Win7 and Win7 x64.  All contemporary hardware.  Also note that the more memory a system has, usually the larger the swap file.  I think you will also find because this is a security setting, windows does not just delete the file but does a file overwrite (zeros).  Actually I find your comment interesting :) here are some references to this topic:

From Microsoft proper...

"Note If you enable this feature, the shutdown time may be increased."

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314834

"Note that this will significantly increase the amount of time it takes to shut down your computer."

http://www.pcmech.com/article/clear-swap-file-on-shutdown/

"The only result of using this setting will be a longer shutdown"

http://www.pctipsbox.com/clearing-the-page-file-on-shutdown-for-xp/

Update: turning off "System Memory" under Active Intelligence did indeed stop the registry setting from being set all the time.  So Thank You!!  My PC's are back to quick shutdowns without the need to keep changing that registry setting.

Glad to hear this. :)

I would like to confirm two things from above: 1. This BUG does significantly slow down the shutdown on Win 7 64 bit.  2. The suggested fix works.  Of course I had to search the registry for these keys and fix them.

Martin & Mark,

Thank you for having this dialogue.  Mark, I am not sure what Martin is using, but some of us use your products to extend the life of some very old machines.  My main laptop is 7 years old and has its maximum complement of 1GB of memory.  It definitely takes a hit clearing the pagefile on shutdown.

When I first used SS9, I noticed this problem and eventually used JV16 PowerTools to tweak my old laptop into usability.  I would be at a client's site and a meeting would end with me waiting for the lights to stop blinking on my laptop; not pleasant.  I had been forced to use hibernate as an option rather than delay people.

The difference is that the shutdown times go from well over 10 minutes to 1 to 2 minutes depending on what is loaded.

Pretty sure Avanquest no longer cares about this which is sad.  This area to interact is being wasted by them by ignoring customers.