Forums Bug Reports $tick and the Ticks 49.7 days limit - SOLUTION

As posted here http://www.rundegren.com/software/windowsuptime/faq/

What does "Ticks (49.7 days limit)" mean?
This means that the uptime will be reset if the machine has an uptime longer than 49.7 days. This is the only method that can be used on Windows 98/Me machines.

Why is uptime reset after 49.7 days?
This happens because a 32-bit variable is being used to store the tick count which is incremented every millisecond. A 32-bit variable can store numbers up to 4,294,967,295 which equals to 49.7 days (4,294,967,295/1000/3600/24). When this variable overflows it will start over from 0 again.

THEY FOUND A SOLUTION THAT WOULD BE GOOD FOR IMPLEMENTING

What is PDH?
PDH stands for Performance Data Helper and is an interface for querying performance data on Windows NT/2000/XP machines. It can store uptime values of more than 500 million years (300 million years before the first dinosaurs). It is not available on Windows 98/Me machines.

Where can I get PDH?
PDH is included in Windows 2000/XP and later. For Windows NT you can get the PDH.DLL file here (http://www.rundegren.com/software/dlls/pdh.dll) which must be kept in the same directory as the Windows Uptime executable or any other directory that is in your path.

Why isn't PDH working on Windows XP?
In order to connect to a machine which is running Windows XP you will have to disable the 'Use simple file sharing (Recommended)' option in the 'Folder Options' dialog on the machine. You also have to make sure that the computer is running the Professional Edition of Windows XP.

Maybe some sort of integration into mIRC would be beneficial. Just a suggestion to fix this bug.

Umm everything you mentioned there is already known.

Yes, however I havnt seen it IMPLEMENTED in mIRC yet, and so this is a reminder

If I recall, at one point the method you are talking about was used, however it didn't really fix the problem.

hmm, ok then. It would be really nice if we could get a good solution for this then.

The only kind of windows computers that stay on for more than 50 days at a time are servers, and they aren't going to be running mIRC.

I resent that statement

[05:57:43 PM] <@OverDrive> Personal Statistics Addon By OverDrive Version 4.1
[05:57:43 PM] <@OverDrive> -- I am using Windows 2000 Professional, Service Pack 4 (5.0 - 2195) on Cable.
[05:57:44 PM] <@OverDrive> -- My computer is running 1-Intel Pentium III, 503MHz, 512KB (100% Load).
[05:57:44 PM] <@OverDrive> -- Running with 230/288MB (79.86%) of memory.
[05:57:44 PM] <@OverDrive> -- My graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 displaying at 1600x1200 32bit 85Hz
[05:57:44 PM] <@OverDrive> -- Last restart: 5 Weeks 2 Days 11 Hours 41 Minutes 55 Seconds. Record uptime: 7 Weeks 17 Hours 2 Minutes 47 Seconds.
[05:57:44 PM] <@OverDrive> You Can Get It At http://www.adamj.org

My actual uptime is 10 weeks and this isn't a server. I play games on it, I do work, I do design work on here and everything. I also have friends with 5 week uptimes, who do the same as me. This is an all around functional computer for home use. My linux server has (or rather had due to the Blackout 2003) a 160+ day uptime.

Oh, and that 100% load (if you are thinking that's bad) is [email]SETI@HOME[/email] running. My actual load is about 1%

I am behind u 100%. The only computers that have long uptimes are ones with operators that know wtf they are doing. If a computer is contantly crashing, or f****'n up, its your fault--not the os. I completly argue with people whom say "I run linux because its more stable and have a longer uptime" Thats the biggest load of crap. If you dont have an uptime, or cant get an uptime of over a month, you may consier taking a computer course and learn how to properly operate a computer.

Dont get me wrong, "funky stuff" does happen, but very rarely. If something messes up, its almost always the programs you're running, not the OS.

I think what he meant was, that regular users do not NEED such high uptimes (beside of being l33t). And he said "Windows computers", not "Linux computers".

Every time something like this happens you're starting to defend Windows and bash Linux instead... it's called trolling.

I currently have 4 Windows PCs (2 WinXP, 1 Win2k, and 1 NT4) that are at this moment over 47 days uptime. All four of those machines have mIRC installed. Additionally, I have another machine that is at 42 days right now. I also expect my newly setup Windows 2003 machine to break 47 days no problem.

So where exactly are you getting this statistic that no non-server Windows PCs have uptimes greater than 50 days?

in my personal experiance its almost impossible to get any uptime on a windows machine above 47 days ..... MS releases to many damn updates the require reboot. minus that instance my pc would be up from the moment i first installed XP pro till this very second that is the only time it has ever benn rebooted since then.

XP was installed 31wks 1day 8hrs 14mins 1sec ago

thats when i built this system

One reason it (won't/isn't) implemented is

a] many ppl still use windows98
b] windows XP professional is required. Most mIRC users on XP will probably be running the home version.... implementing this would make it much too limited

Actually, the truth is most XP users of mIRC are probably using XP Pro.
I'll leave it up to your imagination, why.

As far as I was aware, this issue only ever affected clients running on Windows 9x kernels (not sure about NT4).

I also do recall reading that this uptime issue had been fixed in Windows 2000.

Because mIRC uses $ticks, the method of it is the same behind the sceens. This is why it doesnt work for me on windows 2000 Pro, nor does it work for anyone else. Hence why i was trying to get it changed.

Umm where did you get your information? XP Pro is NOT required. From a programming standpoint, XP Home and XP Pro are virtually the same. According to Microsoft, PDH is supported in NT4/2k/XP/2003. So Where you came to the conclusion XP Pro is required is beyond me.

Secondly, who cares that people use 98? 95/98/ME/NT4 don't support transparency, but guess what? mIRC does. Why? Because Microsoft isn't totally stupid, they made it so you can work with features that are not available in all versions of Windows while still allowing compatibility. So what happens if someone is using Windows 98? They can't take advantage of the new feature.

To be honest, your post made me laugh. When I read the thing about win98 the first thing that came to mind was, a quote I once heard. "If you can't solve all the World's problems, don't bother solving any." That's a ridiculous assertion. Yeah, so we can't fix the problem for Win98 users, does that mean we shouldn't fix it for the NT4/2k/XP/2003 users? It's foolish to say that we shouldn't.

Agreed. I use Windows ME at one point of time and wondered why people keep complaining ME is so unstable, when mine was stable and fine (unless I plug in my USB modem, ethernet works well though).

Also, I use XP Home, it came with my laptop. So if PDF is supported on XP Home, that's good.

And we aren't talking bad about Linux, to those who think so. These are the facts.

BTW: if you hibernate your PC instead of turning it off, you can reach 47+ days update quite easily.