GRIPES: Cannot remove email address
Let's see now, here's a quick summary of just a few of the issues with this software, before coming to my latest MAJOR GRIPE;
*Rather than intelligently reporting critical events, just once or twice, this software prefers to repeat the reports every few seconds or minutes, Ad nauseum.
*Once you start getting these "Event ID #" messages, it would be nice to know what they actually mean, so that you might try to fix the problem. Sorry, Acronis are little help there. You're on your own.
*Want to delete these messages from your events list, so that your Notification Area icon isn't permanently displaying as red? Well, you can't. You can, however "ignore" these events. Unfortunately, you either have to "ignore all" (which may not be desirable, in case there are similar future issues you want to be warned about), Or you have to ignore them all, ONE BY ONE. You can't highlight them all in one go, then "ignore". No, you have to do them all, individually. Great fun, particularly when your events list has filled up with hundreds of these spurious notifications.
...and so on.
Which brings me to my latest issue with the software. When I first installed it, I had high hopes (based on the claims Acronis had made for it). I entered my email address in Options, Alerts, thinking that a critical event would be a rarity, & I would want to know about it whatever I was doing. Drive Monitor then proceeded to inundate my Inbox with alerts, every few minutes, whilst my computer did certain things....
To cut a long story short, I eventually decided to only receive warnings from Drive Monitor in the Notification Bar, & to cancel the email alerts. I went back into Options, & removed my email address. But the emails kept on coming. Back in Options, I found that Acronis had restored all the settings I had previously given for my email address. Whatever I did, I just couldn't keep my address deleted, & make Options forget it. Eventually, I resorted to uninstalling Drive Monitor, checking that no installation folders were left behind, & even using a registry cleaner.
I then re-installed Drive Monitor. Well, guess what? All my settings, including my email address, were automatically restored, without any input from me. ARGHHH! And of course, the spamming has resumed.
MY SOLUTION TO THIS LATEST ISSUE : Instead of trying to delete it, I will just change the email address I had entered, to that of Acronis. Now YOU can receive the spam instead of me.
Looking at my first post here, I see that my re-attempt at posting to the forum has been allowed to remain this time, albeit edited to remove some of my more "critical" lines! But thanks at least for leaving the majority - it still conveys the (more harmonious) gist of my original message.
I'm not sure how the software which is used for this forum works exactly, because I don't see Anton's reply in this thread until I log in. It might be that it has been posted for my eyes only, or perhaps it's because of the forum's idiosyncrasies... It seems to not update very often - the forum's main Acronis Drive Monitor page shows my first post as having been made 3 hours ago, when in fact it was made 2 days ago. Does anyone else see Anton's post yet, without logging in?
In response to Anton, thank you & yes, I have received an email. Ideally, I would have preferred to have conducted a walk-through of the "fix" on this forum though, so that other people with similar issues could benefit, & also gauge for themselves whether Drive Monitor looks fully polished yet.
I will post back here, once I've had a bit of interaction with Support, & hopefully achieved a fix for at least the self-spamming problem.
UPDATE :
Well, after a protracted exchange of emails with Support - first of all the good news is - I can say that Support have been very polite & patient.
Unfortunately, the bad news is that the problems with this software may only be fixable in a practical way if I allow a "Remote Session". This basically means allowing some unknown person or persons from Acronis free remote access to my computer, to have a good rummage around through my system & drive, to see if the problem can be found.
Err... no thanks!
I did suggest trying an alternative which would provide better security & privacy for me, such as support via email, but apparently this would take too long and/or may not even resolve things.
It was also confirmed that Drive Monitor is only regarded as a "pilot project & there are no current plans to release new versions". As such, there are also unlikely to be any public fixes or updates within the near future.
This is such a shame. Given Drive Monitor's current bug with email address removal, & the shortcomings with its other features, some of which I highlighted earlier, I've sadly no option now but to uninstall the software, & hopefully find better elsewhere.
On the brighter side, Acronis' paid software continues to impress me. I guess you just can't expect too much from the free stuff!
I have suggested them about a year ago via contact form to opensource the product. they're already using qt and some few other opensource libraries. they don't seem to care (no asnwer). they prefer to bury it instead of getting attention.