Alatricity completely screwed up my system - help

I stupidly installed Alatricity and now I don't know what it's done but NOTHING is now working on my pc. It was working 100% before installing it and even using the system restore has had no effect.

Basically it boots into Vista no problem but then most applications including any windows help wont' work. I start FSX and I get the opening screen but nothing else. FSX is not shown in the programs thing either even though i get the opening screen.

The last thing I was doing, was going through the services in Alatricity to choose which ones to switch off when FSX is run. I didn't even activate FSX since then. However, looking in the Services section of Task Manager (which is what I understand Alatricty controls, there's a ton of services which have been stopped.

How do I start these services again? If I right click on each service I get a message saying it cannot be started. Nothing is now working. Alatricity is a virus from what I can see. i would urge nobody to run it.

Any help would be appreciated before I trash this system.

Thank you

Ok, so I was the victim of one of the gazillion Vista usability problems. I thought I was using the system restore to go back to the point BEFORE alacrity was installed. This wasn't the case and didn't have any positive effect. I just started in Safe Mode and restored to a previous point to the last, and everything seems now to be working. However, I still don't get why Alacrity messed up so badly. I used default settings and run FSX with it in the background. I then terminated FSX and let it restore everything before closing down the machine. Now I know I can go back in time (I was a system restore virgin before, ya know!), I might give it another go. I was fairly careful with it but I guess if you start p-ing around with techie stuff you're probably going to become a geek and start competing with others on windows start up times in milliseconds. Now I'm on the subject what's yours?

Seriously though, I didn't find Alacrity too intuitive as, like 99% software, it focuses too much on giving you options and not enough on explaining a) what it is, and b) how to use it. In principle it sounds excellent and something I've been trying to do manually, but not if it shafts my system every time.

Thanks

Paul

I've never heard of the program you installed.

In XP Pro there is an Administrative folder with options to start up and shut down different services manually, automatically, or never.

Upon start up (about 30± seconds) I have 32 processes running. While flying I have 28 processes. I shut down the ATI manager and the spool server and associated processes.

If Vista is set up like XP Pro with Administrative options, it will explain what each process does and if it depends upon another process to function, or if another process depends upon the current process to function.

I've never liked startup programs that control what is running in the background for FS. I'd rather handle that through XP Admin options.

Not a nice experience hey Paul. I've done this sort of thing before and spent many hours trying to recover just because I wanted to see how a new software thingy worked! However I didn't get this with AlacrityPC. I was somewhat experienced with Ken Salter's FS9 program of this type and ended up ditching it because it was too techo and not intuitive but I found the FSX AlacrityPC to be much better. I'm running it on Vista64 and haven't had any problem. In fact it gets me 5-10 FSP more out of FSX (and that's gotta be good). I also use it to run FS9.

I initially ran it straight out of the box as it seems to select a known list of services to shutdown and it ran OK, then I started selecting all the services I thought I could do without and it ran better. I suspect you might have selected a service such as Explorer which threw Vista into a tizz.

Did you select to start FSX within Alacrity? Your explanation seems to indicate that you've run Alacrity and then separately started FSX, but I could just be misunderstanding. You should see Alacrity close down all services within a command window, free up memory blocks etc. then start FSX and it can take about 2 minutes or so to complete. When FSX is terminated all your services should launch again (if you've selected them to restart).

Glad you found the method of recovery though (you might need it again :) )

Ken.

While the experience was a bad one, particularly when it happens late at night and I know I have to stay up until 4am to resolve it, it doesn't stop me from constantly tweaking my system for improvements.

Although one little screw up can cost hours of effort and sweat, to then get back to where you were yesterday, there's also little things you can change which give you significant improvements which you'll then enjoy for hours. Of course the latter is far easier to forget.

I will be running AlacrityPC again, but this time one step at a time. The program is pretty clear about what it's doing. I'm not sure what service I lost but I could only start a web browser; no other app would run including Alacrity.

Next time I'll check the settings more closely. Unless it does so by default (which I'm assuming it doesn't), I'm guessing that it didn't start with Windows. When I used it, I started FSX through AlacrityPC and when I stopped FSX I monitored Alacrity restoring the services in the DOS window, so assumed all was well.

One thing I noticed when all this happened was that a) Vista started much quicker than normal, b) there was almost no disk activity after start (normally there's a minute or so before the machine is truly ready to rock, c) the network/internet icon in the tray had a cross through it.

Perhaps any of these things is symptomatic or just consequences. But as I only use that PC for my sim and sim related programs, I don't mind losing any service that FSX or its cronies are not reliant on.

I shall give AlacrityPC another shot, treading more cautiously this time. If the same thing happens I know what to do (as you say Ken) and I can always resort to the manual method (which was also suggested).

Thanks guys for your help.

Cheers

Paul

I ahd good results with alatricity ( which was free) but not tweaks which i had to pay for. Anyhow, I lost where i downloaded Alatricity. Does anyone know where i can download it again please?

Syneonix

AKA Call sign Fat Rat

Alacrity works.
For me, a former Techie, I tend to do it manually, but then again, I have already shut down most un-needed processes so that they don't bother me anyway.

Here is a tip for you.
Before you shut down a service or process, Google it. You will discover what it is and if it is required for the machine to run.

Paul,
Good to hear ya got it sorted mate. Im off to LA today for work, got a couple seminars to teach but give me a call next Friday so we can get together. Last time I remember 4am was when you were over to my place :) and we were messing in my sim all night :) Anyway it'll be good to see ya again.

Regards
Tim
A340
Canada