If you purchased and installed your software before February 10th 2004, the default location is C:\Program Files\Arrowkey\Diagnostic

Activation of the trace mode causes the table of contents and directory of any CD or DVD examined to be recorded in a file.  It does not record the contents of any of the files contained on the disc.

 The purpose of this is to allow InfinaDyne to diagnose your media without having the actual disc in our hands.  It is also useful occasionally when diagnosing problems with specific devices as this kind of information is also placed in the trace file.  The trace file also allows us to know what software was used to create the disc.

There are two ways of activating the trace.  One is through the Preferences and the other is through the command line.  These are described below.

Regardless of how you activate the trace, it is necessary to force CD/DVD Diagnostic to completely reexamine the disc in order for the trace file to be meaningful.  It is necessary to override the Disc Memory feature to keep it from bypassing important parts of the disc examination process.  It is recommended that you first open the program, select File and Preferences, click the Disc Memory tab and the button "Empty".  This will clear the disc memory and allow collection of all of the necessary information.

Activate with Preferences Dialog

To activate the trace through the Preferences dialog, first remove all discs from CD and DVD devices.  This will prevent the software from beginning the examination and it will start without any device selected.  Then, select the Preferences item from the File menu and press Alt-D.  You will see a message saying that tracing has been activated.  Now use the Select Device menu selection (under File) to select a device and examine the disc. 

When you report a problem with CD/DVD Diagnostic, you may be requested to use the command-line technique specifically.  This collects information about the startup process of CD/DVD Diagnostic.  If CD/DVD Diagnostic is crashing or hanging during startup, you should always use the -d2 technique described below.

Start with Tracing through Command Line

With Windows XP you can use Start->Run and click Browse to locate the CD/DVD Diagnostic executable.

For other versions of Windows, while you can get to the Run dialog, it makes more sense to do this a little differently.  With Windows 7 click the Start button and type, with Windows 8 and 8.1 simply start typing on the tiled initial page.  In either case you are doing a search and want to search for "cmd".  This is the command prompt for Windows and simply by typing "cmd" (without the quotes) and pressing Enter you will open the command prompt.

To activate the trace through the command line, use the Start button and select Run.  Then, click the Browse button and locate where CD/DVD Diagnostic is installed – it is by default placed in C:\Program Files\InfinaDyne\Diagnostic.  Then, add the option “-d” (without the quotes) to the end of the line, adding a space after the file name shown.  Click the OK button and CD/DVD Diagnostic will start with the trace activated.  It should look similar to this:

"C:\Program Files\InfinaDyne\Diagnostic\Diagnostic.EXE" –d

Note that the quotes around the filename are required.

 In cases where CD/DVD Diagnostic hangs in such a way that the computer must be reset (Ctrl-Alt-Del does nothing), the command line parameter “–d2 “ should be used.  This will severely impact performance, but it will insure that all of the trace information is written out properly.  Just like the option of “-d” you will go through Start and Run to enable this option.  This should look similar to this:

"C:\Program Files\InfinaDyne\Diagnostic\Diagnostic.EXE" –d2

OK, Now What?

After you get the information recorded into the trace file the file will be located in the trace file folder named Diagnostic.dbg.  The trace file folder with recent versions of CD/DVD Diagnostic can be found easily by looking in the Start menu (or the list of applications) for "Open trace file folder" which is under InfinaDyne.  With earlier versions of CD/DVD Diagnostic the trace file is stored in the user's application data folder.  The exact path varies with the version of Windows:

    Windows XP:            C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\InfinaDyne\Diagnostic
    Windows 7 and 8:    C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\InfinaDyne\Diagnostic

 When you have a trace file, please email it to support@InfinaDyne.com with your problem report for analysis.  If the file is quite large, please compress it using a program like PKZIP, LHA, or WinZIP.

Note: If you used the Preferences technique, after you have collected the information you need about a disc you should turn tracing off.  This is done the same way it is activated: by pressing Alt-D from the Preferences dialog.  If you do not do this, information will continue to be recorded in the trace file and this file may grow to be quite large.