BHODemon 2.0 (Freeware) Beta Testers Needed!

I'm the developer of BHODemon 1.0, and I'm currently working on version 2.0. It's been completely rewritten from scratch, and has several new features. It's still free, of course.

This board seems to have been very useful to people looking for help with BHOs and BHODemon (which I appreciate, by the way), so I thought I'd ask your opinions/ideas for new features. The Beta can be downloaded at http://www.definitivesolutions.com/...emon20Setup.exe - it's not ready for general public consumption, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't publicize it outside of this community just yet. (But if someone does, I can live with that, too.)

So, let me know what you think of it (posted on this thread, or at BHODemon@DefinitiveSolutions.com), and if you have any questions about how it's supposed to work, or there are things I haven't explained clearly, or you see something that could be made better.

Thanks!

Larry Leonard
Definitive Solutions, Inc.
www.DefinitiveSolutions.com
BHODemon@DefinitiveSolutions.com

 

Hi Larry!

Welcome aboard, it's an honor to have you here

Thnx for this opportunity!

I'm gonna play around a bit with it, and will notify (on our private boards) the other peeps as well, they'll be gladf to have a look as well.

Do you feel we should cut out the download url and post it privately, and respond here? Or are you comfortable posting it in this public forum?

Will keep you updated

Cheers,

 

Posting it here publicly is fine. Thanks!

 

Hi,

You can see demon 2 is running in my systray after startup. However if I open it from here I got only an empty window. If I restart the .exe file I can see my BHO 's again.

Gerard

 

Hmmm... that's odd. In the folder you installed to will be a file called _BHODemon.log - can you email that to me at BHODemon@DefinitiveSolutions.com ? (It's a plain text file, so you can view it with Notepad first, if you'd like.) Thanks!

 

Hi,

I just mailed you the log.
Regards,

Gerard

 

I see the problem (it just happened to me this morning).

If you can, please do me a favor. Reboot, and BHODemon should do the 'empty window' thing again. When it does, grab a few of its corners (it's 'stretchy') and drag it to be as big as you can. I think you'll then see your list of BHOs.

I hope to have this fixed today; I'll post here when a new version is ready (or, you can just click the 'Check for Updates' buttons every hour or so ).

Thanks for finding this bug!

 

Okay, I just posted version 2.0.0.2, which should fix this problem. Let me know if it doesn't... Thanks!

 

Using the latest beta, got two "Unknowns". One is javacools and the other is for the Openwares patch (in case you want to update your list). Pete

 

Hi Larry,

Its OK now but with the same unknowns as Spy1.

Gerard

 

Glad it's working!

To send me any 'Unknown' (to me, anyway) BHOs, just double-click on the BHO in the list, and from the dialog that pops, click the "Report This Unknown BHO To Us" button. That will give me info I need, like the CLSID.

The next version of BHODemon will automatically notice that you have "Unknown" BHOs, and ask you if you want to send us a report.

 

Yes, I sent both of them to you when I ran the program yesterday.

Upon re-starting the computer, I get this pop-up (see screenshot). The first time I got it (yesterday), I actually had the tray icon already in SYSTRAY (but no information was present about the bho's on the system) - this morning, no tray icon, period. (*Although it was again showing in the task bar with the empty information field).

Pete

 

Hmm. Just did a re-start and everything worked exactly like it was supposed to (icon showed up in SYSTRAY and when I opened it from there, it had all the correct information displayed as re: bho's on the system).

Oh, well, I'll let you know if I notice anymore flakiness with it. Pete

 

That is weird... could you send me your _BHODemon.log file to BHODemon@DefinitiveSolutions.com ? It should have some error returns that might give me a clue. I'll also try to duplicate it here, and make sure the error-checking code is as robust as it can be in that general area.

Thanks!

 

Sent. Pete

 

Developer Question: If you're running BHOD as a SYSTRAY icon, is it going to give you a flashing "Icon alert" or anything if a new BHO gets placed on your computer?

If not, what's the purpose of having it running in SYSTRAY? Pete

 

Yup! You'll get a message box within a few seconds that says, "BHODemon has detected a change to the Browser Helper Objects on your system! (This message will also display when you enable or disable a BHO using this program.)" You can test it by disabling and re-enabling a BHO.

BTW, I hope to have a new version out later today...

 

Cool. Thanks, Larry. I'll be checking for the new version. Pete

 

Version 2.0.0.3 is available.

 

Larry - Sent in a copy of the log after un-installing/re-d/l'ing/re-booting and installing the latest. The feature to send in unknown bho's during initial setup bailed out on me, but apparently everything else is working right now.

Question: Did you receive the "unknown" bho's I sent in a couple of days ago? Pete

*Also, you might want to note somewhere that the alternate way you check to see what version you've got (besides using the SYSTRAY icon's context menu) is to click on the kittycat in the upper left-hand corner of the main interface window, then on "About BHODemon2.0..." (a lot of people aren't even going to realize there's a context menu there).

**Furthermore, it keeps trying (and failing) to send the info about the unknown bho's upon every re-start of the computer (I just now re-started again).

 

Yup, I got the "Unknown BHO" reports (just haven't had a second to add them to the list yet). Thanks!

That's a good point about the "hidden" About dialog box - I'll fix that somehow to make it more "discoverable".

Kittycat? It's suppossed to be a demon... back to the drawing-board (literally!)...

<<Furthermore, it keeps trying (and failing) to send the info about the unknown bho's upon every re-start of the computer (I just now re-started again).>>

Yeah, it occured to me last night that if someone had a problem uploading a report, the way I wrote the code would force it to do the check for updates in esentially an endless loop. I'll fix that too. In the meantime, if you're handy with RegEdit, just set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Definitive Solutions\BHODemon 2.0\EverRun to 1 instead of 0 - that should fix it for now. (The usual caveats about how you can destroy your whole computer with one simple error in RegEdit apply.)

Thanks for all your help!

 

You're quite welcome.

Looking at the log, I'm seeing where I can thin it out quite a bit before sending it now (you've got it laid out pretty nicely, actually) and I'll do so until things get sorted if I send you any further ones if you want.

I checked that key, and it's currently already set to "1". Pete

 

Larry - I can make the "failed to create" problem occur every time if I first shut down BHODemon from the SYSTRAY icon before doing a re-start.

Also, a question about the updater: Why, after it tells you that there's no updates available, does it go ahead and seemingly d/l something after you close out that intitial message window? (See screenshots).




Pete

 

2nd ss