UCheck - Update your software in 2 clicks

Hi Tigzy:

The latest BETA of UCheck Portable v4_11_0_0 offered in post # 335 was able to successfully download and update my out-of-date AdwCleaner v7.4.2 (located at E:\Portable\AdwCleaner 7_4_2\adwcleaner_7.4.2.exe) to the latest v8.4.0. As a second test I deleted the new v8.4.0 adwcleaner.exe executable and replaced it with the old adwcleaner_7.4.2.exe, and a new UCheck scan correctly detected that my AdwCleaner executable was once again outdated. Trying to update AdwCleaner v4.7.2 to v8.4.0 using Patch My PC did not work as expected on my system, in part because of the problems I outlined in my topic How to Check Portable Apps on Removable USB Stick for Available Updates? in the Patch My PC forum.

I imagine that updating AdwCleaner with UCheck is relatively straightforward because there is only one executable to update and no other subfolders or .exe, / .dat / .dll files that need to be replaced. I'm still not clear exactly how UCheck will handle updating more complex portable apps like my CCleaner Free Portable (for example, when I manually unzip the latest ccsetup6xx.zip file I normally delete everything except the CCleaner64.exe, portable.dat and license.txt files prevent other unnecessary junk like the Driver Updater and CCleaner Bug Reporter from running on my system) so I look forward to further testing once your list of supported Portable apps is expanded.

Regarding the detection and updating of outdated portable apps, all I need UCheck to do is scan all the subfolders in the E:\Portable folder of my removable USB stick and alert me if any portable apps are out-of-date, but I don't need it to update those portable apps. If the Updates tab could offer to download the latest portable .zip file from the manufacturer (e.g., from Piriform's direct download link at https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/download/portable) that would be a bonus, but I'd still be happy if Portable apps were treated like Community apps on the Updates tab and only showed "Exclude Software" when the Action dropdown was selected as shown in the attached image. I'm used to manually downloading and upzipping the .zip files for portable apps like CCleaner, HWiNO, TreeeSize Free, CPU-Z, etc. when SUMo detects an update, and I suspect that's the way I'll continue to do things, even after UCheck expands its list of supported Portable apps.

P.S.

Sorry about some of my earlier comments about using radio buttons to filter scan results. When I suggested that I didn't realize that the software used to build the UCheck UI does not support the use of radio buttons.
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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3448 * Firefox v118.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23080.2006-1.1.23090.2007 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.6.3.282-1.0.2158 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * Patch My PC Portable v4.5.0.4 * SUMo Free Potable v5.17.10.542 * UCheck Free Portable BETA v4.11.0.0

 

The name is "SQLite ODBC Driver (remove only)" so yes it does have parenthesis.

Did you see the other items that are not excluding properly? They have no special characters.

Bill

 

Yes, but it's not that simple.
In order to do that, this means huge heuristics to determine if an .exe file is a portable software. There's no easy rule to do that, and we cannot afford to "trust" user feedback from people adding their folders.
Imagine a single user adding C:/Windows for example, we would get data for all the .exe inside of it, and that could easily mess up with the database.

Adding support for download is relatively easy once we support specific software. It's specific rules.
But when it comes to Community support and mass recognition, that's a huge mess. This is why we didn't rush on this too fast.

 

No, first time I see this. But since the list is encoded into a JSON, special characters (parenthesis are easy to encode, that's weird) can be a problem. I'll try to repro.

 

For SUMo, Kyle had members of the community that had the power to mark a version as a beta or unmark it as beta. I am one of the individuals that could do this. I'm not sure how many folks he had with this power. It wasn't all done by Kyle and his team;.

 

The ones I'm having problems with are all listed in reply #312 in this forum.

 

Both SUMo and Softpedia are reporting an update for Malwarebytes, but UCheck is not reporting it.

Bill

 

https://twitter.com/UCheckBot/status/1710491496800047419

 

I don't do Twitter. Since Elon took over... Twitter is dead to me.

 

I understand, but it was just to show you when it detected the update

 

When will a new beta be available?

 

Not now, we'll have a release this week. I'll try to fix the couple things reported into it but this week is production (with silented community feedbak)
Next beta will be about portable software, but later

 

Hi Tigzy:

Just to clarify, when I said in post # 375 that "I'd still be happy if Portable apps were treated like Community apps on the Updates tab and only showed "Exclude Software" when the Action dropdown was selected as shown in the attached image" I wasn't suggesting that Portable apps should be treated like Community apps where the latest available version is a consensus of the most prevalent version number being used in the wider community of users. I was only suggesting that I would be fine if Portable apps that were out-of-date and listed on the Updates tab only had the "Exclude Software" option in the Action dropdown.

Having the option to "Download" the latest version of a Portable app in the Action dropdown that could download the .exe or .zip file to a specified location would be an added bonus, but I suspect that including the option to "Install" is going to be problematic. As I said before, installing an update for a Portable app like AdwCleaner is relatively straightforward compared to other Portable apps because you only have to replace a single executable (AdwCleaner.exe). Once you start supporting more complex Portable apps like CClelaner Portable and BleachBit Portable that are distributed as .zip files and include mutiple executables and subfolders (and store configuration settings in a .ini file that the user must retain from version to version) then automatic updating becomes much more complex.

I'd much rather have UCheck monitoring a large number of Portable apps for available updates (e.g., with "Exclude Software" as the only option in the Action dropdown on the Updates tab) than to have UCheck monitor a small number of Portable apps that can be easily updated.

If you can find some heuristic algorithm that is able to accurately distinguish if an executable (e.g., HWiNFO64.exe) is the Portable or "installed" version and can treat those executables as separate entities in your database of current version numbers that is populated "using editors websites and changelogs" then this should help to decrease the number of times that a BETA version of a Portable app is recommended (a common problem with some Community apps). However, I suspect this will also severely restrict the number of Portable apps that UCheck will be able to support.
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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3448 * Firefox v118.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23090.2008-1.1.23090.2007 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.6.4.286-1.0.2163 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * Patch My PC Portable v4.5.0.4 * SUMo Free Potable v5.17.10.542 * UCheck Free Portable BETA v4.11.0.0

 

I see...thanks @Tigzy. I was just surprised it wasn't being shown as an update in the program since SUMo and Softpedia were showing it.

Bill

 

Since we're using bots, it takes some time to rotate over all the list of supported. Usually it may take a few hours up to less than a day to rotate everything.

 

TO EVERYONE.
Beta for Community feedback is closed, thank you all ! The version 5.0 is now in production: https://adlice.com/ucheck/

- We will have a quiet week, see what happens, community updates will be silent, time to accumulate some data.
- Next week we will re-enable (if everything is fine) community updates, and start a new Beta for portable support.

EDIT: OLLI_S I didn't forget you, but we had to release this now.
I'll continue looking at your feedback in the support ticket.

 

I've installed version 5.0 and still see problems with exclusions. I have some items in the exclusion list in settings that are still showing up on the Installed panel.

The "Exclude Software" option in the context menu is grayed out for unsupported programs(black writing on white background). So now there seems to be no way to exclude an unsupported program.

Also there is no tooltip for unsupported programs.

I have 32 programs in the excluded list in settings, but when I choose to display "Excluded" on the Installed tab, only 1 program is shown.

Bill

 

Can you try emptying the list and re-add them ? It should be fixed.

 

Yes, that was a bug prior to this, and the reason of the empty entry. No need to exclude something that isn't supposed to appear in Updates anyway.

 

I emptied the list, but I can't re-add them as the "Exclude Software" command in the context menu is still grayed out.

 

It isn't on the Update tab that I'm talking about. It is grayed out on the Installed tab.

Bill

 

If it's not supported, that's expected. Only Supported / Community can be added as exclusions.

Yes, it's the same story here too.

 

As I said, I have 32 programs out of the 82 on the Installed list that I don't want tracked. Not being able to exclude them from the Installed tab means I have to wade through them in the list which is a real pain. It would be very helpful if you would allow exclusions for any program in the installed list. There are some unsupported programs that I do want to update if a new version comes out. There are some I don't, for a variety of reasons (no new development, drivers, want to stay on the version I'm on). I really don't want to see them in the list. Could this be an enhancement for the future?

Bill

 

Ok I understand what you mean now, we'll add something to do it.

 

That would be great @Tigzy

Thanks,
Bill