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Thanks

 

First wave of portables incoming

 

@Tigzy
As the first wave of portable apps is arrived, in which way we can help best ?
In other terms: what are the most useful feedbacks for you guys in this phase ?

 

Hi,
I downloaded the new beta but I am out of luck.
It does not list any portable softwares that I use:

• CPU-Z Portable
• Process Explorer
• ScreenPresso
• SumatraPDF Portable
• XMedia Recode Portable
• O&O AppBuster
• O&OShutUp10++
• FAT32FormatGUI

Hard_Configurator is not listed either.

 

Be sure to set the location for your portable software in Settings > Custom Locations.
All my portable programs are visible, with the latest beta 5.0.5.0, including the O&O software that you have.

 

Is there a reason why UCheck doesn't start scanning (not updating) for app updates the moment it's launched? Seems like an obvious step after an updater is launched. If there is an option in settings for this, then I couldn't find it.

 

Ok, now we're cooking. Picks up all my portable programs as well as some others I have in the same folder. However a few of these have multiple entries in Ucheck, for instance, Rollback RX 12 has 30 entries, I assume its because I don't have it installed but have the folder that gets downloaded which has multiple folders as well such as Deployment Tool,Plugin ,x86 etc. Now we need a way to exclude folders from scanning so that they don't show on the Installed programs list again.

 

Tigzy,

You should be adding an "Exclude Custom Folder" option to allow users to exclude suites of portable apps like SysInternals Suite and NirSoft Launcher Suite from being processed. These two popular suites add about 450 .exe files to a scan. It is typically more convenient to just download and update the entire suite when an update to the suite is announced rather than to deal with updates to individual programs as they trickle out. SUMo had an option to exclude custom folders.

A workaround is for users to move the folders for such suites to a separate location rather than keeping them in a common location for all portable apps.

 

Edge is not supported?
What is the default folder?
I have some clutter in the paths..........

 

Edge is Community Only, Installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application.
And that is fine because it is updated through Edge, like Google Chrome and you will eventually be informed when there is an update.
The default folder for portable apps is C:\Users\your username here\Downloads but you can add other Custom Locations.

 

This question has been asked and answered before ---

"Would it be possible to add the option to "Start analysis when starting UCheck" in Settings? Something similar to "Start the application when the computer starts".

Tigzy's Response: I don't think it's a great idea, because it will clutter Windows startup. Instead, you should use scheduled scans (Settings, Scans, scheduled scans) . . . to avoid performance issues at startup.

Ref. posts #607 & #609 on page 25 of this thread

 

On my UCheck, Edge is shown as unsupported, not as Community Only.



Bill

 

I have autoruns only, not all of sysinternals. It now shows on the installed tab. (Thanks @Tigzy! for adding portable pgms.)

The problem is there are 6 .exe files and all show in UCheck. (see image1). They all are different files with different names (see image2). I can't figure out how to exclude 5 of these and only show one (they are all always the same version). If I try to exclude 5 of them then all 6 get excluded. Then if I remove one from the exclusions, they all get removed. Is this because they all show the same Program name in UCheck? How can I have only one show?

image1:



image2:



Thanks,
Bill

 

Technically this detection logic is correct, each binary could be an old version.
You can reduce the number of 6 with 2 because the files ending on a.exe are for ARM64 based machines, other than that it's Autoruns 32&64bits and it's command-line equivalents.

On the topic of exclusion logic it would be nice to be more flexible in that area, but I guess with the huge number of code added (and the hours of work put in that) we have to take it easy.
It's already huge progress over the last couple of weeks thanks to @Tigzy 's efforts

 

@RonnyT

I realize that they are all different and could be old versions. I just care about only one of them. That is the issue I was reporting. If I exclude the items I don't care about then all of them get excluded including the one I didn't want excluded.

Shouldn't I be able to exclude any item on the installed tab without it excluding other items that I don't want excluded? I don't need autoruns listed 6 times, once will do.

Bill

 

Yes all valid points, but please keep in mind that UCheck never had to deal with this, all code is fresh, so having the basis covered is first priority. (and it's not just the application, also changes to cloud services back-end databases etc).
Scanning binaries and listing their version numbers/vendor info etc, once that's covered it's time for next steps, this is a huge Work in progress change for the developers, so it wouldn't be fair to expect a full featured beta in just a few weeks of coding, at least that's my 2ct.

 

@RonnyT

That makes sense and I agree. I was just giving feedback from my beta testing so that @Tigzy would have that information. I thought that was what beta testing was for.

Bill

 

HI Bill H:

One way to avoid this problem with Portable apps is to delete the excutables you don't use.

I run Autoruns from a removable USB stick and only use Autoruns on computers with a 64-bit Windows OS, so every time I update Autoruns (i.e., download the latest Autoruns.zip file from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns and unzip) I simply delete the executables I don't need and keep the 64-bit executable as shown below.



I do this type of cleanup with most of my portable apps. For example, the .zip file for many of my portable apps include both a 32-bit and 64-bit executable and I don't need to run any of my portable apps on a machine with a 32-bit OS, so after I unzip the .zip file I always delete the 32-bit executable.
------------
Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3570 * Firefox v119.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23090.2008-1.1.23100.2009 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.6.5.293-1.0.2181 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7690 * UCheck Free Portable BETA v5.0.5.0 * QuickInstaller Preview v0.2.8711.28182

 

@Imacri

I did think about doing this as I only have a 64-bit machine as well. I just tried using exclude in UCheck first and ran into the issue I described. I think I might take your advice as I'm seeing similar problems with process explorer and process monitor as well. The only pain doing it this way is I have to remember to do it evey time a new version of these comes out (which shouldn't be too bad as they don't come out too often).

Thanks,
Bill

 

Yes use case feedback is definitely important and I wasn't trying to criticize that, it's a valid case to use some form of exclusion/filtering for that also.

But also the full 6 detection's is valid, say you are a computer tech and get a machine for maintenance and someone did not keep track of all that and has only updates some of those 6 for some reason it should display all.
So from that point of view it's a request for enhancement on the "exclusion" and/or filtering functions on top of these scan results.

 

I think we may have to just agree to disagree. If there are 6 items in the list and I exclude 5 of them, but all 6 get excluded. I think that is a bug not an enhancement request. After all, it is 6 differently named .exe files.

Bil

 

Well based on how UCheck implemented exclusions in their past design this is a side effect of that, it excludes based on "description" and that worked in the old scenario.
Just not for this portable based addition so exclusions needs more granularity to give users the flexibility that they like/need in both described use cases.
e.g. exclude on filename, description, hash, code-signing certificate, folder(s), add exclusions before you run a scan etc etc, there is a lot to improve in that area as let's call it fall-out from scanning portable applications.

Beware I'm not disagreeing with you, I was just trying to make sure that they can't fix/add all these features in a couple of days.

 

Once again the request was misunderstood. We're not asking for UCheck to automatically start with Windows. We're asking that the scan for updates start automatically with UCheck. Because why else would we open the software if else to check for updates. We're not even asking that it be a required check on UCheck start, optional is fine, best of both worlds.

 

I agree. It might need to be a little different as you say. I didn't think they would or could be able to fix it in a couple days. I'm just hoping that at some point this can be made better.

Bill