Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

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ripu
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Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#1 Post by ripu »

I mean apps like X-firefox, X-videolan etc..

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I am Baas
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#2 Post by I am Baas »

ripu wrote:I mean apps like X-firefox, X-videolan etc..
What is the purpose of your question?

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ripu
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#3 Post by ripu »

I am Baas wrote:
ripu wrote:I mean apps like X-firefox, X-videolan etc..
What is the purpose of your question?
As the title suggests, I want to know if winpepack apps like x-firefox, x-vlc etc. are stealth.

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joby_toss
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#4 Post by joby_toss »

I don't think anyone here tested them all.

bzl333
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#5 Post by bzl333 »

I am Baas wrote:
ripu wrote:I mean apps like X-firefox, X-videolan etc..
What is the purpose of your question?
heheh, the TPFC welcoming committee.

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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#6 Post by Midas »

bzl333 wrote:heheh, the TPFC welcoming committee.
  • :twisted:

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I am Baas
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#7 Post by I am Baas »

bzl333 wrote:
I am Baas wrote:
ripu wrote:I mean apps like X-firefox, X-videolan etc..
What is the purpose of your question?
heheh, the TPFC welcoming committee.

It was a fair question AFAIAC, the OP lacked clarity but you choose to ignore that.

bzl333
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#8 Post by bzl333 »

I am Baas wrote: It was a fair question AFAIAC, the OP lacked clarity but you choose to ignore that.

maybe. :lol:

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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#9 Post by webfork »

ripu wrote:I mean apps like X-firefox, X-videolan etc..
I've msg'd the WPP spokesperson about this but here's my understanding:

They're certainly not "pure" stealth in the sense that they prevent programs from writing to the machine.  Instead, they are wrapper programs that (as I understanding it) try to do a sort of pre-population and program after-close cleanup.

Wrapper programs traditionally get most material left behind, but answering your question in any legitimate sense would involve quite a bit of testing.  You can expect that some details will get left behind sometimes with some programs.  These aren't perfect.

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ripu
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#10 Post by ripu »

webfork wrote:
ripu wrote:I mean apps like X-firefox, X-videolan etc..
I've msg'd the WPP spokesperson about this but here's my understanding:

They're certainly not "pure" stealth in the sense that they prevent programs from writing to the machine.  Instead, they are wrapper programs that (as I understanding it) try to do a sort of pre-population and program after-close cleanup.

Wrapper programs traditionally get most material left behind, but answering your question in any legitimate sense would involve quite a bit of testing.  You can expect that some details will get left behind sometimes with some programs.  These aren't perfect.
Thanks for the reply. May be TPFC can have entries for X-apps whose stealth regular portable versions are not available like vlc. I know there are portableapps.com versions, but they take quite a long time to open and x-versions are faster. I will only consider if they are stealth though.

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ripu
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#11 Post by ripu »

I am Baas wrote:It was a fair question AFAIAC, the OP lacked clarity but you choose to ignore that.
Sorry for that.

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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#12 Post by JohnTHaller »

ripu wrote:I know there are portableapps.com versions, but they take quite a long time to open
Our apps should load in about the same time that an installed version does. We have noticed exceptions with a couple of antivirus engines that have issues with compressed executables, though. We compress some app's EXEs and DLLs to save space in our release. That's why VLC Portable is currently 51MB installed instead of 81MB installed.

Historically, it was because flash drives were small and later because everyone has limited cloud drive space. More recently, these are less of an issue, so we've been eliminating the compression of some apps. And we've retuned some apps so that only the larger EXEs and DLLs are compressed since the antivirus engines have an issue per-item rather than based on size. We noticed it most recently with VLC last year which took close to a minute from a mid-range flash drive due to the slow antivirus engines. So, we adjusted the levels and made the app larger but faster on the engines in question. If you can report to us the apps you find slow and the antivirus engine, it will definitely help us troubleshoot the issue and make the decision to ditch compression altogether.

To speed things up immediately, any apps you find slow with compression and your antivirus engine, you can de-compress using the PortableApps.com AppCompactor utility by selecting the DECOMPRESS option.
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ripu
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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#13 Post by ripu »

JohnTHaller wrote:If you can report to us the apps you find slow and the antivirus engine, it will definitely help us troubleshoot the issue and make the decision to ditch compression altogether.
Thank you for the information. I didn't know about the compression thing. For me vlc is very slow. It takes about twice the time compared to normal install. I will try AppCompactor. Picpick is slow but, I never used the regular version. So, don't know if that's because of compression or not. I have Avira free antivirus installed.

And thanks a lot for your work on making software portable. You guys are awesome.

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Re: Are all WinPenPack applications stealth?

#14 Post by JohnTHaller »

ripu wrote:
JohnTHaller wrote:If you can report to us the apps you find slow and the antivirus engine, it will definitely help us troubleshoot the issue and make the decision to ditch compression altogether.
Thank you for the information. I didn't know about the compression thing. For me vlc is very slow. It takes about twice the time compared to normal install. I will try AppCompactor. Picpick is slow but, I never used the regular version. So, don't know if that's because of compression or not. I have Avira free antivirus installed.

And thanks a lot for your work on making software portable. You guys are awesome.
VLC is the biggest offender, which is why we tuned it to be larger and faster last year. We'll likely tune it further or stop using compression.

Like all our freeware, PicPick is unmodified. So, that's the speed of the app itself.

You're welcome :)
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