Running two instances of Portable Apps at the same time

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Binlade95
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Running two instances of Portable Apps at the same time

#1 Post by Binlade95 »

I have an old copy of Portable Apps Platform on thumb drive #1. I have a newer (17.1.1) on a second thumb drive. There is one old app on the original thumb drive that I really would like to run at the same time that I am running the rest of the apps from the newer drive.

Today I do this -- insert both thumb drives. Launch portable apps platform from drive #1 and start the old application. Use it to add data to a database. Exit the program, close portable apps platform (without ejecting the drive). Launch portable apps platform from drive #2. Use programs from this instance to perform other work. But if I need to do more data entry, I have to close all the apps and then close the portable apps platform. Start up the other copy of portable apps platform, etc.

What I'd like to do is to have both of instances of the portable apps platform active at the same time. I've configured one with a blue scheme and the other with an orange scheme (War Eagle!) so I can tell them apart.

My question is -- is this possible and safe? The data on these thumb drives is critical and I'm not willing to experiment and take the risk that I lose any of it. (And, yes, I back up these drives routinely, but I could lose a day or two of work if the drive should crash between backups.)

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Midas
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Re: Running two instances of Portable Apps at the same time

#2 Post by Midas »

Blindly guessing, I'd say you need to start by finding the folder where the old application resides and copy it in bulk to the new drive.

After that, you might need to adjust configuration so it's integrated with the newer platform, but there's too little info for me to speculate about how to do that. Besides, I'm really not a PAF platform user.

Technically, the copying over shouldn't mess anything with either drive so in the worst case scenario you could still work as you do currently.

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webfork
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Re: Running two instances of Portable Apps at the same time

#3 Post by webfork »

Binlade95 wrote: Mon Dec 14, 2020 11:13 pm My question is -- is this possible and safe?
In terms of possible, I can verify that PA does not want to run two instances of itself. Trying to start the second program just opens the menu for the first. While there are loads of threads over at PA about running multiple program instances, but this is all I could find on duplicate menus: https://portableapps.com/node/60291 (not much here) I also looked inside the launcher INI (PortableApps\PortableApps.com\Data\PortableAppsMenu.ini) but it doesn't look like there's functionality for that.

In terms of safe, I'd suggest copying all files to a second source if we're talking anything mission-critical. That's is maybe my favorite part of portable applications -- just copy it to another source and experiment freely. Insofar as you trust someone's speculation on the Internet, I think its fine. I don't run it except as an updater, but apart from a shutdown functionality that one time turned of my computer (when I didn't mean to do that) my experience with the program has been very reliable over the years.
Last edited by webfork on Tue Dec 15, 2020 9:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

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JohnTHaller
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Re: Running two instances of Portable Apps at the same time

#4 Post by JohnTHaller »

You can run two separate copies of the platform without issue. You can't run two instances of the same menu (that would be a bit pointless anyway). The only issue you'll encounter is when upgrading the platform as all copies must be closed during an upgrade, though this will be changing in an upcoming release (it's in the enhancement list).
PortableApps.com - The open standard for portable software | Support Net Neutrality

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vevy
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Re: Running two instances of Portable Apps at the same time

#5 Post by vevy »

@JohnTHaller

I run into a problem with Firefox. In order to do that, I set AllowMultipleInstances=true. But then, I can't open local html files if a firefox instance is already running. It gives the mesage "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. The old Firefox process must be closed to open a new window."

Steps:
- set the option above in the ini file
- open FirefoxPortable.exe
- open an html file ( or a protocol link) with FirefoxPortable.exe (or thought the command line, registry, etc).

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webfork
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Re: Running two instances of Portable Apps at the same time

#6 Post by webfork »

vevy wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:14 pm I run into a problem with Firefox.
A thread on the topic: Customizing Firefox

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vevy
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Re: Running two instances of Portable Apps at the same time

#7 Post by vevy »

webfork wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:56 am
vevy wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 2:14 pm I run into a problem with Firefox.
A thread on the topic: Customizing Firefox
Didn't do it for me since I need to keep two different full portable "installs". :|

Is there a way, John?

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