Writing a non-portable app converter: need apps to test with

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Master of Dice · #211 Post by **Master of Dice** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:47 am

redllar wrote:Does anyone have a Vista build and would be willing to run a simple 32-bit app via JPE just to see what happens? Please post here or PM me here or contact me at yahoo.com if so (same username as here.) Thanks.

Also, I can't remember if anyone tested on 2K3, or anything different than 32-bit 2K and XP for that matter, so please contact me if you'd be willing to run a quick test on anything newer than 32-bit XP. Thanks.

I have a Vista build running in vmware. And on my local computer, I have 2k3. I can test both for you if you want.

redllar · #212 Post by **redllar** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 10:00 am

Master of Dice wrote: I have a Vista build running in vmware. And on my local computer, I have 2k3. I can test both for you if you want.

Hello Master of Dice and thanks for the offer to test.

I've created a little test zip for you that you can download from http://www.geocities.com/redllar/Jaunte ... OSTest.zip. (~175KB)

Once you unzip the contents you'll also need to unzip the contents of the metapad351.zip into the same directory. Then run the MetaPad_portable exe and hopefully a little window will popup with a little USB icon next to the 3 righthand-side titlebar buttons. Then just quit the app and let me know what happened, good or bad.

Master of Dice · #213 Post by **Master of Dice** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 2:13 pm

I've tried to download it but the page isn't available.

Edit:

Found it. It's
http://www.geocities.com/redllar/Jaunte ... OSTest.zip

Edit 2:
You have a "." at the end of your link. That's why it isn't working.

Master of Dice · #214 Post by **Master of Dice** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 1:30 am

I've tried it and it works. metapad shows up. I have the USB Icon and a second one also.

redllar · #215 Post by **redllar** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 8:54 pm

Master of Dice wrote:I've tried it and it works. metapad shows up. I have the USB Icon and a second one also.

That's great. Thanks for helping out. And sorry about that trailing dot.

aceofspades · #216 Post by **aceofspades** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:50 pm

see if you can make gdsoft's Paquet Builder. If you can get it to work than i shall worship you.

http://www.gdgsoft.com/pb/index.aspx

redllar · #217 Post by **redllar** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:08 pm

aceofspades wrote:see if you can make gdsoft's Paquet Builder. If you can get it to work than i shall worship you.

http://www.gdgsoft.com/pb/index.aspx

As the saying goes, "When pigs can fly..."

redllar · #218 Post by **redllar** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 10:42 am

I've been mucking with this a few hours a week for long enough now that I'm going to go ahead and make a version available. I have no idea how well this thing runs now, as I've yet to do a complete re-testing of all of the previously runnable apps. So you just might find that almost nothing works anymore. You can get it at its home page.

It's still very raw, so many installers and apps will probably not work properly. Mainly in regard to the portablized file system, but in some cases with regards to the portablized registry as well. Some of these problems may be worked-around by adding in exclude, include, and/or ignore paths, but it's not always apparent what paths need to be added. You can use the new discovery mode to help you with that, but apps that use COM and/or OCX are still hard to figure out exactly what's needed.

There are a lot of new features, no docs, and the gui is still not complete. I've also disabled several other features since they're not quite complete. I've included a readme that covers the basics, plus an example regedit ini if you need to do anything special. Hopefully you'll be able to figure things out from those.

I'd love to continue work on this project, as I think it still has a lot of potential. And I have a number of ideas on how to make the process of portablizing an app easier. But I can't afford to spend much more time on freeware development as the money coming in isn't matching the money going out. I'll try and clean things up as best as I can, when I can, but that's the best I can offer.

nycjv321 · #219 Post by **nycjv321** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:33 am

wonderful gui i tried it on media player classic which writes settings to HKCU and HKLU and the %appdata% folder and it doesnt run at all? idk i have no service packs on win xp pro. 128megs of ram and 550mhz cpu

thanks for adding me on the info for the testers

why when i create a portable application useing JPE and use the usb ico it is very blurry ico why dont u use the old ico that is more visually appealing

also ure readme says compressed wit upx1.25 why arent u using the new 2.03 version and also the new beta 2.91 lmza compression compresses it even further

u can also use winupack which compresses it even better
http://portablefreeware.com/?q=winupack&m=Search
dude but other then that as u said it is complete and probly wont work its still pretty sweet when everything works its gonna be top notch app

dyce · #220 Post by **dyce** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 12:31 pm

i tried out juantePE and it definitely has the potential. the only thing is that when you build a portable app with it, it saves the registry to file and but does not load up the registry with all the settings after it being closed and open again. i tried virtual dimension, it saves everything in registry. virtual dimension is a virtual desktop app. so i made some virtual desktops (4 of them) and then i close it. i see the registry file has been updated. when i load it up again, it only has 1 desktop, totally ignores the registry. but anyway.. GREAT JOB REDLLAR! try to make this more spread (like at portableapps forums) and get it on digg and you might get tons of donations!

edit:
woops, i didnt read "So you just might find that almost nothing works anymore." so you probably already knew this.

redllar · #221 Post by **redllar** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:56 pm

i tried it on media player classic which writes settings to HKCU and HKLU and the %appdata% folder and it doesnt run at all? idk i have no service packs on win xp pro. 128megs of ram and 550mhz cpu

I tried it here on XP Home SP2 and it runs fine via JPE, so I can't really say why it's not working for you.

when i create a portable application useing JPE and use the usb ico it is very blurry ico why dont u use the old ico that is more visually appealing

It's the same icon as before, if that's what you mean by the old ico, but I only included the 16x16 version to keep things small. It saves about 13.5KB.

also ure readme says compressed wit upx1.25 why arent u using the new 2.03 version and also the new beta 2.91 lmza compression compresses it even further Smile u can also use winupack which compresses it even better

I tried upx2.01w and it didn't make any difference, and only took longer to do the packing. I'll try the others when I have the time. Thanks for the tip.

i tried virtual dimension, it saves everything in registry. virtual dimension is a virtual desktop app. so i made some virtual desktops (4 of them) and then i close it. i see the registry file has been updated. when i load it up again, it only has 1 desktop, totally ignores the registry.

Thanks for the find. It's actually a bug in Virtual Dimension that the Windows registry api functions auto-correct. JPE wasn't performing the same auto-correction.

portable-freak · Sun Jan 07, 2007 12:20 am

Terrific work redllar, one can't be grateful enough for all the efforts

I'll try it later on as I am not at home right now and obviously need more time ( there are so many options

)
Cheers.

mordor · #223 Post by **mordor** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 1:14 pm

Ok, I downloaded the app and so far noticed these bugs.

1. No matter if I uncheck all the checkboxes on the identification tab, when I build portable apps they have the icons on the title bar. I know these are probably for debugging purposes, but most people probably wouldn't care about this anyway.

2. I've tried the app with Foxit Reader, Notepad and Regedit and so far so good, as long as I allow filesystem modifications.

3. If I follow the build portable wizard, the resulting application does not run without Jauntpe.dll and madCHook.dll Maybe statically link these to the launcher? (although I see madChook does not offer this option).

Also, in case you don't have time you can release the code via SourceForge or Google Code so others could possible develop it further

Thanks for this great app. It has great potential for future

dyce · #224 Post by **dyce** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 4:43 pm

redllar, please confirm this:
it seems that JPE doesn't operate under guest accounts? at least with a game i tried. i dont have any other programs to test, so please confirm this if it is so on normal apps.

portable-freak · #225 Post by **portable-freak** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 4:13 am

A quick test on the fly ...
WinRAR portable has been successfully created and is working fine as far as I can tell.

Regshot 1.7 reports:

Code: Select all

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\RNG]
"Seed"=hex(3):24,C6,4E,D2, ............
----------------------------------
Values modified:1
----------------------------------
----------------------------------
Files [attributes?] modified:1
----------------------------------
[C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\software.LOG]
----------------------------------
Total changes:2

So far so good

The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

Writing a non-portable app converter: need apps to test with

Re: Vista anyone?

Re: Vista anyone?

use this

Re: use this

Pre-alpha JPE "public" availability