I am using the latest Google Chrome app, version 4.0.249.89.
When I click on [About Google Chrome]from the wrench menu, at the bottom of the window it states "Update server not available (error: 1)" Does this mean, that I won't be able to go thru the occasional browser update whenever Google releases one?
I have this browser installed on my home pc, downloaded from Google and installed on the C Drive and everything looks fine. However for this portable edition, which is installed on my Kingston Flash Drive (which is the E Drive), I get this error.
This is actually the first time I am using the portable edition of the Chrome browser as before I would use the Firefox one using the same flash drive on my PC at work.
Even though I am not experiencing any form problem right now, but is there a way to get that "error 1" fixed? Or is there a work around? The PC, to which this happening is operating on Windows XP.
Thanks.
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Unlike Mozilla's updater which is a simple part of the app, the Google Updater is a separate, closed-source app, that has to be installed locally on Windows. So, it is not included in the portable version.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hey John,
I'm new to portable apps so I was wondering if you could help me. I have also recently downloaded the portable version of Google Chrome and am experiencing the same updating problem. What do I have to download to make it work? And would it be possible to install the updater on the USB device so that it would work properly?
Basically, I would like to have the same auto-update feature Firefox Portable has with Chrome. Is there a way to get around this?
I appreciate any help you can give me.
Thanks,
Stefan
As John said, it's not included and it isn't portable. You can't have it because it won't work.
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@SUPERFASTJELLYFISH
if you want it to work like the firefox one, you'll need to petition Google to make it work like the firefox one.
FF updates by getting the app to check with a site online to see if there is a new version.
Chrome updates by getting a completely separate application - the google updater to be permanently installed on the PC, and to run as a windows service in the background all the time. This service contacts the online site to check for updates to all your google apps, and handles them. It is findamentally not a portable system. The closest you could get would be to dynamically install and remove the service, but you still couldn't tell it to check, since it handles the rate and timing internally. Worse, it would require administrator access to run, so would be totally useless to the vast majority of users.
In other words, nothing that the PortableApps team can do. If you want it badly enough, ask at Google, not here.
OK, thanks for clarifying that for me. I'm not really knowledgeable in this area so I was uncertain.
Thanks again,
SUPERFASTJELLYFISH ^_^
Actually, Omaha (a.k.a. Google Update) is open source, and has been for a while now. Not sure if that really helps much, but in theory it should make this a lot less hard to do...
Two questions:
1) In a normal install, on the about Chrome page you can get a demand check of status by clicking the box on the left of the version number. Is this going outside of Chrome to get the update status?
2) If the server could be reached, at least a user would know an update is out there and could come here to start looking.
Just thinking,
Homer
As I understand it, when you click on the update button in Chrome, it talks to the windows service that is running in the background as a service on the local PC.
Chrome does not have any in-built updater or checker function, at all. All that it has is the ability to talk to a separate local application (running as a service).
So the problem with the portable one is that there is no service to reach since the service that it is trying to reach is the Google Updater Service running on the local PC.
Edit: the fact that the updater is available as an open source app doesn't help up to get it to run as a service without admin access on the PC. If someone wanted to write a non-service application that was capable of running in a stand-alone way that used the same communication protocols as the service (which may not even be possible depending on how Chrome finds the point to talk to {e.g. if they ask windows for the PID of the service called xxx, we can never intercept that}), then the source code might be useful, but that is a major project of basically reimplementing the google updater as an application, not just a project to portablise the current one.
I figured it was something. Since it is a service, could PA run the service off of the portable install? It could be loaded before Chrome runs and unloaded when it exits.
Homer
It's a service as in a Windows installed service at the OS-level. Chrome is designed to be integrated with Windows and use a separate update service. Unlike Firefox that has an updater built-in. There are currently no plans to portablize the Chrome updater (which would require a rewrite and recompilation from the open source bits to make it portable). Instead, users will be pointed to the Platform's built-in updater debuting soon.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Google Update would install the browser locally anyway (AFAIK), which isn't what you would expect or want. At the very least it would make registry changes that would break locally installed Chrome and would create Start Menu links etc...
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