I recently renamed my P-App folder to test if all my apps were portable...Ie to see if any tripped up etc....(being a newbie)
And i noticed that spybot started up with a message that it was moved to a new folder and that some functionality (whatever that means) would not work...
Are you sure you want to proceed??? (ie run the app)
Doesn't give one much confidence since the thing is supposed to be portable if it complains that it won't work properly if you move it...
Anyway perhaps there is a reason for this (not understanding what this is if any tends to undermine my confidence in its portability)
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That's your problem.
Portable apps are not path portable, they are drive letter portable. So if you take your USB stick to a different computer, and your stick gets a different drive letter, say G: instead of F: then the PortableApps.com launchers will correct for the drive letter.
neutron1132 (at) usa (dot) com
PortableApps.com takes another approach to portability than just to run off a random folder. It rather emphasises on leaving no traces an a host computer (in addition to beeing able to run a specific app of a defined folder on every host machine that meets its requirements). Many apps are tolerant to changing its folder but not all (there you mostly get that message to warn you).
Many Apps here are not natively portable but depend on their launcher that takes care of some requirements and clean up after the app is closed. Have a look at What is a portable app? for further insight.
You can safely disregard that message.
The ability to change the relative paths is somewhat new to the PortableApps.com Launcher (PAL), so I had not added the appropriate key that tells the launcher it's safe to move the folder. Spybot in particular needs no special code or settings to allow for changing the relative path, so it's safe.
Some apps use absolute paths for certain parts of themselves, and thus the launcher will change the Drive Letter (e.g. F: , G: etc) to the correct one, but other path changes could potentially make the app no longer portable (or not work at all).
ScriptDaemon says that SpyBot doesn't mind getting moved about like that, and since he's the guy that packaged SpyBot as a PortableApp, he's probably right.
In the future he'll probably change the launcher so that it doesn't warn you about moving SpyBot.
But other apps that warn you very well may lose their portability (or functionality) if you change their path (besides the Drive Letter).
~3D1T0R