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GoogleChrome Portable problems

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whiskers
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GoogleChrome Portable problems

Hi,

i'm having a problem trying to get GoogleChrome Portable working when installed to my hard drive. [specifically the program folder] It will install fine, but clicking the icon does nothing. I tried installing it to another part of the hard drive [E:\ instead of C:\] and it worked fine from there.

I've installed it on my USB device, and it runs fine from there. tried copy-pasting the working one from my USB to the program files folder, and it still didn't work.

I've installed other portable apps and they've all ran fine [Pidgin, Skype etc]

Any ideas, it's no big deal i can always install it to another drive, but i liked having everything in one place [programs folder], it's really bugging me why i can't get it work, since it seems to work fine otherwise.

ceciliaFX
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yup, that was my experience

yup, that was my experience as well

my HD address is "F:\Program Files\Portable\PortableApps"

notice the annoying space between "Program" and "files". I hate that windows does that. arg

well, I know another program (StellariumPortable I believe) which also does not like spaces in the location address. I'm going to guess that Chrome has the same issue. Works fine on my portable HD ("H:\PortableApps") because there are no spaces. and when I moves Chrome to the root of my HD - BLAM! worked.

have I mentioned how much I hate windows???

Smile

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whiskers
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ah, i see. Thanks for

ah, i see.

Thanks for clearing that up.

It was really bugging me that it wouldn't work despite working fine in another location. :lol:

John T. Haller
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No Program Files

Portable apps should never be installed to your Windows Program Files directory. Period. It has different permissions in Windows that will interfere. It has nothing to do with the space in the name, it's the permissions in Windows itself.

If you're installing it to your local hard drive, install it to C:\PortableApps

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whiskers
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uh oh. i have a whole bunch

uh oh.

i have a whole bunch of them there. Shock

Anthony A
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I do to. I have not had any

I do to. I have not had any problems as of yet and I have a lot of portable apps in there. When ever I need an app I always look for a portable version of it and use it. I think now I will start installing them in a separate folder as suggested.

ceciliaFX
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Actually, on my win2000

Actually, on my win2000 install I had all my portable app on another partition (NOT c:). this problem was on my XP install (on the same laptop) and the boot isn't on c: anyway. Chrome is the 1st portable app I had an issue with when I had it in "program files" of XP.

JUST Move all my portable apps on XP in the root. what the heck. being portable they won't mind Smile

"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." - Edward R. Murrow

Chris Morgan
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They may not

Our applications are designed to cope with changing drive letters, but any support for changing the directory it runs in is generally fairly incidental. Songbird is the main application that we have which can't cope with you moving it into a different directory.

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nowotny
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Hmm... I also have many other

Hmm... I also have many other portable apps installed into Program Files folder and have absolutely no problems with them or any other apps for that matter... I'm running Windows 7 RC and have UAC disabled so I don't really understand how Chrome should be affected by any of this... could you shed some light on this...?

John T. Haller
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Chrome Itself

It is an issue with Chrome itself. Sumatra has had issues with it in the past. Program Files has never been recommended and is unsupported for this reason. Vista and higher has specific rights setup on the C:\Program Files directory that do not allow changes to the directory except when running with admin rights. This interferes with all portable apps. Even if you disable UAC, Windows is still switching in and out of admin mode to do stuff, which can mess up certain apps.

Install it to C:\PortableApps. That fixes everything.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

The MAZZTer
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I wouldn't call it an issue

I wouldn't call it an issue with Chrome because Chrome specifically picks an install location the current user can write to for this very reason!

Though it SHOULD show some sort of error dialog I suppose.

Maybe the next version of PA Installer can have "RequestExecutionLevel user" in it, specifically to keep users from installing to locations they can't write to without UAC?

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The MAZZTer
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Applications which require

Applications which require the need to write to their own folders should not be installed to Program Files if UAC is enabled on Vista or above, since they will not able to modify their own folders. It's for this very reason that Google Chrome (non-portable) installs to your user profile folder instead!

I recommend using the non-portable version of Google Chrome if you plan to run Google Chrome locally, not my portable version.

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nowotny
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It's for this very reason

It's for this very reason that Google Chrome (non-portable) installs to your user profile folder instead!

And this is exactly the reason why I prefer the portable version... I have couple of accounts on my system and otherwise I'd have to have multiple copies of Chrome installed for each account... I wonder if they ever gonna install it like a proper app... binaries to Program Files and profiles to %APPDATA%\Chrome... :/

BTW, what are your plans for releasing the Dev version...? I don't suppose you're gonna release a new version every time Google does, do you...?

The MAZZTer
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Actually Chrome has support

Actually Chrome has support for multiple profiles. "Default" is the default one... there used to be a dev thing to let you add and manage more but they took it out, probably because it was more complicated than it needed to be.

Wouldn't be too hard to use different profiles though, just pass different directories using --user-data-dir or whatever the switch is called...

I don't tend to release new versions unless I've also made fixes to the launcher. Also... Left 4 Dead 2 came out like a week ago... I've been busy. Smile

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