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PA 1.6.1 - Does NOT work properly when running under write-protected media!

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October 2, 2010 - 12:26am
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Camo Yoshi
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PA 1.6.1 - Does NOT work properly when running under write-protected media!

Hi all,

I am running PA 1.6.1 from my flash drive which has write protect switch. When I try to eject the flash drive using the eject button in the PA menu, it gives me a error:

Unable to write to K:\Portableapps\PortableApps.com\Data\PortableAppsMenu.ini.

Then if I click on the the tray icon for PA, it opens, but if I click outside of PA onto another window or desktop (basically, make PA lose focus as main application), then I get the same error. If I try to close PA using the close button in the menu, it gives me the same error again. I have to go into task manager and terminate the PortableAppsMenu.exe entry.

Running Windows XP Home SP3.

Thanks
Camo~

EDIT: Totally forgot to mention that this is when it's set as write protected. Works fine when it's not.

I talked with Chris Morgan in IRC and he said that it should normally work when running from write-protected media.

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October 2, 2010 - 12:32am
John T. Haller
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Read-Only Unsupported At Present

As with most Windows software, read-only media is currently unsupported by the platform as well as many apps. We had originally intended to add more support especially for optical read-only, but with the optical drives on a slow but constant decline in use and barely any USB drives shipping with write-protect modes, it has been a bit of a lower priority.

It is in the feature-request queue and we should have some basic functionality in the 2.0 branch in the near future, though.

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

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October 2, 2010 - 1:24am
Camo Yoshi
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OK

Allow me to explain my scenario a little better:

I have a Kanguru 8GB FlashBlu II, a specialty flash drive that is still made with the write protect switch. I use it for running virus scans on PCs that I clean up for friends of mine. It's not the most convenient to have to navigate through folders and such to find the EXE I want to run.

So, I'm looking forward to 2.0 coming out of Beta, and hopefully with some sort of write-protected mode.

"...And we're out of Beta, and releasing on time..."

In the meantime, my search for the ideal App Launcher continues...

Although I do use PA on my other, personal flash drive and it has worked, well, much better than U3 ever did. Blum

Thanks,
Camo~

... every time I see some[one] [post a] brain-dead one-word comment on a post or photo, I just want to reach through the internet and smack them. - Matt Falcon A.K.A. FalconFour

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March 22, 2019 - 12:26am
edlithgow
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Write Protection Status?

Realise this is an old post, but I wonder what the current state of play is?

I stopped using Portable Apps about the time of the above post due to the lack of support for write-protected media. It should be a higher priority.

In a Taiwan academic environment Portable Apps were otherwise very useful, allowing some avoidance of Chinese, but the level of malware threat makes writable media simply untenable.

I realise that there are very few protectable USB's on the market (proving that the market isn't rational AKA The Punter is a Prat) but protectable SD cards in a card reader are an effective substitute.

Normally, in a teaching context, I only need to display, but many, perhaps most apps, still need to write to media.

I'd think it should be possible to avoid this, or write to, say, an "expendable" usb stick in a usb hub.

If necessary this could be formatted after use.

Just looking

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