Product
PortableApps.com Platform
Problem
Stopped working and has been shut down
Date
3-6-2011 16:14
Status
Send report
Discription
A problem has caused this program to stop communicating with Windows.
Problem with signature
Name of problem event: AppHangB1
Name of application: PortableAppsPlatform.exe
Application version: 1.999.5.0
Timestamp of application: 4c4010b8
Signature of crash: 3ade
Type of crash: 0
These crashes keep reoccuring during startup of PortableApps.com Platform. I believe it may be because of either the need to index all apps on the USB pendrive or because of the fact that there are no sub-menu's possible and the start menu being too big because of many apps. I use about 60 different apps.
My Pc has Vista on it and about 3 GiB Ram / dual-core Pentium.
Are there fixes possible for it ?
Could it be solved by using sub-menu's ?
Does it make a difference whether I use a 4 GiB Usb or a 8 Gib Usb ?
Should I use NTFS file system or Fat32 ?
Pardon me for the amount of questions but this way I may get it over with.
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I am pretty sure that its not the number of apps as I have even more and it doesn’t crash.
Submenus cant be used at the moment (they arent implemented) so thats not a problem either.
Finally, the size of the device doesnt matter. I run it on 1 gb drives and on portable hdds.
I always use FAT32 for external drives as sometimes there are security issues with NTFS where people cant access their files because their username changes when they switch PC. Others use it without problems so its up to you.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
60 apps is not a problem for the menu (it easily handles hundreds) and, even with the categories addition, it still indexes them all anyway. My test one here has 200 in it and runs just fine.
I'd say check the drive for errors. Barring that, it could be the last app you added that has something improper about the EXE (if it's a non-PAF app and the menu is having issues) or the PAF setup (if it's a PAF app, especially a pirated app).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
The drive has no errors, I had already tested that before posting. It may then be that it's one of the apps I made portable myself. No pirated apps though - just open source apps I extracted from the installer with Uniextract. I'd like the insight what in them could make PortableApps.com Platform crash.
What I do is - I make them portable within a sfx, so there are no other files then the exe and sometimes a ini file for the settings.
The exe unpacks needed files to the windows temp folder and cleans them up at shutdown of the app.
In order to display those files in the menu, it has to address the EXE and pull the file details from it. It could be the extreme size of these files (the menu is expecting 100k launchers, not 50MB packed EXEs) or some of the data within them.
There's actually no reason at all to keep them in a self extracting EXE. This doesn't make them portable. It's just as portable (more likely unportable) as just extracting the files with Uniextract and then running them directly. All data is still written to the host PC's APPDATA and registry. But you get the added delay of having to wait for it to extract and then clean up when done.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
The PC's I use the pen drive on doesn't allow any installations whatsoever, it's in an office. Unless ofcourse their IT dept did a bad job. But at least now I know why the delay and probable crashes because of it. It's the size that counts.
I'd like to make some of them 100% portableapps in the PAF but making those can be very time consuming. Needing to include Help HTML files when I only use them for my own needs.
What I'd like to see is a guide for how to make a 'minimal' PAF for this usage. Ofcourse I wouldn't mind sharing the apps I made portable that I made according to the PAF, but then I would have to make new ones too every time an update comes out. Not to mention I'd have to ask permission from/or inform the creators of the original app about it. Open source: I know the contents of the GNU/GPL license but in my opinion that doesn't release me from common courtesy.
I am involved as a volunteer in several open source software projects, and I'd rather like to do those things right instead of doing many things but sloppy.