I'm installing PAP for the first time and it has not been a smooth process. I first checked off 283 apps to download, and it took many hours to download everything. However, after installing about 150 apps, the application started to repeatedly display these two error alerts:
(1) "Access violation at address 00404F47 in module 'PortableAppsPlatform.exe'. Write of address"
(2) "Stack overflow."
I kept hitting the OK button, but eventually the application bombed out entirely. Interestingly enough, the installation window was still running, but now I had to manually sit there and hit the Next, Install, and Finish buttons to install every app. My thought was that the PAP menu had logic to automate clicking these buttons since I didn't have to do this when it was running, so I made the mistake of relaunching the menu (by double-clicking on Start.exe). Bad idea! After proving my theory correct for the first couple minutes (I no longer had to click Next, Next, Install, Finish), there was some kind of conflict and the installation window closed :(.
A large chunk of my time downloading went down the drain because I had to go back and check off the remaining 129 apps that didn't get installed, and PAP had to download them all over again. As before, the download went OK, but after installing about 40 apps, I'm now getting the same Access Violation and Stack Overflow errors again, which brings us to this post.
What gives?
To play it safe, now I have to spend time monitoring each installation and clicking Next, Next, Install, and Finish for each app.
Tom
[EDIT 1]
I would like to add that my PAP is installed to an 8GB USB stick and I'm running Windows XP Pro SP3 with Comodo firewall and Avira antivirus disabled during the installation.
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It's a known bug due to a memory leak in the icon loading API. It's listed in known issues. It happens after 100 or so refreshes of the platform with lots of apps installed.
Unfortunately, the current setup of the platform refreshes after each app is installed. So, by the 150th app installed from the app store, it's been refreshed 150 times with an average of 75 icons loaded per refresh (11,250 icon loads and leaks if you're counting).
This will be sorted soon in two ways. First, the platform will only be refreshing the app that was installed. The PortableApps.com Installer was updated a year or so ago to advertise to the platform what was just installed so the platform can do a smart refresh, the platform just doesn't do it yet. Second, we'll be fixing another good chunk of the memory leak soon (it was 1/2 fixed in the last update).
Sorry for the inconvenience, but once you have all your apps loaded, it shouldn't happen again even if you're updating a dozen or two apps at a time.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks for the quick reply, John. Would you consider having an option to not show app icons for us power users? (if icons disabled, then icon refresh would not be needed also)
I'm still sitting here installing 59 out of 129...
It doesn't affect install time. Install time is most affected by the speed (or lack thereof) of your drive.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!