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[This project has been discontinued due to license compliance issues. Thanks everyone who assisted with your ideas and feedback.]

About

  • What is this? - this was a project dedicated to building an up-to-date collection of great, free portable software for easy installation and use.
  • What's in it? - list of included freeware
Releases
  • v. 1.3 beta - note that this release is over a year old and contains very out-of-date software. I haven't worked out how to solve licensing issues. Download

NEWS

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Windows 2000 problems

Finally had the chance to test the software out on an earlier Windows OS. Issues below.

Programs that won't start:
  • WeatherMate -- DLL file missing - msvcp60.dll.
  • Iron Browser
  • DrvBackup
  • Foobar2000 - I checked this out and there are no plans by their team to fix this
Other problems
  • Shellfish Anti-Keylogger Keyboard starts but doesn't work.
  • Firefox Secure icon breaks but otherwise still functional.
  • Winxmove - appears to open multiple copies ... repeatedly.
  • Tor - won't start but may have had a conflict with my firewall, not Windows 2000.
  • Hard Disk Indicator for some reason creates an all-gray background for the desktop. Very distracting.
  • xp-Antispy and Config for XP - don't work for for obvious reasons.

6 comments:

guinness said...

Okay so I have tested this on Windows XP SP3. Fistly is your main goal for Kitchen Sink to be run locally or on a USB Drive? Because if this is the case perhaps you could incorporate EjectUSB to autorun on exit of PStart.exe. Can be done via your Batch Script.

Personally there is one program I wouldn't include in September's release which is - TCExplorer, dowm to the fact this will only work on TrueCrypt 4.10 and previous. If you included a legacy version of TrueCrypt then it would make sense. But then it adds the question of if users are wishing to encrypt their USB Device, do you go for a legacy version which is buggy and prone to error, but can be opened without Admin rights, or go for the less buggy version. I would opt for the later, purely and simply most users nowadays are logged in with Admin privileges. As for Internet Cafe's I don't think they take too kindly to USB Drives being plugged into their network.
As far as my testing goes the Apps I pretty much have 70% on my USB Drive. So my testing has gone into the frontend of Kitchen Sink. I see you didn't opt for editing the XML file within the PStart directory, perhaps on the next release?

This is not an error but I use PStart on a daily basis, I have no idea what the Windows Start Menu is, nor do I care to find out. But on your version when you double click on a group (for example: USB Devices) it opens all the programs in that sub-group, shocked me when the entire folder of Graphics started to execute.

I would also add certain files to improve the UI of some programs, one example CurrPorts by NirSoft uses the IPToCountry.csv which can display the IP's Country of origin in the program, this was included in version 1.45, see http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html for details. I have creatde an Autoit Script which can update this automatically.

I hope this helps!

guinnesss said...

Does anyone use Windows 2000 anymore? With the release of 7 most users of XP will probably migrate, so I wouldn't be concerned. XP-7 is what I would be interested in looking at.

Folding Home said...

Agreed but many systems and programs use earlier versions of Windows as a measurement of how standard something is, so comarisons to Win2K can be helpful.

Developers for example that make an effort to make a program run for more than one version of Windows are going to see future compatibility.

But you're right: I was hiding from it but the Windows 7 thing is going to be a requirement.

Folding Home said...

> if this is the case perhaps you could incorporate EjectUSB to autorun on exit of PStart.exe. Can be done via your Batch Script.

I think for true portability, it should be able to be run on either an external drive or locally but this may need to be something the user specifies at setup/install. Great idea -- I'll try to implement that.

> TCExplorer, dowm to the fact this will only work on TrueCrypt 4.10 and previous. If you included a legacy version of TrueCrypt then it would make sense.

Agreed. I'll throw that out. It was an emotional decision to leave that in rather than a rational one: TCE helped me out once or twice.

> As for Internet Cafe's I don't think they take too kindly to USB Drives being plugged into their network.

Probably not but since everyone saves documents to USB drives nowadays it would probably go unnoticed.

> I see you didn't opt for editing the XML file within the PStart directory, perhaps on the next release?

So a link to edit the config file? Is that what you mean? I figured that was something only powerusers would want access to and I was assuming they know where to find it. Still, that's very easy to do.

> it opens all the programs in that sub-group, shocked me when the entire folder of Graphics started to execute.

Yeah that drives me absolutely mad. I don't know how to prevent Pstart from doing that and I can't find a menu system even close to it in terms of functionality. I'll look into some possible fixes in the meantime.

> IPToCountry.csv which can display the IP's Country of origin in the program

That sounds fantastic, sure. I'll look into it.

> I have creatde an Autoit Script which can update this automatically.

I'd love to check it out -- please send.

Thanks very much for all your suggestions!

guinness said...

I see that there was a spelling mistake. When I referenced the edit of the XML I meant for you to take out any references to the amount of time the files have been run.

For Example:
(file)Programs/Firefox.exe(/file)
(runount)45(/runcount)

It won't let me post HTML so I have opted for () not <>

I am not at my computer so this is via memory. But as you can see if users want to get an overall idea of how long they have been using Firefox since starting the Kithensink Software.

Folding Home said...

> if users want to get an overall idea of how long they have been using Firefox since starting the Kithensink Software.

Absolutely -- my memory fails me if I got all those out for the 1.0 release or if I just missed one. Either way, I'll do my best to clean that up in future releases.

Thanks!