jv16 PowerTools - New Major Version - Release Candidate (build 335)

jv16

Here is the Release Candidate version of the brand new, New Major Version of jv16 PowerTools:

(version no longer available for download)

Please read the following before downloading

This is Release Candidate level software. It means that this version has been made available only for testing purposes - for you to try the upcoming version and offer us feedback and bug reports. This version is not meant to be used to replace any current version of jv16 PowerTools for everyday use.

As you probably know, jv16 PowerTools was started over 20 years ago. That means for the longest time it has been a mix of very old code coupled together with new. Year by year, new versions have been made and tweaks and improvements and fixes have been implemented. As you can imagine, this has resulted in a very complex system, prone to bugs and difficult to maintain.

That is why we decided to start all over. Do everything from scratch. Both with the user interface and with everything under the hood. Go back and go through all the user feedback we have received in the past 20 years and basically take everything you love about jv16 PowerTools and build those features from the ground up.

The previous beta versions of jv16 PowerTools were "read-only" for your own safety. However, this version is fully functional. I highly recommend you to create a system restore point before using the software and not using this version in any critical systems. That being said, we have done a lot of testing with the software already and the safety of the new engine is already very high level.

From the bottom of my heart I hope you will like the direction we are going with this new version.

Please help us with the development by doing the following:

1) Download and install the jv16 PowerTools NMV Release Candidate.

2) Run all of the tools main tools ("Internet Optimizer", "System Cleaner" and "Software Uninstaller"),

3) When back at the Main Screen of the program, go to File > Save As. This will generate a ZIP file to your desktop, with all of the debug logs from the program.

4) Upload the ZIP file to WeTransfer.com (or other similar service), and send the download link to this thread, directly to me via forum Private Message or email it to support@macecraft.com

This would greatly help us with the development as the debug logs file contains information about how the Beta 2 performed, what items it listed as registry errors and what software you have installed in your system. We can use this data to improve the safety and accuracy of the new registry cleaning engine. The more data we get, the faster we get the new jv16 PowerTools released!

Privacy notice: The debug data will contain information of your system, such as the basic hardware setup, what software you have installed etc. If you are running the program in a system with private information, please review the debug data before sending it. We will store and treat all received data as confidential and will not share the data with any third parties.

As always, we will give out free licenses to the best beta testers. If you find and report bugs or provide any other kind of valuable feedback we will give you a free license to the final product.

Change Log since Beta RC1 - b312 1) Bug fix: The program's main window area will flicker and flash when the app opens and when moving between different tools. 2) Bug fix: The program fails to create a System Restore Point in some systems. 3) Bug fix: The program can show Access Violation error message relating to GetNodeLevel. 4) Bug fix: Software Uninstaller can fail to detect the uninstaller of an installed app, even if it is detected by Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs. This happened often for example with Opera. 5) Bug fix: The program does not always delete its own temporary files after usage. 6) Bug fix: Software Uninstaller does not list software if two versions of the same software are installed in the computer. For example, if Amazon Corretto 8 (x64) and Amazon Corretto 8 (x86) are installed to the system, only one is listed. 7) Bug fix: There is no way to disable the temporary data attribute scan module from the System Cleaner. 8) Bug fix: The app can show an Range check error if used in a computer which has been turned on for over 20 days without a reboot. 9) Bug fix: The Internet Optimizer can report there is no internet connection even if there is one. This happens mainly on older Windows versions, such as Windows 8. 10) Bug fix: The tool captions could sometimes show a wrong text. For example, the Software Uninstaller's caption could say Backups. Improvements: 1) Software Uninstaller and Initial Setup now run faster. 2) Improved the scanning speed of the System Cleaner. 3) Improved the ability of Software Uninstaller to uninstall software and left-overs. 4) Improved the way the non critical message boxes are shown, that is, they will not be shown in the middle of user action anymore. 5) By default, Windows allows only one System Restore Point to be created per day. Therefore, user can get confused why no new restore point is created before System Clean or Software Uninstallation. This can be because of one restore point was already created when the app was installed and therefore no new restore point is allowed again the same day. This is now mentioned in the UI in the Settings window. 6) The splash screen is now more responsive during app startup. 7) Added an option to automatically restart the computer after the Software Uninstaller has completed uninstalling apps. 8) The Software Uninstaller will now show an additional warning if you attempt to uninstall only one version of a software but keep the other version.

Known bugs and issues we are still working on (no need to report): 1) System Cleaner's Right Click -> Add to Ignore List feature does not remove the item from the screen. 2) My Account does not indicate what type of license a registered user has or how long it is valid. 3) Using the browser data cleaning feature of System Cleaner can disable or clean the bookmarks from Firefox browser. So far three users have reported this. We have not been able to reproduce or fix this yet. 4) Internet Optimizer does not support IPv6. 5) There is no visual way to select all items of a group (only via the Right Click menu). 6) The translation system is not yet finalized, so the user interface cannot yet be fully translated.

How to send your feedback

* Please use the Post Reply button of this thread for all feedback.

* Open the program and go to File > Save As. This will generate a ZIP file containing the debug data from the jv16 PowerTools installation. Send this file to us, even if you don't experience any problems. We can use the collected data to improve the quality of the program.

* If the "File > Save As" method fails, you can do the same manually: Simply create a zip file of the jv16 PowerTools' Debug directory (not the Backups directory as was the case before) - by default this is at C:\Program Files (x86)\jv16 PowerTools\Debug. IMPORTANT NOTICE: The zip file can contain detailed information of your computer, if you are worried about your privacy, use a service such as https://www.wetransfer.com/ to upload the zip file there and send me the link to the file via a forum Private Message.

* You can send attachments, including screenshots, to the thread from the Post Reply > Upload attachment tab (below the main text area).

* You can also send your general feedback, how you feel the program works for you or if there is something you don't understand, or if some feature doesn't work the way you expected. Feedback like this is sometimes even more valuable than bug reports.

Release Notes:

* Do not start to translate this version to your language yet, there will still be some changes to the translation system and possibly to the user interface too.

* Please do not install this version over any previous version, install it to its own installation directory.

And remember, please send all your feedback regarding this beta version to this thread! Thank you!

jv16

Sorry about the delay with this update (and the radio silence from my part - when you don't see me here, it means I'm too locked into some development problem : ). But, I think you will quite like these improvements:

1) Everything is now a lot faster. On 30 different test systems, the previous jv16 PowerTools NMV Release Candidate version (build 312) had an average Initial Setup run time of 140 seconds. On the same systems, this new build has an average Initial Setup run time of 93 seconds. Similarly, the old version's Software Uninstaller took on average 65 seconds to scan the system for installed software and left-overs. The new build now does it in 46 seconds, on average. And what's even better: These are not the final numbers yet. There is still a lot of room for speed improvements.

2) No more user interface flickering! The previous versions had an annoying issue of the user interface flickering and turning blank white for a fraction of a second on many systems. We also spent a lot of time on this issue and it's now 99% fixed. There can still be little bit of flickering left but it's now a lot better for most users. Albeit this was purely a cosmetic issue, it was an annoyance, so we really wanted to fix it as soon as we could.

3) Finally: The System Restore Points work. Previous versions had problems with Windows System Restore Point creation. Sometimes they were not created. Sometimes they were, but with a description text of only the character "B". This should also now be fixed in this build for most users.

4) Major overall quality improvements. Many people ask how do we test for quality within our company. We do this by manually running the software in over 30 different testing environments. Some real computers, some virtualized systems.

We define one testing cycle as one major operation that is done with the app. For example, installing the app is one testing cycle, cleaning the computer with the System Cleaner counts as another and uninstalling one software with the Software Uninstaller counts as one testing cycle as well. By this definition, we performed a total 29124 test cycles since the build 312 (the previously published Release Candidate version) until this build 335. Yes, that is almost 30 000 tests!

Each of these tests generate a log file of everything that happened inside the system and we use our custom made automated system to analyze these log files to find possible quality control issues. For example, if the log files indicate that Winzip is installed to the test computer, but the log file also indicates that jv16 PowerTools Software Uninstaller did not list Winzip as an installed software, that is automatically detected as a quality control issue. Another type of test is looking for False Positives from the System Cleaner's results, and so on and so forth.

Based on this manually collected but automatically processed testing quality data, we can see that the new build 335 is triggering almost 10% less issues than the previous build 312. That means we are also making steady progress in the overall quality of the software, as well, and we have testing systems and processes to objectively evaluate quality.

5) Major improvements to the Software Uninstaller. One often reported issue (and something we have seen in our internal testing too!) is that uninstalling an app with Software Uninstaller does not actually work. The app still remains in the system, or some left-overs still remain. While this issue is not yet 100% fixed, it is a lot better now with build 335.

Still few words about performance: I also did an analysis of the average application performance from build 210 until the new build 335 and this is what the data shows like. As you can see, we are making steady progress on the Initial Setup and the Software Uninstaller performance. In the very first versions, these were fast, because they were not as comprehensive as they are now (e.g. the Software Uninstaller would not detect all parts of installed software). Fixing these accuracy issues made the scan a lot slower, which we are now addressing. We want it to be the most extensive software and left-over scan available, but also fast enough that it will scan your entire computer in under 30 seconds on average.

runtimes.png

So, long story short: We have been working very hard on making these improvements and fixes, and many new fixes are already in the pipeline coming soon (e.g. IPv6 support for the Internet Optimizer, visual way to select all items of a group etc.)

redseujac

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thedude20165

When is the beta/candidate going to find my license info. It still says 14 day trial.

cleanfeet

Now jv16RC finally updated (from 312 to 335)!

May I wish for scans:

1. choose to keep PUPs (some similar programs want to remove them without asking)

2. choose to keep MRUs of choice (with another program I recently lost MRUs in WinWord...)

Just 2 things I come to think of for now.

all-tek

Suggestion,

At installation stage, can we have the ability to select Admin only and or all users?

Regards

Mac

All-tek

all-tek

BUG Report.

using software uninstaller,

Warning window remains in focus, makin it difficult to proceed with advised actions such as using system restore/backup when warning window remains in focus.

thedude20165

When is the beta/candidate going to find my license info. It still says 14 day trial.

any answer here....

mrsense

When is the beta/candidate going to find my license info. It still says 14 day trial.

any answer here....

MIne is registered. Doesn't say 14-day trail anymore.

mrsense

Having this installation issue.

olyfant22

TheDude20165 wrote:

When is the beta/candidate going to find my license info. It still says 14 day trial.

As far as I now you have to fill in:

- your name you used when you purchased the license at "My name"

- your email address you used when you purchased the license at "My email address"

- then click on "Apply"

After closing and starting up PT your license should show "Licensed version".

mannie

Has beta testing finished or is there something wrong with the new forum software?