jv16 PowerTools - NMV - Release Candidate 2 (build 391)

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 Release Candidate RC1 build 335 1) Bug fix: Software Uninstaller's result list can still have some flickering (black boxes show up on the screen) if moving mouse cursor over the list fast enough. 2) Bug fix: The app can show a disk write error relating to function AS_CreateAppDirFilesList when started. 3) Bug fix: Collapsing and expanding the result groups can change the sort order of the result list. 4) Bug fix: If you clean the system with System Cleaner, then restore a system backup and then run the System Cleaner again, it can report zero items found. 5) Bug fix: Uninstalling software with the Software Uninstaller can result in a flood of Runtime Error messages from regsvr32.exe. 6) Bug fix: Uninstalling software with the Software Uninstaller can cause the app to display an Access Violation error message. This only happens when uninstalling specific software. 7) Bug fix: Even with the option to not list any builtin Windows apps, the Software Uninstaller can list the builtin Windows Flash Player, Mplayer2 and legacy Netscape Navigator entries. 8) Bug fix: The app can create files named Uninstall_CollectionReport_0_post.log to the app's main installation directory. These files should go under the Debug directory. 9) Bug fix: It is possible that the System Cleaner deletes the sqlite3.dll file from jv16 PowerTools installation directory. 10) Bug fix: On a very rare cases, the app could show error message List index out of bounds relating to module TSystemDirDetector. 11) Bug fix: The app may freeze in a rare case of two popup message boxes being displayed at the very same time. 12) Bug fix: If you register the app to yourself, then click the Reset button in My Account, the app can show it's still registered but registered to nobody. 13) Bug fix: If you uninstall certain software with the Software Uninstaller, Windows may display an error message the next time the computer starts. 14) Bug fix: Starting the app causes a button to appear in the Windows task bar, then it disappears and a new jv16 PowerTools button shows up. Improvements: 1) Initial Setup, Software Uninstaller and System Cleaner now run much faster. 2) Software Uninstaller finds more registry data of installed software. 3) It's now possible to click the group to select/unselect all items. 4) In System Cleaner, using the Right Click -> Add to ignore list now also removes the item from the current result list. 5) You can now copy the current jv16 PowerTools version number to clipboard via Right Clicking the version text at the bottom left corner of the window. 6) The version number in the splash screen and the about screen can now be selected and copied via Ctrl + V to clipboard. 7) It's now possible to abort a scan. 8) In the case of the Internet Optimizer failing due to connectivity issue, it will now automatically retry a couple of times before the process is aborted. 9) The core files of jv16 PowerTools are now automatically backed up, and restored if missing. 10) Improved the smoothness of the System Cleaner and Software Uninstaller result lists. 11) You can now copy to clipboard the content of any error message or other popup message by Right Clicking the box and choosing Copy to clipboard. 12) The Copy to clipboard feature now shows a one time message informing you that the data has been copied to the clipboard. 13) Improved the reboot prevention of the Software Uninstaller in non English Windows. 14) Improved the accuracy of the Internet Optimizer's benchmark test. 15) The app will now remember the size of its window.

Known bugs and issues we are still working on (no need to report): 1) My Account does not indicate what type of license a registered user has or how long it is valid. 2) 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. 3) 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

Some numbers from our long testing and development of this new version:

* Since the last Release Candidate (build 335), we have done in our internal testing 1327 test installations of private test versions. We do these test installations manually to different kinds of computers (both real and virtual machines), and collect the data for automated analysis which finds if there are any problems under the hood of the app. For example, something analyzed incorrectly.

* On average, the Software Uninstaller now starts 13% faster with an average loading time of under 48 seconds.

* Yet, the Software Uninstaller is now able to find on average 13% more registry entries and files of installed software.

* With the build 391 alone, we did 5205 test cycles in quality control. During these tests we uninstalled 407 different software from Windows, and the uninstallation failed in only 2 cases.

So, again, I do apologize for the radio silence of my part here in the forum. I took the most important requests from you and applied them to the new version (such as: Ability to abort a scan, IPv6 support for the Internet Optimizer, the Ignore List feature now removes the items from the list and added checkboxes to the result list for easy selection of items in groups etc.) I will go through all the feedback since then, and apply accordingly.

In regards of the performance, both in speed and accuracy of the scanning, we are making good improvements. That being said, unfortunately the issue few users have reported about the System Cleaner cleaning the bookmarks of Firefox is still not fixed as we have not been able to reproduce it.

redseujac

First findings not brilliant

- Initial Setup: takes 6 min and 25 sec, while in build 335 only 3 min and 45 sec

- System Cleaner: takes 5 min (that's much too long) and the results list is poor: showing e.g. 332 registry errors in total relating to Advanced Installer, Chromium, Gridinsoft, MS Windows Photo's, Onedrive and Telegram Desktop while none of the items shown under those headers is related to them : What's the benefit of those headers then? I preferred the list in the good old jv16 PT 4.2.0.2009.

- Internet Optimizer: Slow - remaining quite some time at 0%. Says no IPv6 Server addresses are found, while in fact my system has IPv6 DNS Server addresses.

Edit: second try with system Cleaner: same BAD results: takes 302 seconds. 74% slower than average scan time, while in build 335 40-50% faster than average scan time : Same bad listing: none of the entries related to headers!!!

First Conclusion: much slower than previous build 335 and not reliable as to the System Cleaner results. This is regrettable and too bad after waiting al that time for this actual build :(

mrtee

Results build 391

thibdige

Unusual set up here so maybe useful...

Linux Mint 19.2 with Oracle VirtualBox 6 and Windows 10 1903 running on a real SSD directly linked to the VirtualBox as the VM.

The Windows 10 SSD was in my laptop which died...

Attached is the ZIP but it never visually finished in that the spinner/timer kept showing until I clicked on the app.

jv16

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jv16

Confirmed: There is a bug that causes the System Cleaner to be abnormally slow in this build. We'll release a fix for that probably first thing next week.

We were too focused in making the Software Uninstaller fast that we missed this bug, oops :

lloyd_mueller

The "Internet Optimizer" is a very nice addition. It seems simple to use and quite effective.

The "System Cleaner" Seems quite different than the old registry cleaner.

- Previously you had a Safe--Aggressive slider that the user used to choose the depth on the review. On the old JV16 system I used the "Safe" setting. and I would get NO errors. On the same PC the RC2 software pick up many items, causing me to wonder if the new software has a default setting that is more like the aggressive setting in the the old software.

-- What happened to the privacy apps? The Picture + Windows Antispy apps, and the Immunize my PC app. Likewise, is there a "Speed-up my PC's Startup" app?

-- The Software Uninstaller app has some awkward English language phrases display a) before uninstalling a program it says "If you choose to uninstall many software..." I would be better to say - "many software programs...."

--- Following the uninstall, the display says "The software were uninstalled..." --> "The selected software was uninstalled."

--- What will happen to the "FileTools" from the old version

Best wishes,

Lloyd Mueller

thibdige

Hers another one for you. The System Cleaner seems to repeat itself in other directories (same screendump directory reported in other directories) ....(see screenClip.jpgshot)

redseujac

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redseujac

jv16 wrote

redseujac wrote

- Internet Optimizer: Slow - remaining quite some time at 0%. Says no IPv6 Server addresses are found, while in fact my system has IPv6 DNS Server addresses.

Can you take a screenshot of your IPv6 DNS settings (showing what IPv6 DNS servers)?

Settings: Obtain DNS server address automatically, both for IPv4 and IPv6.

Here is the screenshot of the iPv6 DNS servers:

IPv6-DNS-Servers.jpg

gravy

Not sure if this is intended or not but the System Cleaner tool for the cookies section does not display a list of cookies found. As well as not listing them the sections have only a listing of "Chrome Cookies" even for Firefox and Opera as can be seen in the image. Hope this is helpful.

Annotation 2019-10-26 211502.jpg

gravy

Small spelling mistake in the System Cleaner Settings page:

rick22

I used it and it worked well, except for one thing. When I went to fix problems that it found, I was notified that it could not create a restore point, since backup wasn't turned on. I went into my system protection settings and found that protection was turned on for my C:\ drive. I have several others that are turned off since I use a backup utility to backup all of my drives at different periods. I manually created the restore point and proceeded.

redseujac

Gravy wrote

Not sure if this is intended or not but the System Cleaner tool for the cookies section does not display a list of cookies found.

This is indeed by design. The cookies are not listed.

redseujac

Rick22 wrote

When I went to fix problems that it found, I was notified that it could not create a restore point, since backup wasn't turned on. I went into my system protection settings and found that protection was turned on for my C:\ drive.

That was indeed a problem already reported in previous builds, I think.

redseujac

Lloyd_Mueller wrote

The "Internet Optimizer" is a very nice addition. It seems simple to use and quite effective.

Quite effective? Do you have concrete evidence of that statement? Tests with results? Or is it simply a feeling?

As far as I'm concerned, I didn't have any proof of effectiveness of that tool on my system so far. After making changes, Internet does not seem faster as before with previous DNS Server settings.

redseujac

Lloyd_Mueller wrote

-- What happened to the privacy apps? The Picture + Windows Antispy apps, and the Immunize my PC app. Likewise, is there a "Speed-up my PC's Startup" app?

--- What will happen to the "FileTools" from the old version

In this post https://jv16powertools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6060&start=90#p36577

jv16 wrote
...We removed features because the less features we offer, the better we can make those core features included in the app. For example, the quality of the System Cleaner (i.e. the old "Clean and SpeedUp My Computer") and the Software Uninstaller in the PT NMV is in another level compared to the PT Classic. With less features, we can really focus on them and make them as close to perfect we can.

And in this post https://jv16powertools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6060&start=90#p36570

jv16 wrote
According to our research (both by data from the application, and by user feedback), over 95% of jv16 PowerTools users are only using the system cleanup feature and the Software Uninstaller. That is why we are focusing on those. As you may have noticed from this and the previous threads about the PT NMV, there has been very few comments about the removed features. We are open in adding any features from the current / classic jv16 PowerTools back in, but in order for that to happen, there must be real user demand for those features.

jv16

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jv16

thibdige wrote

Hers another one for you. The System Cleaner seems to repeat itself in other directories (same screendump directory reported in other directories) ....(see screenClip.jpgshot)

This is indeed the same visual corruption bug in the result list. It's now fixed and the fix will be included in the next released build, thank you for reporting!

So, just to be clear: There are no false positives or other serious issue like that in the program, these are simply incorrect texts shown on the user interface. You can confirm this e.g. via File > Save List As, and the data saved to the file is correct.