Updated version released - jv16 PowerTools 7.3.1.1372

jv16

An updated version of jv16 PowerTools is now released. The version is 7.3.1.1372 and it can be downloaded from here:

https://jv16powertools.com/downloads/jv16pt_setup.exe

This version fixes some bugs from the last week's major release. Most of the bugs that were found from the original release were minor. However, there was one bug that was more serious, but it was rare.

The bug was essentially that if the Windows registry contained incorrect information about shared Windows system file usage, such as DLL file and font file usage, jv16 PowerTools would trust this information to be correct and list potentially important Windows system files as unneeded and if user accepted these files for removal, they would be removed. Doing this could cause problems but usually simply restoring a System Restore Point would be enough to recover. As said, the issue was rare, so far we know five users reporting this to have happened.

I am very sorry for this issue and I will try to find a way to improve our testing processes to prevent this from happening again. It is not easy, as this was a very rare type of occurrence and it never happened in any test system we have, but I will nevertheless try to find a way to improve the way we test the product safety before release.

jv16 PowerTools Change Log Since b1369

Improvements:

1) Added more mentions to the UI about the program using Windows scripts for data removal and that this is normal and nothing to worry about. If you see a big scary Windows Command Prompt when jv16 PowerTools is working or after the next system reboot, that is normal and nothing to worry about.

2) The Software Update screen now highlights the 'Download Update' as the default action button if an updated version is available.

3) The message box saying a system cleanup has completed now stays visible for a longer time. Before, it could automatically close too fast, which could leave the user thinking the cleaning somehow failed.

4) Many small improvements to the accuracy of the System Cleaner and Software Uninstaller scans.

5) Added an option to disable the killing of running apps to the Software Uninstaller. Uninstalling apps works better the less apps there are running in the background and this was declared by the app before uninstallation started. Yet, some users were surprised that apps were closed when something was uninstalled. Therefore, this is now made more clear.

6) Added an option to disable automatic system reboot after system cleaning or software uninstallation.

7) System Cleaner's category listing panel now shows the found item categories sorted by their name. Previously the order was random.

8) Software Updater tool is now hidden and disabled by default. We are considering to remove this tool as it requires constant updates and does not seem to be worth it. If you want the tool to remain, you should voice your opinion now.

9) Updated the Widget's Setting screen tabs to look the same as in the main app.

10) Comes with many updated translations, including Dutch, Finnish, Polish and Swedish.

Fixes:

1) If the Windows registry's shared system file keys contain invalid data, this could lead jv16 PowerTools to list important system DLL or font files for removal. This only happened with systems that had invalid shared file registry data and was therefore a rare issue. So far, five users have reported this to have happened to them. Nevertheless, we wanted to release a quick fix for this issue.

2) Some parts of the app's UI were missing from the English.txt, making them impossible to translate.

3) If the system was in idle, the jv16 PowerTools Dashboard and Widget would keep showing different apps using 1% of CPU but these apps were often changing order every few seconds. This made it annoying to read the CPU usage list. From now on, all apps using the same amount of CPU power will be displayed in the CPU usage list in alphabetical order.

4) It was not possible to close some of the tip panels by clicking the X button at the top right corner of the panels.

5) Leaving any of the confirmation boxes open for a long time started the automatic message box closing sequence. However, this incorrectly displayed the button captions.

6) A message box could sometimes open behind the main app window, making it difficult to notice.

7) Installing a new version of jv16 PowerTools over an older version could cause the Dashboard's drive content information bars to remain gray.

Known issues

During the quality control for this version, we have also identified the following bugs or issues in the new version. These issues were found in our testing but are not yet fixed. These issues are:

1) The text of the circular progress element in the progress screen, such as when scanning the system, can be sometimes drawn to the left side of the screen. This issue is evident if the window is resized during the progress screen being visible.

2) Sometimes the program fails to correctly fetch the icon of a running application, causing the CPU or RAM listing areas of the Dashboard to show either a missing or incorrect icon.

3) Scrolling the Dashboard's list up and down immediately after the program has started, can cause the scrolling not to be smooth and the CPU usage high for a few seconds.

All of the above issues are cosmetic and will be fixed in future versions.

redseujac

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siliconman01

This release is working very well on my Windows 10/11x64 Pro systems. No issues found thus far. The stated improvement and fixes are quite obvious.

arctucas

So far, so good.

One thing that irks me; PowerTools 'phoning home'.

It immediately tries to make several internet connection upon install, and the "Automatically check for product updates" is set by default.

doctor9fan

New version is good although it does still hang on around 2%. At least the problem with it showing fonts as temp files has been fixed & no command popup after a restart so the popup was down to cleaning the fonts folder.

jv16

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jv16

siliconman01 wrote

This release is working very well on my Windows 10/11x64 Pro systems. No issues found thus far. The stated improvement and fixes are quite obvious.

Thank you!

jv16

Arctucas wrote

So far, so good.

One thing that irks me; PowerTools 'phoning home'.

It immediately tries to make several internet connection upon install, and the "Automatically check for product updates" is set by default.

That's because we don't want people to use old versions of the app. Before having the automatic check for product updates feature, we would get feedback and bug reports of versions which were months or even years old. I'm sure you can understand that it's very frustrating to realize people are using very old program versions without knowing there are updated versions available.

The details of what data is being sent during these connections is detailed in the program's License Agreement (a copy of which is stored at \jv16 PowerTools\Help\License Agreement.txt).

Plus, you can disable the automatic product updates checks if you don't wish to use that feature.

With all these points, I would say jv16 PowerTools is one of the more privacy friendly apps out there.

jv16

Doctor9fan wrote

New version is good although it does still hang on around 2%. At least the problem with it showing fonts as temp files has been fixed & no command popup after a restart so the popup was down to cleaning the fonts folder.

Thank you for confirming the fixes! By hanging around 2%, what do you mean exactly? Do you mean the app locks up and does not continue after 2% progress? Or that there is some delay at around 2% but the program continues normally after that delay? Also, I am assuming you are referring to the process of System Cleaner scanning? Or the cleaning?

coolzen

I am on Win10 Pro x64, an untimely window only appears when opening jv16 powertools, of which I attach a file as soon as I click on OK, it disappears and comes back immediately, this has happened since the last update of the software 7.3.1.1372 and the AOMEI Backupper program was already installed before, I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, nothing worked, or else reverted to version 7.3.0

siliconman01

System Optimizer is not creating system restore points prior to cleaning. I've never encountered a Windows 10/11 restriction that states only one Store Point can be created per day. I can manually create as many restore points as I want to.

SystemRestorePoint.png

jv16

Coolzen wrote

I am on Win10 Pro x64, an untimely window only appears when opening jv16 powertools, of which I attach a file as soon as I click on OK, it disappears and comes back immediately, this has happened since the last update of the software 7.3.1.1372 and the AOMEI Backupper program was already installed before, I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, nothing worked, or else reverted to version 7.3.0

Thank you for reporting! We have received a few other similar reports and we are working on a fix. This issue is causing jv16 PowerTools to close, but there is no data loss or damage to the computer. I am hoping that a fixed version will be released next week.

jv16

siliconman01 wrote

System Optimizer is not creating system restore points prior to cleaning. I've never encountered a Windows 10/11 restriction that states only one Store Point can be created per day. I can manually create as many restore points as I want to.

SystemRestorePoint.png

The Windows System Restore Point functionality is from our (i.e. developer) point of view a black box, where we can kindly ask Windows to please create a System Restore Point because we would like to have one created, and then Windows creates one if it wants to. If it doesn't create one, there is unfortunately nothing we can do about that. The one restore point per day is something we have noticed to happen in our testing. It clearly does not apply to Windows own System Restore Point creation functionality.

doctor9fan

jv16 wrote

Doctor9fan wrote

New version is good although it does still hang on around 2%. At least the problem with it showing fonts as temp files has been fixed & no command popup after a restart so the popup was down to cleaning the fonts folder.

Thank you for confirming the fixes! By hanging around 2%, what do you mean exactly? Do you mean the app locks up and does not continue after 2% progress? Or that there is some delay at around 2% but the program continues normally after that delay? Also, I am assuming you are referring to the process of System Cleaner scanning? Or the cleaning?

There is a delay @ 2% which takes around 5 minutes to continue.

Yes it’s the cleaning. Scan is very quick.

jv16

Coolzen wrote

I am on Win10 Pro x64, an untimely window only appears when opening jv16 powertools, of which I attach a file as soon as I click on OK, it disappears and comes back immediately, this has happened since the last update of the software 7.3.1.1372 and the AOMEI Backupper program was already installed before, I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, nothing worked, or else reverted to version 7.3.0

I'm fairly sure that we have now found and fixed this bug. I say "fairly sure" because it is a very rare issue, only happening with some systems. So far, we have had perhaps seven people reporting the issue, you included. However, we did send a private test build to some users reporting this issue and they confirmed the issue was fixed in a private build already. An official release with this issue fixed should be released Thursday next week. Thank you for reporting the issue!

siliconman01

jv16 wrote

siliconman01 wrote

System Optimizer is not creating system restore points prior to cleaning. I've never encountered a Windows 10/11 restriction that states only one Store Point can be created per day. I can manually create as many restore points as I want to.

SystemRestorePoint.png

The Windows System Restore Point functionality is from our (i.e. developer) point of view a black box, where we can kindly ask Windows to please create a System Restore Point because we would like to have one created, and then Windows creates one if it wants to. If it doesn't create one, there is unfortunately nothing we can do about that. The one restore point per day is something we have noticed to happen in our testing. It clearly does not apply to Windows own System Restore Point creation functionality.

I honestly feel that you should re-evaluate how jv16 "creates a restore point". There are a multitude of programs that positively create restore points before they perform a specific function...such as install a new driver on a user's system. I feel that jv16 should assure that a restore point is created before System Cleaner and other tools perform their function. Sometimes a using Restore Point is the quickest technique to get a system back to normal if an error is made by the utility program such a jv16.

arctucas

jv16 wrote

Arctucas wrote

So far, so good.

One thing that irks me; PowerTools 'phoning home'.

It immediately tries to make several internet connection upon install, and the "Automatically check for product updates" is set by default.

That's because we don't want people to use old versions of the app. Before having the automatic check for product updates feature, we would get feedback and bug reports of versions which were months or even years old. I'm sure you can understand that it's very frustrating to realize people are using very old program versions without knowing there are updated versions available.

The details of what data is being sent during these connections is detailed in the program's License Agreement (a copy of which is stored at \jv16 PowerTools\Help\License Agreement.txt).

Plus, you can disable the automatic product updates checks if you don't wish to use that feature.

With all these points, I would say jv16 PowerTools is one of the more privacy friendly apps out there.

All fair points.

Except, my belief is that it should be the option and responsibility of the end user.

EDIT:

Perhaps during installation, a pop-up appears (before PowerTools initiates internet connection attempt) that states something to the effect of "Thank you for choosing to install PowerTools. Would you like to allow the application to connect to the internet to check for the latest version?"

Also, another pop-up could state "PowerTools is able to check automatically for updates. Would you like to enable this option?"

olyfant22

Hi,

For 'ages' : I tried to alter the width of the columns in as it ran.... I just could not do it, it just jumped back to the width it was set to....

Now, finally, I browsed through the [Settings and I discovered the category [~~....!!~~

So, I changed the setting to [User defined column width and clicked on [.

Then I started up [System Cleaner again, but I still could not change the width of the columns.

Only when I restarted jv16PowerTools and started up [ ~~I was able to resize the columns!~~

~~Is this a design flaw or is this by design? 8)~~

redseujac

Olyfant22 wrote

...

Only when I restarted jv16PowerTools and started up [ I was able to resize the columns!

...

After changing some settings one has to restart the program to let the changes become effective, I guess. Maybe it's not necessary for All of them though. I have not tested that. Maybe it would be handsome to let the program display a message about restarting the program if that is necessary.

olyfant22

redseujac wrote:

Maybe it would be handsome to let the program display a message about restarting the program if that is necessary.

Thanks, I agree!

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