You can download the new version from here: https://jv16powertools.com/downloads/jv16pt_setup.exe
Since the last version (build 675), our in-house testing team has done a total of 6685 cycles of testing of the product. One testing cycle means a testing of a major product feature, such as running the System Cleaner or uninstalling one software with the Software Uninstaller. The testing team has spent a total of 202 hours in testing. This does not mean simply work time, this means actual testing time, logged by jv16 PowerTools itself in our various testing environments.
This updated release focuses again on two major factors: Performance and accuracy.
First, we received feedback that the program is taking quite a long time to start. According to the data we have collected from our own testing systems, the build 675 takes on average 11 seconds to start. That is indeed a long time to wait for the app just to fully open! In addition, the Initial Setup takes on average 52 seconds. That is not too bad, but there is always room for improvement. So, we spent a lot of time in improving the performance and now, with the new build 697, the average starting time of the application is down to only 3 seconds and the average Initial Setup run time is down to 45 seconds!
Secondly, we spent a lot of time in improving the actual cleaning performance and accuracy of the System Cleaner and Software Uninstaller. I have great test results to share with you about this: The improved System Cleaner now finds 69% more errors compared to the last official build. Again, this is in our test environments. What is also great is that it does this faster than before: Last version takes on average 64 seconds to perform the System Cleaner scan, the new version takes only 49 seconds. More results but faster!
We also did a lot of work with the Software Uninstaller and it now finds 15% more data of installed software and left-overs. These improvements were major and unfortunately they cause the new version to work slightly slower than before. The last version's Software Uninstaller takes about 30 seconds to do the scan while the new version takes on average 41 seconds. While our long term goal is to push the average scan time to under 20 seconds, we believe the improvements in accuracy are worth the decrease of speed at this time. Also, the improvements to the software uninstallation engine still have a lot of room for speed improvements. For this build, we mainly focused on accuracy for the Software Uninstaller.
Lastly, the overall improvements we made to the performance of the application also manifest in the user interface smoothness metric we measure: The previous version had an average user interface responsive delay of 2175 msec while in the new version it is down to 1474 msec. This number represents the average slowest times the program's user interface took to respond in our testing, and therefore the lower the delay the smoother and flicker-free the user interface will feel.
And one more thing - I saved perhaps the best thing for last: Our custom developed Automated Quality Control System (AQC) is giving this build a massively improved 657% increase in the overall quality. This number is calculated from the debug log data collected by our testing team. The automated system analyzes these huge archives of log files and searches for cases of internal error states, warning messages, larger than expected analysis delays, memory usage, application error messages, incorrect detection of data, user interface flickering and so on and so fort. Of course, this is a number calculated by an automated system and must naturally be taken with a grain of salt, but that being said, I think it is clearly showing that we are making major improvements also in quality. And I am sure you will notice these improvements after updating!
For the next major update, we are going to add two new tools based on your feedback! So, let me know what you think of this version. And as always: If you don't like this program or if there is anything I can do to make it better, please tell me - if you think it is great, there is no need to tell me, please tell that to your friends and everyone else! Thank you!
How to update:
If you are using any recent jv16 PowerTools (5.0.0.x) - simply install the new version over the old version. No uninstallation is required or recommended.
If you are using an older version, please uninstall it before installing the new version, or install the new version to another directory. As you might know, jv16 PowerTools also support automatic updates so you should get the update also automatically. However, there is a designed delay in this process (in order to avoid every single installed version of the program downloading the same file from our servers the same time), so if you wish to update to the new version right now, simply download the file from the link above and install it.
Change Log since Build 675 (the previous official version)
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Change Log since Build 675
Fixes:
1) Bug fix: Uninstalling software can cause the Windows user interface (explorer.exe) to be terminated. This is by design. However, after the uninstallation, it should be restarted again. Bug mainly affects Windows 8.
2) Bug fix: If you use the Results Search feature within Find All, the blue category bars with the number of found items are not updated to reflect what is currently on screen. Instead, the number of items in each category remains the same as if no Results Search is not used at all. This only affects the number of results reported, the actual searching of results is working correctly.
3) Bug fix: You cannot use Ctrl + A to select all the text in the Software Uninstaller > Uninstall Software screen.
4) Bug fix: In some systems, the automatic detection of Whitelisted Domains to be listed in Settings > System Cleaner does not work, and no domains are listed.
5) Bug fix: Software Uninstaller can incorrectly list some software twice, with and without a version number in the program's name.
6) Bug fix: Find All's group captions are not correctly capitalized. For example, file paths can be incorrectly starting with a non capital drive letter.
7) Bug fix: The default sort of Software Uninstaller is incorrect.
8) Bug fix: System Cleaner can incorrectly say some Windows application shortcuts, such as the Snipping Tool, are broken and not working, even if they are working. This bug is rare, we were not able to even reproduce it but nevertheless, it is now fixed.
9) Bug fix: Restoring a backup with the Backup tool can cause Windows RegEdit.exe error message to show up.
10) Bug fix: The bottom status bar texts in the main window are not always correctly positioned (not centered).
11) Bug fix: Some parts of the user interface cannot be translated because the texts are missing from the translation file (English.lng)
12) Bug fix: Applying filters in System Cleaner, Software Uninstaller or Find All result screens does not hide the filter panel while the screen updates.
13) Bug fix: System Cleaner's progress screen can display a number of errors founds to be larger than actually listed in the result screen. This is a cosmetic bug, caused by the scan progress screen counting all found items, and the final result listing containing only items without any duplicate data and without results matching the user defined ignore lists.
14) Bug fix: Find All's result list processing will become very slow with a lot of data (10000+ rows) and the counts, such as the number of items on screen, can be inaccurate.
15) Bug fix: If you use the Settings window to hide Find All from the home screen, and then re-enable it again, the Find All box is incorrectly positioned in the home screen.
16) Bug fix: Uninstalling software with the Software Uninstaller can get stuck to long periods of time (30 minutes+) when uninstalling certain software. This only happens in some cases, and with some software.
17) Bug fix: System Cleaner's result screen always contains a long English text, even if you are using the program in another language.
18) Bug fix: The scan progress screen can display a cosmetic mistake by showing hkey_local_machine\somekey\ - (full key)\. The trailing \ character is incorrect here.
19) Bug fix: Even if you list the installation directory of software in the Settings > Ignore List, under some rare cases, the Software Uninstaller can still list the software. This does not occur if you also list the software's name in the Ignore List.
Improvements:
1) The program now starts a lot faster. On average, the previous build took 11 seconds to fully start, this version takes on average only 4 seconds.
2) Greatly improved the speed of uninstalling software with the Software Uninstaller.
3) Greatly improved the performance of Results Search and the result list filtering features when dealing with lists with a lot of data.
4) Improved the accuracy of the Software Uninstaller. It again finds more data to remove when you use it to uninstall software.
5) Improved Software Uninstaller's ability to delete locked and otherwise write protected data.
6) Improved the progress reporting of uninstalling software.
7) Improved System Cleaner's ability to find more leftovers from old software.
8) Improved System Cleaner's detection of which registry data is relating to which installed software or left-over software. This will make the analysis of the results list a lot easier when you can see what is relating to which software.
9) Improved the speed of System Cleaner scan.
10) It's not meaningful to display the number of issues found during the System Cleaner scan because the number is not final before the final post processing phase, which takes two seconds just before the scan completes. The previous versions showed the number of possibly found issues, but this is not accurate and could lead to confusion with users. Therefore, this is no longer shown.
11) Improved the user interface after you click the Uninstall button in the Software Uninstaller. Before, you saw a progress animation. Now you see an actual progress bar.
12) Starting to type in the home screen now automatically moves to focus to Find All, allowing you to start a Find All search without first having to click its search box to become active.
13) Ctrl + A in the home screen will now select everything in the Find All's search box.
14) The main program window now starts with less visual flickering and elements moving around immediately after the window becomes visible.
15) The program will now display a message on its main window if a new version is available for download. Before, user would have to use the Help > Check For Updates to see this information.
16) Improved the accuracy of the progress reporting, especially when cleaning the system with System Cleaner and uninstalling software with Software Uninstaller.
16) The installation file of the program is now better in detecting and closing any instance of jv16 PowerTools, to ensure a smoother update process.
Known Issues
These are the currently known bugs and issues that we are aware of and are working to fix in the near future.
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Known Issues:
1) The program does not scale properly when using 4K screen or other large resolutions. This is mostly a cosmetic issue, the program works just fine, but many user interface elements are incorrectly sized.
2) The System Cleaner and Software Uninstaller Right-Click menus do not yet have the Add To Ignore List feature.
3) The progress indication is not perfectly smooth. For example, in Find All or in the Initial Setup, the progress indicator can stop for long periods of time, especially on some systems. This is a cosmetic issue and simply waiting for a moment should solve the issue.
4) If certain files are removed (or corrupted) within jv16 PowerTools installation folder, the program can enter a state where it always runs the Initial Setup when started. This is a rare issue and can be fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling jv16 PowerTools, or by manually clearing the "Cache" and "Debug" folders.
Do notice that the items being analyzed kept showing in the scan progress screen during the long time that the progress circle remained at 11%, but they are passing much slower over the screen. Do notice also that during Scanning for software Task Manager reports Very High Power Usage and Memory usage: 283,5 MB.
