Silent Update Checks Are Always A Bad Idea

[Andrew]

First off, I want to say how much I like this program.

That said, I would like to point out that having the program automatically attempt to check for updates on each run, without asking the user if it's OK or giving them the option to cancel/disable it is, in my book, a Bad Thing. I realize that there's an option to turn this off in the installer, but I cannot find any option to change this once the program is installed, and there is no option at all with the portable edition.

Well, that's the best gripe I could come up with, keep up the good work!

[Thomas]

Device Doctor is designed to be as simple as possible. There are no options, it just does the job. Yet what you mention is one of those more questionable parts - while there is an option during installation, as you noted already, it's not possible to turn it off later on easily.
(It shall be possible to do new installation over the old one, and disable that option in the installation dialogue.)

I also tried to search registry but couldn't find any obvious setting - I still think it might be possible to turn it off somewhere in the registry, perhaps in the installer part, maybe developers will jump in with a suggestion unless I'm wrong about it (also they read the forum posts, so rest assured they read this and hopefully they will also come up with some idea how to make that setting more accessible).

Thank you for the feedback!

[Device Doctor]

Thanks for the feedback Andrew! At the moment I'd echo Thomas's suggestion of just reinstalling with that option disabled.

Collin

[Andrew]

Thanks for the replies!

I did a little digging myself and found the answer. There is a file called preferences.dat which is installed in the DeviceDoctorSoftware\DeviceDoctor sub directory the user's %appdata% path (in Windows XP that's usually C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\.)

This file has only one entry in it called automatic_updates which is set to True if auto-updates were selected. The file is absent otherwise. Also absent is a sub-directory called updates, which presumably would hold any updates which are downloaded.

It seems (though I've not tested this just tested and it worked!) that to enable auto updates, simply create the file and directory I have described and to disable them, delete the file and directory.

[Thomas]

Good find, I think more advanced users might appreciate this way of changing the setting better than reinstall.

[GuidoZ]

Great find for the installed version, but what about the portable one? Is anything planned, say an INI file with basic settings?

Thanks for the great program. I work on customer systems a lot and this should come in handy.

--
Peace. ~G

[Thomas]

(12-30-2009 06:58 PM)GuidoZ Wrote:  What about the portable one? Is anything planned, say an INI file with basic settings?

Unless developers will chip in, I'm not sure about exact plans in that respect at the moment I'm sorry.
It would of course only make a perfect sense to have a config file for portable version.