XYplorer Beta Club

Sorry, but I did not make it clear: I'm using 64bit BC and XY together without problems. 64bit BC installs both 32bit and 64bit context menus.

v3 as well? Version upgrades cost money and he said that he uses it since years so it doesn't
necessarily mean that he is on a current one...

I was using V3 a couple of years ago and I think to remember that I had a similar problem with that when I started to use it on 64bit Windows. But I believe that they fixed it. That's why I asked which version of BC he uses, but he never answered that.

There is also mentioned on the BC page, that a portable install of BC doesn't have the context menu.

It should be possible to recreate the 32bit context menu on a non-portable installation by manually triggering it through registering the shell extension from the BC installation directory. He would have to start a command prompt in the BC program folder and enter: A similar procedure applies when you want to re-register the 64bit context menu: BTW: This should work with most 64bit programs as long as they install both context menu DLLs, although the DLL names will be different. It might require a restart of XY after the registration but I'm not sure about that.

Hi Highend,

Thanks for your reasonable & patient responses. Don is lucky to have you here.

And everything you patiently explained is certainly true. And if I hadn't had so much going on and been so frustrated I would have likely thought this out and gone looking in the %appdata% folder. I'm not a newbie and i've done 100's of installs of every description. Under less stress I could have handled this better.

But you & Don are overlooking and in denial of an obvious problem here. Let's start at the homepage where most people land. Scroll to the bottom of the page to the big DOWNLOAD button. See any warning that there are different types of downloads. Nope - none. So why, at that point would I bother going to the DOWNLOADS page even if I noticed that there was one? I've already found THE place to download.

So I download the "full" file and skim the Readme. (please do the same so you can see the problem) All it talks about is how PORTABLE XY is:

XYplorer is portable. It doesn't require any "installation" in the
proper sense, and using it does not change your system or registry.

Note: No matter which package you use, Install or No-Install, running
XYplorer does not change your system or registry at any time.

These statements are simply not true. The installation writes to 2 different keys in the reg, it writes to the Start Menu and it puts it's config files in Users\%appdata%. The is a normal software INSTALLATION which differs from any other install only in size. The XYPlorer folder is not longer self-contained & portable - it's config files are over in %appdata% which is part of the SYSTEM not XY. When the config is updated it writes to the config files over in %appdata% which, in my book, changes the system. This ain't portable in any sense of the word.

But supposing that you already have a longstanding true portable install of XY that you want to update and, not seeing any options at the DOWNLOAD button you download the installer (which is falsely described as portable too) and you skim through the Readme and are reassured that it's still portable aren't you going to be a bit irked when you install this "portable" software that isn't and it trashes your configuration?

The following quote from the Readme:

Choose one of the following packages:
(1) Installer Package
(2) No-Install Package

becomes a "throwaway" because there no content provided. What "No-install package"? There's none in the zip file nor is there any direction to go to XYPlorer.com/downloads. So the comment is ignored as nonsensical.

XYPlorer suffers from the same problem that 95% of other small software projects suffer from. It's the brainchild of one genius who's devoted the better part of his life to building it and knows it intimately. But that cuts both ways. How it works and how to use it are blindingly obvious to him so he's incapable of seeing the program through newbie eyes. He can't see where the huge config file is unintuitive and confusing. He can't see that having a single Download button with no options is a very bad idea. He can't see past his obsession with having XY be portable to see that he's lying to his customers when he calls a a true full installer "portable".

So you can join him if you like in labeling this incident "user error". That's a comforting position to take. But it's not an accurate analysis nor is it one that's likely to increase sales or customer satisfaction.

Thanks again, Statler, for your help.

I'm running BC 4.16 (x64) and found that getting the context menu entries working is a 2-step process. During the install there's a box you check to ok context menu entries. But this, in itself, doesn't write the necessary entries to the reg. You have to open up the options and fine tune your context menu choices before it actually gets installed. This got overlooked during the OS reinstall. It's working fine now. BC has both x86 and x64 dll's so the "bittage" of the OS (and XY) is not an issue.