Avaquest’s PowerDesk crippled unless it can call home?

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Hi all,

Powerdesk has been one of my favorite file managers for years. When I switched to Win 7 Ult about a year ago I purchased a new version of PD. Unbeknown to me at time of purchase, this version 9.0.1.10 Pro insists on calling home in order to remain uncrippled!

When I dug out my original info on this purchase, there was no mention anywhere, either in emails received from Avanquest or on their websites that I visited prior to purchase, that PD must be permanently connected to the internet in order to work. Unlike previous versions of PD, I was unable to take my PC to regions that did not have internet access.

This did not become an issue until recently when I requested a way of not crippling PD when travelling and working in an internet-free zone. The support person I spoke with via email told me this was not possible.

When I enquired further and asked him to point me to anywhere on Avanquest’s websites that stated clearly that PD would be crippled unless connected, he became evasive and did not give me a straight answer, but did point me to this webpage.

Here is the content of our emails:

Hi -,

Thank you for contacting VCOM Technical Support.
Sure if you go to the link below you will see it stated at the bottom of the page

http://www.vcom.com/power-desk-pro-system-requirements

If you have any further questions, please write back to us.

Thank you,
Michael
VCOM Technical Support

Office hours are:
5:00AM to 8:00PM Pacific Time

09/03/2015 20:40 – noozilandr wrote:
Hi Michael,

Can you please tell me where specifically and clearly VCOM or Avanquest state, at time of purchase and before, that the Powerdesk version I purchased is/will be crippled when not permanently connected to the internet?

Thank you,

John S

I think the particular text he refers to is this: Internet connection for product and subscription updates.

I feel this is hardly a professional explanation, and certainly not one that was explicit and clear to me at time of purchase. In the time I’ve used PD I have not received a single product update.

The other fact I don’t know is what information is being sent to Avanquest from my PC.

I’m left with a bad taste and wonder where I can go to take this sloppiness to the next step.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

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Are you quite sure about this? I use PowerDesk, version 9.0.1.10, as you use, and I value it as a file manager, just as you do.

Curious about the “phone home” feature that you described, I blocked C:Program Files (x86)AvanquestPowerDeskPDExploNXP.exe from reaching the internet. I had no problem in making PowerDesk work, could not find any feature that would not work. Yes, it told me that it could not reach the update server, but that was no surprise.

I installed from a file named , which, as far as I can see, I downloaded direct from Avanquest when I purchased it in Mar-13. I think that it did “phone home” when I installed it and entered my licence code, but I don’t have a real problem with that.

Purely out of curiosity, I’m going to leave this block in place to see whether it reproduces the behaviour that you describe. I’ll post in this thread if it does want to “call home” at some future time.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Hi John,
With me it took some 10 to 15 mins after I blocked it in my firewall until PD started to protest. I’ll try it again in the morning. I tried to locate another post on the net where they had the same problem, but so far no luck.

John

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I also have PowerDesk Pro 9.0.1.10 on a Win7Ult computer and don’t see any issues but once in awhile it will check for an update.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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I also have PowerDesk Pro 9.0.1.10 on a Win7Ult computer and don’t see any issues but once in awhile it will check for an update.

I have been using PD for many years and ran into the same problem and got nowhere with them. However; since I had to “land on Iwo Jima to take Mt. Sirabachi” [aka to get work done], I found an acceptable clone: Cubic Explorer. Along with “Folder Marker & File Marker”, I created a very powerful File Mgr system that quickly allows me to find/use nearly 1,000,000 files in approx 3,000+ folders on 4 TB hd space. And it’s all FREE. Plus it comes in a portable version. Now that’s powerful innovation.

See screen shots below for more info.

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I also used Powerdesk for quite a number of years, but support under VCOM is pretty much useless. So, based on several interactions with VCOM “non-support”. I got rid of it. I now use FreeCommanderXE and find it just as good or maybe better than PD. The only thing that I don’t like is when opening FreeCommanderXE (I have a server with network shares), it takes quite a long time to open the program (timing out on network share connections, it seems).

So, before closing FreeCommanderXE, I just set both windows back to C: (assuming I remember). The same happens if I leave one of the Windows “set” to an external “drive” such as an SD or CF card. Not a huge deal, but a bit annoying. If I later turn the server on (it sleeps a lot), just clicking on one of the network connections re-establishes that connection. There is a user changeable toolbar right down the middle of the two screens that allow often used functions (new folder etc) easily visible.

So, it takes a little setup but one would expect that with a fully featured file manager.

I might try Cubic to see what it is like.

I have been using PD for many years and ran into the same problem and got nowhere with them. However; since I had to “land on Iwo Jima to take Mt. Sirabachi” [aka to get work done], I found an acceptable clone: Cubic Explorer. Along with “Folder Marker & File Marker”, I created a very powerful File Mgr system that quickly allows me to find/use nearly 1,000,000 files in approx 3,000+ folders on 4 TB hd space. And it’s all FREE. Plus it comes in a portable version. Now that’s powerful innovation.

See screen shots below for more info.

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I also used Powerdesk for quite a number of years, but support under VCOM is pretty much useless. So, based on several interactions with VCOM “non-support”. I got rid of it. I now use FreeCommanderXE and find it just as good or maybe better than PD. The only thing that I don’t like is when opening FreeCommanderXE (I have a server with network shares), it takes quite a long time to open the program (timing out on network share connections, it seems).

So, before closing FreeCommanderXE, I just set both windows back to C: (assuming I remember). The same happens if I leave one of the Windows “set” to an external “drive” such as an SD or CF card. Not a huge deal, but a bit annoying. If I later turn the server on (it sleeps a lot), just clicking on one of the network connections re-establishes that connection. There is a user changeable toolbar right down the middle of the two screens that allow often used functions (new folder etc) easily visible.

So, it takes a little setup but one would expect that with a fully featured file manager.

I might try Cubic to see what it is like.

kevmeist,

Thanks for the quick response & the lead on FreeCommanderXE. Cant wait to check it out & let you know.

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OMFG,

I notified Avanquest’s support team and they were completely useless, giving me answers you’d get if you were trying to activate a bootleg copy (which it was not).

Avanquest is like that – so is Nuance.

Zig

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Powerdesk support used to be pretty good (I used it for quite a few years). After several companies bought out the original company (at least I think it was the original when I first started using it), support went down the hill. With VCOM, I had earlier emails showing that I had 3 licenses for PD…they said we have no records of that and wanted me to buy it again. Totally useless Tech Support IMHO (or IMO). It’s as if they wanted to tick off licensed users and stop supporting the product. I did my best to oblige them.

K

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I use Directory Opus as file manager.
http://www.gpsoft.com.au/

It costs a penny but there’s a 60-day trial if you want to road-test it to death. It’s road-rage free.
Trust me, after 60 days (or just 1), you’ll be begging them to take your money.
It’s configurable to the nth degree.

Support?
They have their own forum (resource centre) and their 3 developers/experts come online every day to answer questions and provide solutions to your own tweaks.
http://resource.dopus.com/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=33ffe7e3c907f9247ed1eafc8ac074e6
Just browse through that forum to see how users can modify the defaults and add-on new functionality.

🙂

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So, I just tried Cubic Explorer and uninstalled it again (which you have to do by running uninstall.exe from the program folder as it was not in “programs and features” that I could see).

The main reason (I did not exhaustively test Cubic) that I uninstalled it is that FreeCommanderXE offers a dual window approach (either left to right or top to bottom) that allows you to visually see drag and drop file moves/copies. I did not see a view like that in Cubic. This feature alone would recommend FreeCommanderXE to me.

K

kevmeist,

Thanks for the quick response & the lead on FreeCommanderXE. Cant wait to check it out & let you know.

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So, I just tried Cubic Explorer and uninstalled it again (which you have to do by running uninstall.exe from the program folder as it was not in “programs and features” that I could see).

The main reason (I did not exhaustively test Cubic) that I uninstalled it is that FreeCommanderXE offers a dual window approach (either left to right or top to bottom) that allows you to visually see drag and drop file moves/copies. I did not see a view like that in Cubic. This feature alone would recommend FreeCommanderXE to me.

K

K,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I’ve a lot on my plate. I did install FreeCommanderEX and have used it a little bit, and have some questions. It will take me some time to to put it all together. Then I’ll get back.

I have the Portable version of CE. I noticed the lack of dual winow option, but I did’t use it much with PD. I generally remove all the functions I don’t need from the Menu bars, and drag the ones I need/use from the “options list”.

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Ah, there’s the rub…….I use the dual window ALL THE TIME when moving/copying files around. I use a CF or SD card in the left window and my server shares in the right window. Make drag n drop a “visual” thing (especially if you meant to copy but moved or vice versa). My wife (for some inexplicable reason) created her own “playlists” for MP3s by copying multiple copies of various MP3s into multiple folders. What a mess to sort out, but there are various free duplicate file finders out there on the web also.

When you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. Take your time.

K

K,

I have the Portable version of CE. I noticed the lack of dual winow option, but I did’t use it much with PD. I generally remove all the functions I don’t need from the Menu bars, and drag the ones I need/use from the “options list”.

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Ah, there’s the rub…….I use the dual window ALL THE TIME when moving/copying files around. I use a CF or SD card in the left window and my server shares in the right window. Make drag n drop a “visual” thing (especially if you meant to copy but moved or vice versa). My wife (for some inexplicable reason) created her own “playlists” for MP3s by copying multiple copies of various MP3s into multiple folders. What a mess to sort out, but there are various free duplicate file finders out there on the web also.

When you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. Take your time.

K

K,

I have avoided “drag n drop” ever since one of my buddie’s “dragged n dropped” his C drive accidently in to… I’ll let you figure out where???

I have over 6000 mp3’s in about 180 labled by genre & artist folders “below”. I put a bunch of venues on a tiny 8gb flash dr so when I travel to NJ to see the Grandkids, I have totally uninterrupted music for 12+hr.

I’ve been looking further into FreeCommanderXE and it looks very sophisticated. Surely there is a manual somewhere that explains plethora of options with pix & explanations. I built a shortwave radio years ago and FC looks like it has as many parts “functions”. Altho I’m an experienced PC user, a lot of the terminology & its organization seems arcane to me as I’m not a techie.

I may have a file dupe finder, If so I’ll let you know.

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Well, not much can recover from a careless user . Where are the “rubber band” commands when you need them?

I use iTunes to organize by genre (or other sort orders). It’s free…maybe you should look at it?

This URL (http://www.freecommander.com/fchelpxe/en/FreeCommander.html) is where I found the color information. You can, I imagine, manipulate the TOC structure for the manual to find other stuff.

Again, many file dupe finders on the web…many of them free. I have one called “Duplicate File Finder” from Ashisoft here and another one called Similarity from GAR Software.

Good luck,

K

K,

I have avoided “drag n drop” ever since one of my buddie’s “dragged n dropped” his C drive accidently in to… I’ll let you figure out where???

I have over 6000 mp3’s in about 180 labled by genre & artist folders “below”. I put a bunch of venues on a tiny 8gb flash dr so when I travel to NJ to see the Grandkids, I have totally uninterrupted music for 12+hr.

I’ve been looking further into FreeCommanderXE and it looks very sophisticated. Surely there is a manual somewhere that explains plethora of options with pix & explanations. I built a shortwave radio years ago and FC looks like it has as many parts “functions”. Altho I’m an experienced PC user, a lot of the terminology & its organization seems arcane to me as I’m not a techie.

I may have a file dupe finder, If so I’ll let you know.

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Ah, there’s the rub…….I use the dual window ALL THE TIME when moving/copying files around. I use a CF or SD card in the left window and my server shares in the right window. Make drag n drop a “visual” thing (especially if you meant to copy but moved or vice versa). My wife (for some inexplicable reason) created her own “playlists” for MP3s by copying multiple copies of various MP3s into multiple folders. What a mess to sort out, but there are various free duplicate file finders out there on the web also.

When you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. Take your time.

K

K,

Hopefully this email will bring closure to my orig PD post. My file mgr is probably the most important piece of SW that use. I use 75-80% it for MANAGING information in the “broadest sense”. PD worked fine until they came up with this call home nonsense. I found Cubic by accident, tried it, it worked, stayed with it. For what I use it for it actually works better than PD and it’s “portable”.

Then when I go to someone’s PC I can use right from a flash drive. I my world that’s power. It’s almost like having a Navy Seal as your handler when you’re in E. LA, etc.

Below are screen shots I made from CUBIC as I configured it and use it. If I could configure FLEX close to this, I’d give it a real shot as I can see it’s a thorough program. However; I don’t need a $3-4000 sniper rifle and 2 wks at Thunder Ranch [$3,000?] to go hunting deer. A 30-30 will be fine.

If you or anyone on this forum can point me where I can get some useful info about the commands & how they operate, I’d appreciate it.

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FLEX? Were you referring to FreeCommanderXE?

If so and from what I see of your screenshots…FreeCommanderXE can do all of those things although obviously will not be in quite the same way. It would be much easier to reply to specific questions as opposed to me trying to interpret which parts of your screenshots you are looking at.

K

K,

If you or anyone on this forum can point me where I can get some useful info about the commands & how they operate, I’d appreciate it.

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FLEX? Were you referring to FreeCommanderXE?

If so and from what I see of your screenshots…FreeCommanderXE can do all of those things although obviously will not be in quite the same way. It would be much easier to reply to specific questions as opposed to me trying to interpret which parts of your screenshots you are looking at.

K

K,

Thanks vey much for your help on this PD-FCEX-CUBIC discussion. I’ll keep FCEX and Cubic and noodle around with FCEX as time permits. I’m sure I’ll get it to work the way I need it to, though I hope my birth certificate doesn’t expire as I’m 75.

You guys have been very helpful.

cheers

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I’m only 10 years behind you…but spent my entire career writing software (44 years of software development with 3 years of mainframe operations before that)…so don’t have to think too hard about how some of this stuff works.

Take care,

K

K,

Thanks vey much for your help on this PD-FCEX-CUBIC discussion. I’ll keep FCEX and Cubic and noodle around with FCEX as time permits. I’m sure I’ll get it to work the way I need it to, though I hope my birth certificate doesn’t expire as I’m 75.

You guys have been very helpful.

cheers

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The only thing that I don’t like is when opening FreeCommanderXE (I have a server with network shares), it takes quite a long time to open the program (timing out on network share connections, it seems).

So, before closing FreeCommanderXE, I just set both windows back to C: (assuming I remember).

If you go to the FreeCommanderXE settings page (F12) and select “Start Program” and select the “Start/TEMP Folder” Tab you can specify which folders should be opened in each panel of the display. This should avoid accessing your network shares each time you open the program. You won’t have to remember to reset before closing.

Also, on the FreeCommanderXE download page there is a Help File (CHM format) that can be downloaded and put into the install directory to get all the info on the program and settings.

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JC…thanks for the Settings tip, seems to work well.

I did DL and copy the .chm file to the install folder for FC, but help still doesn’t seem to show any data.

I uploaded a screenshot of the install folder with the .chm file in it. Is this the place that you were telling me?

EDIT
OK, forget the question. I looked at the file in the install folder and saw that it was 1.5Mb but the same file in the download folder was 6.94Mb. So, I deleted the 1.5 Mb and copied it again. Seems to work now. Original file was copied using drag n drop (in FC). Replacement copy was done with Ctrl/C and Ctrl/V.

K

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For what it’s worth I used to run PowerDesk. I had to rebuild my system (Windows/XP at the time) as many of us have had to do over the years and when I tried to reinstall/re-activate PowerDesk it failed with a “too many activations” error. OK, so maybe I should have cleanly uninstalled it first. In any case, I notified Avanquest’s support team and they were completely useless, giving me answers you’d get if you were trying to activate a bootleg copy (which it was not). I gave up and just uninstalled their software and moved on.

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$49 is a bit more than a penny. 🙂

cheers, Paul

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Especially when there are other products like FreeCommanderXE that are free.

K

$49 is a bit more than a penny. 🙂

cheers, Paul

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$49 is a bit more than a penny. 🙂
cheers, Paul

It depends how rare the penny is. Some are valued at much more than $49.
😉
Anyway, it depends on the functionality you need. I’m having a look at your freebie and it’s very good in a lot of ways. No question about that.
But, in my situation, I need… every day… to blanket rename oodles of files ; remove underscores/periods/pluses and replace them with spaces (and vice-versa). Or replace “-” with “_” (or whatever). 153 files at once. Or 955.
Does this freebie allow you to select a bunch of files and then click a user-created (pre-defined) button to replace all occurrences of one special character (eg. _) with another (eg. +), if it occurs anywhere in the filenames?
Just select-and-click, without needing to go into the rename dialog and fill out fields?
If it does, that would turn me on.

Not trying to be pedantic here… that’s an essential use for me (that Directory Opus allows).

Cheers.
🙂

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Not sure if it does mass renaming of files (jpgs etc, I assume you are doing?) but there are all sorts of freebies on the web that do that functionality. I’ve not tried that with FreeCommander. But, see more below………

EDIT…I have just attached a screen shot of the multi-rename feature in FC. You can add a variety of “quick-links” to FC features in a toolbar between the two screen views – makes for a quick selection of the feature.

EDIT2…I also just added a screenshot of the toolbar between the two windows.

EDIT3…I have just added another screenshot showing FC color options for folders. On first glance, doesn’t look quite like right clicking on a folder (like PD used) and I have NOT played with this yet…but it does have some flexibility.

So, yes it does do multi-rename…whether to your needs…I’m sure you can determine…hopefully with just the screenshots attached to this post.

Hope these help.

K

It depends how rare the penny is. Some are valued at much more than $49.

But, in my situation, I need… every day… to blanket rename oodles of files ; remove underscores/periods/pluses and replace them with spaces (and vice-versa). Or replace “-” with “_” (or whatever). 153 files at once. Or 955.
Does this freebie allow you to select a bunch of files and then click a user-created (pre-defined) button to replace all occurrences of one special character (eg. _) with another (eg. +), if it occurs anywhere in the filenames?
Just select-and-click, without needing to go into the rename dialog and fill out fields?
If it does, that would turn me on.

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nzo – I checked my log today, and PowerDesk has not tried once to “phone home” since I first posted here, in answer to your first post, and started monitoring the behaviour of PowerDesk, on 17 March, date of our first exchange of mails.

Others posting in this thread remind me about Avanquest’s failing standards of customer service, across the range. I haven’t had to call upon them, but have no great confidence.

Another Windows Explorer replacement is xplorer2, by Zabkat, free if you don’t want to have technical support.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Have a look at Total Commander (was “Windows Commander” until M$ objected).

Not free but I bought a licence in 1999 and have been using it ever since w/o any problems – it just works.
39865-TC

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Ahhh, ok.
Just like I thought. You get what you pay for.
(No free-style colour-coding of files/folders either ; just globally by filetype…).
Nevertheless, it’s a good file manager (maybe Just Manager tops it?) ; would suit most people, for sure (but not me).

Cheers (my last beer … I have to drive home)
😉

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Well, I owe all of you an apology. In terms of a timeline, I recently reinstalled Win 7 Ultimate 32bit from scratch (since I first experienced those Powerdesk problems) to solve an unrelated broadband disconnect problem. Then I picked up where I left off with Powerdesk and emailed Avanquest with my concerns. Like a bad scientist I did not first double-check to see if my Powerdesk issues were still present.

I decided to firewall almost all the contents of the Powerdesk folder and to my embarassment I could not reproduce the previous Powerdesk crashing fault. In spite of all I could throw at it, Powerdesk has worked flawlessly.

So…I’m sorry folks! Thank you to all who jumped in with help and info.

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Well, I owe all of you an apology. In terms of a timeline, I recently reinstalled Win 7 Ultimate 32bit from scratch (since I first experienced those Powerdesk problems) to solve an unrelated broadband disconnect problem. Then I picked up where I left off with Powerdesk and emailed Avanquest with my concerns. Like a bad scientist I did not first double-check to see if my Powerdesk issues were still present.

I decided to firewall almost all the contents of the Powerdesk folder and to my embarassment I could not reproduce the previous Powerdesk crashing fault. In spite of all I could throw at it, Powerdesk has worked flawlessly.

So…I’m sorry folks! Thank you to all who jumped in with help and info.

nzo,

I have W7 Pro 32 bit. No aplogies necessary as I’ve experienced the inability to re-install my copy of PD for yrs. After I emailed them jpgs of the disk, they did something on their end to allow install. You mentioned “firewall most” of the contents of the PD folder. Would you explain exacty what contents you “firewalled” and how you did it as I’m not familiar with the process.

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I don’t need a $3-4000 sniper rifle and 2 wks at Thunder Ranch [$3,000?] to go hunting deer. A 30-30 will be fine

You’re right. I sold 5 rifles a year ago and kept a .30-30 and a .22, will never go hungry.

So far PowerDesk is working fine on my Win7 64-bit but am always on the lookout for other such programs. Had one back in Win95 called TurboBrowser that came on a floppy disk but it has gotten rather expensive although I’m reconsidering it if they make it available for Win10 but since they list Win8 it may work.
http://www.filestream.com/turbobrowser/

Edit: After looking at that site I see TurboBrowser is not listed, the purchase link diverts to their Image Broadway program.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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