2 small utilities for Spoon Studio

I too can't see any differences
Anyway ExeBuilder seems to work fine with this version.

 

Yes, I searched but seems that is not so easy to implement this + the modification of these informations is not "encouraged" because they are a part of the copyright for the original exe file. On any forum I tried to discuss this they were very "reticent" even after I explained the purpose of my program.

By the way, since I implemented the feature to copy these informations, the false positive detections from antiviruses has multiplied by 2..3 times, especially for Microsoft Office exe files. It seems that there are lot of viruses that "mimic" these informations so the users will think that they are legitimate exe files.
This is happening especially with "low quality" antiviruses which have not so good heuristic detection.
One way to reduce this is to "digitally sign" the exe files created by ExeBuilder.
Other way is to constantly report those files as false positives to antiviruses support but unfortunately doesn't always work. Not all the antiviruses support are "cooperative" or they change their heuristic detection only after many weeks.

 

I made one zip file from some exe files (31) from a few Microsoft Office virtualizations. When I scanned it at VirusTotal, more then 20 antiviruses (out of 43) showed "infected". From those names you can see clearly that the detection was made by "generic/heuristic" method not by the "signature" of the virus.
I informed the antiviruses supports and now, after almost a month, there are only 6 out of 43.
I never used MSE but also I've never heard that it shows false positives so often.
Anyway there are many others who use those "low cost" antiviruses that I was talking about...
I use Eset Nod32; one of the reasons is that it has a low rate of false positives

Thank you for the links.
But there are several problems:
1. The one with openssl seems to work only on Linux, not Windows.
2. You still need to buy a certificate, the one that openssl generates is not enough to authenticate a exe file for an antivirus. It's like you sign yourself a document that shows that you're trustworthy If this would of worked, many trojans would of had such certificates
And in my country these certificates costs much in relation to an average income.
4. These methods are used to digitally sign an exe file MANUALLY, you can't use them to automatically digitally sign the exe files generated by ExeBuilder.
5. Maybe some users will decide to modify these exe files (add/remove icons for example). But if you change only one byte, the certificate will no longer be valid.

 

This problem with antiviruses is generated in fact by the way antiviruses "treat" unknown exe files. If an exe file seems to be a virus, it must be one. It doesn't matter that it clearly (for a human being) does nothing wrong when you look at its code, to a limited program it could be a virus.
Those "low cost" antiviruses obviously don't have good code for heuristic detection.
The sad part is that most of the people who use those antiviruses don't know it and believe that they are really infected.

On the other hand, after many searches and discussions on other forums, I don't think that the digitally signing can be included 100% into a program nor it is advisable to do it.
Another way to solve this problem: to add the digital signature after the files were generated.
If you virtualize a program and you want it distributed somehow to others you can digitally sign them with your signature.

 

You're welcome

 

Any virtualized application has one or two special folders used for two things:
1. to register changes made to files, folders and registry entries inside the virtual environment.
2. to cache some startup files like exe, dlls and fonts.

The other virtualization applications (like Cameyo or Thinapp) and older versions of Spoon Studio (<= 9.3 I think) use only one folder for this.

In the current version of Spoon Studio:
The first folder can be set at Settings >> Process Configuration >> Application sandbox location. You can use @APPDIR@ instead of @APPDATALOCAL@ so the first folder to be created and used in the same folder where the virtualized application is. For example you can set "@APPDIR@\[Name_of_the_application]Files".
The second folder is that %TEMP%\SPOON\CACHE which you mentioned. You can't change its location.
Why Spoon Studio implements this second folder in the virtualized application?
Well, if you start the virtualized application on a fast storage device (like the HDD where the OS of the computer is) you will not see much of a difference.
But if you start it from a slow storage device (like a USB key/stick) you'll see a huge difference.
For example on my USB key/stick Office 2007 at the first start is 13(!) times faster than the one made with Thinapp or older versions of Spoon Studio. At the next starts is 2..3 times faster. And after starting seems also to be faster when you use it to create/modify documents.
Why is that? The answer is obvious: because the %TEMP%\SPOON\CACHE folder on the HDD is much faster in handling files/folders than a USB key/stick is.
On the other hand you know that USB keys/sticks does have a limited number of writings operations. So it's wise to lower the number of writing operations made by the virtualized application on the USB keys/sticks.

As you can see it's not wise to move this folder into the virtualized application's location.
On the other hand there are only some cached startup files in it, not files with sensitive informations...
As an alternative, so you can decrease its "size", you can try to activate Settings >> Process Configuration >> Enable startup executable optimization. This way it will not cache so many files. But this doesn't work with any application.

 

You're welcome.
It's not deleting the folder so it could start the virtualized application faster next time you use it again (it would not write again most of those files).
On my computer I use a few virtualized applications every day and everyone of them is using such a folder. But since they are in the temp folder and any virtualization application would of make them cache those files anyway (sandbox or temp folder), it doesn't bother me that much.
But if you still think that it should be removed, you could submit a feature request to Spoon.net

 

I've never virtualized an application with html files as Help.
Which application is it, so I can try..?
And when this application is installed normally is using exactly the same links to load the html files?
If so, perhaps the browser can't "see" well the virtualized filesystem...

 

A solution would be to integrate a small web browser that will load those html files...

 

A question: when you virtualized AutoCAD, have you used that virtual machine (on which is starting well)?