Snappy Driver Installer

[glennd]

don't we all!

 

[glennd]

 

[BadPointer]

I was able to reproduce the "2 of 1" bug.

Error FF - user interrupted. Can you tell me steps to reproduce it? If you canceled installation by unchecking the driver or clicking on the main progressbar, it should've said "Installation stopped".

If you want to run the app without actually installing anything, you can use the hidden menu(right click on the System Information panel).

 

[Laplandz]

i have used snappy driver on at least 15 different machines this week and all have gone flawlessly. It stops all the hassle and inconvenience of looking for the drivers, so far i would highly recommend this software and wanted to give a big thanks to TechNibble and JustInspired for letting me know about it.

 

[alluseridsrejected]

i have used snappy driver on at least 15 different machines this week and all have gone flawlessly. It stops all the hassle and inconvenience of looking for the drivers, so far i would highly recommend this software and wanted to give a big thanks to TechNibble and JustInspired for letting me know about it.

I have run it on several machines this week too. This is a great program. And I want to thank BadPointer for making this great piece of software!

 

[glennd]

I was able to reproduce the "2 of 1" bug.

Error FF - user interrupted. Can you tell me steps to reproduce it? If you canceled installation by unchecking the driver or clicking on the main progressbar, it should've said "Installation stopped".

If you want to run the app without actually installing anything, you can use the hidden menu(right click on the System Information panel).

Debug mode, nice.

i reproduced it twice this morning but i'm struggling to come up with a precise set of steps. What I'm doing is checking one item in the list, click the install, click the top thing to cancel, check the item, install, cancel, check the item, install, uncheck the item, cancel, install, check, install, cancel etc. The mindset is one of impatience, clicking at everything like a moron. 9 times out of 10 it will respond correctly with the installation cancelled message, then occasionally it will give the FF error.

After playing with it for some time I'm convinced it's connected with the list refresh which follows the installation cancellation. ie, there's a delay followed by the list refresh, if i keep clicking like a moron because my hand is on auto pilot, before and during this refresh, the error will occur.

Anyway, I've managed to put it in a state of Not Responding with the hdd going flat out. Been going for over ten minutes now. Task Manager....

Hope you can make something of all that

 

[BadPointer]

It mush have to be a racing condition issue and thankfully doesn't have ill effects. You provided enough information, so I added it to my ToDo list.

While you can check/uncheck drivers while they're being installed, you might end up extending extraction time because SDI may have to do multiple passes to extract all drivers from the same driverpack.

I plan to improve extraction times, eventually. It involves creating tools that optimize driverpacks for SDI by repacking them in a special way. It will result in at least fourfold decrease of extraction time and also reduce the size of driverpacks. Even when it's fully automatized it would still take many hours to process driverpacks each time they are updated, so I might have to get a SSD to speed up things.

 

[Anson C]

I have been using driver pack pack solution. It gets the job done but you need to be very careful when installing chipset drivers with DPS as I have had to wipe a system more then once due to bad chipset drivers. I will give this a shot for sure. Thanks

 

[ChrisTech]

Have tried this on a couple of machines and have to say it works a treat.

Showing my ignorance though...if the driver packs depend on torrent seeding, what virus/malware monitoring is taking place?

Just wondering..?

 

[BadPointer]

Using torrent technology for delivery doesn't put users on additional risk. SDI downloads the torrent file from SamLab's website. This way we can be sure that SDI always download the trusted torrent.

Users are encouraged to share this torrent file with torrent trackers in order to bring more seeders for as long as they don't modify the original torrent in any way. Modifying torrent results in generating a different hash value, so they no longer can seed driverpacks to SDI. The torrent technology is quite resilient to bad agents who try to send bad data. Torrent clients are able recognize it by checking hash values and ban bad actors. I haven't seen someone injecting malware but some release groups like to add their own branding(logo, readme) which changes the hash value.

 

[ChrisTech]

Thanks for clarifying that.

Is there a way of donating to your project - there doesn't seem to be a link on the Google code webpage? I'm sure that Techs would consider this a useful tool and the option to contribute something for it may be an idea....

 

[Bootman 650]

Have been using SDI since November also, when it was first posted. Have used it probably 30+ times since, each of which it has worked perfectly.
Thank you, BadPointer for Developing and thank you Justin for posting.

 

[BadPointer]

Is there a way of donating to your project - there doesn't seem to be a link on the Google code webpage? I'm sure that Techs would consider this a useful tool and the option to contribute something for it may be an idea....

I choose not to monetize the project because I know that people in my country wouldn't be able to donate much to make it worthwhile. They rarely pay for software or services but when they do, they consider an one-time payment of $5 to be a generous donation which entitles them to a lifetime support over Skype/TeamViewer whenever they encounter a problem instead of trying to resolve it themselves and submitting a bugreport.

Anyways, I have a PayPal account linked to my e-mail which can be found on the Google Code webpage. You're free to donate whatever amount you feel fair.

 

[alluseridsrejected]

Hi BadPointer. I just wrote a simple batch file to keep file SDI.exe updated all the time with the current SDI_Rnnn.exe file. I called it sdiupdate.cmd. To use it just put it in the directory where the exe file(s) are. It automatically finds the most current SDI_Rnnn.exe in the directory, runs it with /autoupdate /autoclose, rechecks to make sure it is still the current exe version and copies it to SDI.exe.

I have this batch file scheduled to run automatically at night with a scheduled task so my drivers and SDI.exe are always up to date for my other automation to use and I don't have to keep updating it every time the version number changes.

ECHO OFF
::***********************************************************************************
::                                                                                                                                   
:: Keep SDI.exe updated with the latest drivers and version of SDI_Rnnn.exe           
::                                                                                                                                   
:: NOTE: Put this batch file in the SDI_UPDATE directory with the SDI_Rnnn.exe file   
::***********************************************************************************
::
::SET SDIPath to location of batch file which should be with SDI_Rnnn.exe
SET SDIPath=%~dp0
PUSHD %SDIPath%
::Get the newest SDI_Rnnn.exe file
FOR /F "delims=|" %%I IN ('DIR "SDI_R*.exe" /B /O:D') DO SET NewestSDI=%%I
:: Run SDI update
CALL %NewestSDI% /autoupdate /autoclose
::Make sure we still have most current executable in case one was just downloaded
FOR /F "delims=|" %%I IN ('DIR "SDI_R*.exe" /B /O:D') DO SET NewestSDI=%%I
::Copy current version to SDI.exe
COPY %NewestSDI% SDI.exe /Y
POPD

 

[glennd]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not convinced the Create Restore Point is working fully. I'm on Windows 8.1 using SDI R166. I installed a single driver, wireless adapter, with that driver checked and also the create restore point checked. Everything appears to go swimmingly and it reports the restore point created and driver installed but when i go look at the available restore points there's only one for today created about an hour ago for an application i was installing.
Now this rings a bell for something i was doing last week but got distracted. As is my wont, i install drivers one at a time with a restore point created each time. After i'd installed 6 or so drivers, the last one created problems so i went to do a restore back to the previous point but there was only the first restore point created on the first driver install. i was forced to do that restore and install all the drivers again minus the last one.
So, it would appear that there is only one restore point created on a given date.

 

[BadPointer]

When a restore point creations fails, SDI reports it as "Failed to create a restore point" with red background. Apparently Windows reported that the operation was completed successfully but it didn't create a restore point for some reason.

 

[glennd]

When a restore point creations fails, SDI reports it as "Failed to create a restore point" with red background. Apparently Windows reported that the operation was completed successfully but it didn't create a restore point for some reason.

i looked up msdn for the CreateRestorePoint method and discovered the following:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa378847(v=vs.85).aspx

Windows 8:

A new registry key enables application developers to change the frequency of restore-point creation.

Applications should create this key to use it because it will not preexist in the system. The following will apply by default if the key does not exist. If an application calls the CreateRestorePoint method to create a restore point, Windows skips creating this new restore point if any restore points have been created in the last 24 hours. The CreateRestorePoint method returns S_OK.

Developers can write applications that create the DWORD value SystemRestorePointCreationFrequencyunder the registry key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore. The value of this registry key can change the frequency of restore point creation. The value of this registry key can change the frequency of restore point creation.

If the application calls CreateRestorePoint to create a restore point, and the registry key value is 0, system restore does not skip creating the new restore point.

If the application calls CreateRestorePoint to create a restore point, and the registry key value is the integer N, system restore skips creating a new restore point if any restore points were created in the previous N minutes.

it seems it's working as designed but you can set a registry key to ensure a restore point is created every time. I'll test this tomorrow and let you know what I find.

 

[BadPointer]

I guess I can change the value in the registry briefly and restore the previous state after creating of a restore point.

 

[glennd]

I've just tried this. I set the registry entry as above and ran SDI with one driver and create restore point checked. when i hit the go button, the "Restore point created" appeared within a fraction of a second but there's no point actually created. I went and created a restore point manually, that worked and the point shows up in the list of available restore points. I closed and restarted SDI and again selected one driver and create restore point. Again, "Restore point created" appeared within a fraction of a second and there's no point appearing in the list of restore points.

 

[Altster]

I was able to reproduce the "2 of 1" bug.

Error FF - user interrupted. Can you tell me steps to reproduce it? If you canceled installation by unchecking the driver or clicking on the main progressbar, it should've said "Installation stopped".

If you want to run the app without actually installing anything, you can use the hidden menu(right click on the System Information panel).

BP, this very same thing happened to me today and I had NOT interrupted / cancelled the installation. It seems that the program itself stopped the operation. I have no screenshots to post. But the installation of other drivers continued after this hic-cup occured.

I still love the program - you've done a great service to everyone in the industry.