As someone who uses WinPatrol daily I've create a few tricks that aren't always obvious to our users. I'm post what I can here in this topic.

I've also heard some interesting unique tricks from our WinPatrol users that I hope they'll share here as well.

Keep legitimate Startup Programs from returning

In most cases you'll find you want to Remove an unwanted program from your Startup Programs List. Unfortunately, some legitimate programs think they're so special they keep coming back if you like it or not.

Quicktime, RealPlayer, MSN Messenger and others will put an entry in the Auto Run registry anytime you use them. While this might be nice if you use these programs continuously they don't need to be running all the time using your valuable resources.

Instead of clicking on the Remove button, click on Disable. Just leave these programs as disabled and Scotty will remove them for you every time they reappear. They'll be listed on WinPatrol's Startup Program list as disabled.

If you ever want to Re-Enable them just click on the program name and the Disable button will change its title to Enable.

Parasite returns after it has been removed?

You may have found one of the nasty programs which come in pairs (or more). As soon as you remove one program, another one working together will re-start it.

One of the most effective features of WinPatrol is its ability to kill multiple tasks in one step. This allows WinPatrol to stamp out new parasites before other virus companies have even released new updates.

The place to begin is the list of Active Tasks.
First, exit all the applications that you know are active.

Click on Active Tasks and check to see what is still listed.
Most likely you'll need to select more than one task that looks suspicious, especially those with random looking file names.
Hold down the CTRL key and click to select/highlight multiple tasks and then click on the Kill Task button.

After you Kill the tasks that may be preventing its removal go to the Startup Programs and IE Helpers tabs and remove any references there.

Hopefully, you can reboot and no parasites will be running.
If you continue to experience problems, a list of other free recommended solutions are available on our web site http://www.mysteryware.com

WinPatrol always opens on startup.
Pre-8.0
This issue appears on some OS's due to the way the installer creates the autorun key. The following procedure will make WinPatrol start normally.
It has something to do with the way Windows handles long file names on some systems.

Click on the Options Tab.
Uncheck the box "Automatically run Windows when the computer starts"
Click on any other tab like Startup Programs.
Click back to Options tab again
And now Recheck the "Automatically run Windows..." back the way it was.

I've made another recent discovery while helping folks who have been reporting problems with their systems. It could be the answer you're looking for as well especially if you're having cookie problems.

Apparently, Microsoft Windows can get a little confused when the Internet Temp Folder starts to grow. The first time I noticed it was when I lost right clicking ability in Internet Explorer and could view source. Cleaning up the temp files cleared the problem.

In three unrelated problems reported this month all were resolved by the simple task of clearing the Internet Temp Folder.

So here's my tip...

Run Internet Explorer, on the menu Tools, select Internet Options.

Click Delete Files, and then click OK.

Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box.

To go along with the Temp Internet Folder (TIF) tip.

Windows assigns the size of this folder to be about 10% of the hard drive size. This was OK in the days of 1-5GB hard drives but now with 20-80GB drives becoming the standard then the size of the TIF should be reduced to keep IE performance acceptable.

In IE go to Tools then Internet Options then Settings and move the slider to 200MB.

Wow thanks, i've always been removing items rather then disabling them but they dont usually come back.

Thanks for the tips i love Winpatrol, anyone who ever asks me for help with computer issues i strait away tell them to install Winpatrol and on 90% of the problems it fixes them

3 Cheers

I can offer you one undocumented trick that you can use if you're familiar with Regedit

This can be handy if you want to suppress the Scotty icon on your kids account or someone else with their own user name.
You'll need to use Regedit but the following will force Scotty to hide while he's running.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\BillP Studios\WinPatrol\Options
If it's not already there, create an option called "HideScotty" and set the value to 1.

This will hide the Scotty icon on the task bar but alerts will still appear if something changes. It will prevent them from double clicking on Scotty and changing things you might not want changed.

This is actually a feature that will be in WinPatrol Professional that can be changed without using RegEdit. Someone found it and started to use it in one our versions so we have left it as an undocumented feature for those people who were clever enough to find it.


Thanks,
Bill

Well, no official announcement has been made regarding WinPatrol Professional. I had hoped to have it released sooner but I put more into the free WinPatrol 9.0.

WinPatrol Professional is something that will be designed and marketed to schools, libraries, kiosks, and any system that has multiple users. An administrator can hide that Scotty is at work. Changes can be automatically refused without any alert and a log of all such events will be available to the admin

This will be a separate product so it will not part of the lifetime membership which applies to the free WinPatrol. PLUS members will be able to upgrade for a very special rate. Development will not end on the free version so lifetime PLUS members will continue to see advances in the future without being forced to upgrade.

Here's a little teaser if you'd like to see where its at now. No promises on what the final version will look like.

The Watch list and Black list are new real-time features that will warn you if a watched program has been shut down and Scotty will automatically try to shut down programs on the Black List.
I'm sure we'll be opening up the beta to folks who help promote WinPatrol and participate in our community forum.


Thanks,
Bill

Bill, I was just wondering about the upcoming new "Watch" feature ......

1) Will the "Watch" feature of upcoming Winpatrol Professional work on Win 98 Systems??

2) Also, will the "Watch" feature be added to the Free/Plus versions of WinPatrol??

Bill,

Do you have an estimated timeframe for when you expect to release WinPatrol Professional?

Also, will the "Watch" feature of upcoming Winpatrol Professional work on Win 98 Systems and will it also be included as a feature on the free/plus versions of Winpatrol?


Thanks.

Hi JBB,

I did say it was just a teaser right?

I can confirm that all new features will be supported on Win9x systems. We still have a lot of happy Win9x users and PLUS members.

Eventually, I do hope that many of the new task related features will be available on our free version as long as we can keep them simple and straightforward.

I can't make any promises on release dates but many of the new features are currently being put through my version of focus groups.

My hope is to release a final beta at the end of April. The last week of April I will be away from the office celebrating a major birthday. I won't say what age, but I can tell you my downtime will be enjoyable.
http://www.qcomet.com/photos/feb01/dotcalm/index.html

My fantasy is when I return to the states I'll be well rested and we'll be confident enough to release in early May.

Bill