SyMenu Forum

Gianluca

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22/03/2026 Topic: Win11 client machine takes long time to settle Gianluca Administrator	For the record, it turned out the issue was caused by Windows as I suspected. Thanks to a user with a bit more dedication and patience than Shadohz, I was able to implement a workaround that allows SyMenu to bypass Windows excessive timeout when dealing with disconnected network drives. The workaround is now available to everyone through the new SyMenu release. Here are all the details: https://www.ugmfree.it/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=969&MessageID=3724#post3711
13/04/2026 Topic: SYMenu shows only discontinued applications Gianluca Administrator	When all programs appear as discontinued, it means SyMenu wasn’t able to download the program definitions. Without definitions, every single program becomes unknown and, consequently, marked as discontinued. Anyway you can easily force SyMenu to download the definitions again. However, since SyMenu downloads new definitions every time it starts and therefore should automatically fix this kind of issue, why doesn’t the problem resolve itself? There are four possible cases: Something went wrong during the download and the definitions file became corrupted. This is the easiest case to fix, because you can simply force a new download using the special button (read here). Eventually you can manually download the file if SyMenu is not able to do that by itself. The _Cache folder of your SyMenu suite is no longer accessible. Restore the correct permissions and everything will work again. Your firewall is blocking SyMenu’s web connection. In this case, it’s up to you: if you want online services, you need to trust the program. You are using an old version of SyMenu. In the past, older versions caused several problems (misuse, abuse, and false errors), so I blocked them from accessing the SPS service. If you want to access the SPS suite, you must use the most recent version of SyMenu. With these four tips, you will definitely solve the problem. If you want to let me know which one worked for you, I’d be glad to hear it.
18/04/2026 Topic: Elemental Tracker - A major rewrite of the Publish Gianluca Administrator	Not at all. PortableFreeware community is larger than SyMenu’s, and there will probably be more people who can make good use of Elemental Tracker. Here, instead, the users who can benefit immediately are the SPS editors who are still using the old PAT. And, almost forgot, PortableFreeware has always been friendly toward SyMenu… unlike the other one BTW great job with ET! edited by Gianluca on 18/04/2026
13/05/2026 Topic: A crazy new adventure! Gianluca Administrator	And it's now published in the SyMenu suite. Differently from what I asserted in my previous message, I haven’t redirected the AppData\Local\GANI folder into the program folder because I want to keep hands free with the SPS Clean Update feature for future versions. For the same reason, I strongly advise against placing the WSL virtual disk inside the program folder. That file grows huge (it starts around 20 GB), so its natural location is a dedicated folder on your data drive. And of course, don’t put it on a removable drive, as one user did. You need power and speed to run this thing properly
30/05/2026 Topic: Symenu Crashing Periodically [Win11 24H2 26100] Gianluca Administrator	Nice! These apparently random bugs are my favourites, because it’s impossible to fix them the “right” way. So we’ll go with the wrong one: trial and error. Please be patient we have a loooong road ahead of us. I’ll get in touch with you privately as soon as possible with further instructions for you.
25/06/2026 Topic: Problem updating Speccy Gianluca Administrator	I've just tested and it works well for me. Can you report the entire error message please? You can even delete the old one and reinstall the new one because it could be a problem only with the update process.
26/06/2026 Topic: Problem updating Speccy Gianluca Administrator	What a pity! They've changed a lot the package and it would have been interesting to test a real update with the new SPS (I personally don't use speccy so it was difficult to test it by myself). Anyway problem solved!
08/07/2026 Topic: SyMenu 8.14 Gianluca Administrator	The SyMenu summer version is finally out! Great news (at least from a technical point of view): SyMenu has been migrated to .NET 10 to improve performance, security, and stability. Unfortunately, major upgrades like this can sometimes introduce unexpected bugs or graphical glitches. Please report any unusual behavior you might notice. For all the other updates, please check the changelog on the download page. Bye!
07/08/2026 Topic: VS Code Update Process Fails to Migrate Data Dir Gianluca Administrator	WTF! It was a regression bug when publishing the SPS definitions! I accidentally published an old version of VSCode instead of the newest one. Sorry for the inconvenience! I have just updated the program definition, so please proceed this way: - Open SyMenu - Go to SPS Manager - Refresh the program definitions using the force button (if you can't find it, check the manual here: https://www.ugmfree.it/manual#SPSForm and look for "you can force it pressing the special button") - Search for Visual Studio Code Portable (x64) - Right-click on the grid item and choose Force update from web site Everything will be fixed... provided you haven't moved the Data folder from its original location (it must be located in .\data). Please let me know the outcome!
16/08/2026 Topic: Unhandled Exception - X=0 Y=0 Gianluca Administrator	Hi PhredE, From what I’m seeing, the issue is related to how the menu is drawn. You mentioned that with the default white theme there’s no border, but the Border thickness selector cannot be set to 0 because the minimum value is 1. What I suspect is a combination of particular SyMenu’s drawing custom settings and some Windows graphical configuration (typically display scaling), because I’m unable to reproduce the issue on my systems in anyway. So I need your help to investigate further. First I need to know how your Windows scaling is set? (100%? 75%? 125%? Other?) Then please send me a private message through the website or the contact form. This way I can get your configuration file ([SyMenu]\Config\SyMenuConfig.zip), run it on my machine, and check whether the problem is simply a misconfiguration. Otherwise, if you don’t have a particularly complex setup, you can also try this yourself: - quit SyMenu - delete [SyMenu]\Config\SyMenuConfig.zip - run SyMenu again and reconfigure it Your configured programs will remain untouched, but your SyMenu configuration will be reset. Hopefully, this will allow you to change the theme and save the new settings correctly. Let me know which option you prefer to follow.
30/08/2026 Topic: SyMenu 8.15 Gianluca Administrator	The new version is finally out! The biggest update in this release is a complete rewrite of the tooltip system. Most importantly, you can now customize the tooltip delay directly from the GUI. Check out the full changelog here: https://www.ugmfree.it/symenudownload#changelog If you have any feedback, bug reports, or ideas, feel free to get in touch.
22 days ago Topic: Symenu 8.XX refuses to update Gianluca Administrator	Interesting. If you don't mind, I'll use this thread as a sort of collector for SyMenu update issues, so I've slightly changed the thread title. I'm particularly interested in this case because you're the first person to report a problem with the updater. Hopefully you'll also be the last... but experience suggests you might just be the first of a larger group. At the moment I have no clear idea what is happening on your system. To investigate properly, I'd probably have to ask you to dig through Windows Event Logs and collect diagnostics for me... but I'm not that evil. What I can suggest instead is a workaround to solve that quickly and easily. It's useful both for failed updates and for installations that may have become corrupted over time: Download the latest SyMenu package from the website. The EXE package is the easiest option, but the ZIP package works as well. Unblock the downloaded package using the same procedure described for SyMenu plugins here: https://www.ugmfree.it/manual#SyMenuPluginBlocked Run the EXE or extract the ZIP into the exact same folder where SyMenu is currently installed. For example, if SyMenu is located in D:\CoolApp\SyMenu, make sure the installer or ZIP extraction target is D:\CoolApp\SyMenu. If Windows asks whether existing files should be overwritten, answer Yes to All. This procedure effectively performs a "reinstallation" of SyMenu while leaving your configuration, profiles, program entries, and personal settings untouched. As I mentioned, I'm trying to collect both failed update cases and their successful resolutions. So, whatever the outcome, please let me know how it goes. Every piece of feedback helps me understand whether this is an isolated incident or the beginning of a new adventure with the updater. Thanks for your help and patience!
21 days ago Topic: Symenu 8.XX refuses to update Gianluca Administrator	Frustrated wrote: Fixed the problem. Renamed the SyMenu.Libraries.dll in the Symenu folder and Symenu found the dll in its Lib folder. Really? Any idea how SyMenu.Libraries.dll ended up in the root SyMenu folder? The updater preserves the original package structure, and in both the zip and exe distributions that dll is located in the Lib folder. Could it have been copied there manually at some point?
21 days ago Topic: Symenu 8.XX refuses to update Gianluca Administrator	Okay, after checking the dll timestamps, I'm pretty sure I've figured out what happened. It looks like SyMenu.Libraries.dll was copied or moved to the SyMenu root folder some time ago. Since SyMenu probes the root folder before looking in the Lib folder, it found the dll there and loaded it successfully. This worked fine until the latest update. The new version requires a newer SyMenu.Libraries.dll, but the probing process still found the old dll in the root folder and attempted to load it from there. Once loaded, SyMenu checked the assembly metadata, detected that it was not the required version, and crashed. Deleting the DLL from the root folder solved the issue because the probing process was then able to resolve the correct dependency from the Lib folder. Lesson learned. Next time, I should remember to ask the reporter for a complete file listing of the SyMenu core folders right away. Thanks, this has been really useful.
15 days ago Topic: SyMenu 8.16 Gianluca Administrator	Dear all, A new version has just been released. The most important changes are: A new interface for the plugin system (whatever that means!). SyMenu now highlights in the context menu the updates availability in any SPS suite, including custom suites, through a dedicated icon and special text in the context menu. Let's take a closer look at these two features. Plugin startup notifications The new plugin interface allows a plugin to be notified whenever SyMenu starts. A more consistent implementation might have been to leverage SyMenu's native Autoexec on Start feature. However, that would have required users to enable Autoexec just to execute a plugin during startup. It seemed preferable to let the plugin itself declare its intention to run at that stage. For those interested in the technical details, the new interface is called ISyPluginNotificationStartup and, as usual, it is exposed through SyMenu.Plugin.Resources.dll. If you need further information, you know who to contact. Update notifications for secondary and custom suites This is a long-awaited feature. SyMenu can now show update notifications not only for the main suite, but also for the secondary suite (NirSoft) and even for custom suites created by users. When updates are available, the corresponding context menu entry is highlighted with a dedicated icon and text, making it much easier to spot pending updates. As always, if you have questions or need additional details, feel free to ask.
14 days ago Topic: SyMenu 8.16 Gianluca Administrator	I confirm that SyMenu uses the notification icon status for custom suites too. But how does this work? What does a custom suite editor need to do in order to notify SyMenu about updates? Actually, nothing special is required. The mechanism is exactly the same as the one used by the main suite. Let me explain. When SyMenu starts, it checks its endpoint for updated SPS definitions. If newer definitions are available, it downloads them into its _cache folder. In your scenario, these two tasks are delegated to the plugin. I agree that distributing the custom suite SPS files as a ZIP archive is the simplest solution. SPS files are very small and compress extremely well, so a ZIP archive grants a small download size and a single file to manage. The only difference between the main suite and a custom suite is that for the main suite SyMenu can read SPS files directly from the ZIP archive, while for the custom suite it needs the files to be extracted first. However, unzipping a file is trivial and the plugin can do that in secs. Once the plugin has downloaded and extracted the updated SPS files inside the custom suite _cache folder, the situation becomes identical to the main suite. At that point, SyMenu can detect available updates in exactly the same way it does for the official suite. How? Through the software version stored in each SPS file. Let's see the entire workflow. When a new version of AudioPluginABC is released, you would: - update the master SPS for AudioPluginABC, changing the version number and, if necessary, the download URL and any other metadata (file size, VirusTotal information, etc.); - package the updated SPS files into sl23CustomSuiteCollection.v345.zip; - upload the updated ZIP file to your endpoint; - let the plugin and SyMenu do the rest. The plugin is responsible for checking whether a newer SPS collection is available, downloading it, and extracting it. SyMenu is responsible for determining whether any installed applications in the custom suite require updates by reading the downloaded SPS files. I also suggest versioning the ZIP filename (for example, v345). This gives the plugin a simple reference point to determine whether the online definition package is newer than the locally downloaded package. If you adopt this approach, remember to preserve a version marker that the plugin can compare against. This can be the previous ZIP file itself, an empty file named after the version (for example, v345), or a simple text file containing the current version number. Another important point is the role of SPS Builder. You can use it for sure. What you can't do is upload custom suite SPS files to the UGMFree cloud. For a custom suite you can work with local files (SPS Builder does this easier), and upload the definitions manually to your endpoint. If you need any other information, please ask.
13 days ago Topic: SyMenu 8.16 Gianluca Administrator	sl23 wrote: I'm totally confused! Let me clarify, because I think I jumped ahead. sl23 wrote: You keep mentioning "the plugin", what plugin is this? Do I need to create one specifically to manage this suite, or is that the part you have done in this update? About the plugin: yes, you would write it yourself. What I changed in this update is that SyMenu now tells every subscribed plugin when it starts. SyMenu doesn't manage custom suites by itself as it does with the main suite, so your plugin uses that "SyMenu is starting" moment to do the work. For example, it can check online whether a newer version of your suite definitions is available, or prepare the local folders on first run. sl23 wrote: Could I create a SyMenu plugin that does this check automatically? Yes, you can and you should. Without it, your suite is just a definitions file online that users must download and update manually. sl23 wrote: whats the Master SPS you mention and where does this go? Where do I place this? does it become a part of the suite itself? Then I update that whenever theres an updated sps within the suite? About "Master SPS": sorry, I was describing my own setup. "Master" is just the name I would use for a local copy of the SPS files. It is not part of the suite that users receive. Here is the workflow I would follow: - Keep the SPS files of your custom suite in a local folder (your "master" files). - Edit them with SPS Builder, which also helps check file integrity and VirusTotal results. In theory you can do it manually, but then you must check file integrity, VirusTotal report, package size, exe availability, and so on, by yourself. - Don’t use SPS Builder to upload these files to the official SyMenu suite, or they would become part of it. - When ready, zip the files and upload the zip to an online location, for example GitHub. - When a file needs an update, edit it in your master folder, create a new zip with all the files and upload it again. - Your plugin checks that location at SyMenu startup (for example by comparing a version number in the zip name or in a small config/ini file). - If there is a newer version, the plugin notifies the user, who can then update the suite automatically, exactly as they do with the main suite.
10 days ago Topic: SyMenu 8.16 Gianluca Administrator	Ok, to be clearer with everyone reading this thread, what I sent you is a code template in C# to start creating your own plugin.
9 days ago Topic: SyMenu 8.16 Gianluca Administrator	It's not a problem whether you use a RAR or a ZIP archive because the plugin itself is responsible for unpacking it. So it's your choice. Anyway, I rarely use RAR because it is a proprietary format. They keep the archiver proprietary while providing the extractor for free, which I find a bit awkward. I've never had any issues with ZIP files, either when using GUI tools or when creating and extracting them programmatically. The issue you got was probably related to the specific ZIP implementation rather than the ZIP format itself. For more than ten years, whenever I needed compression or extraction features in SyMenu, I've relied on 7-Zip through command-line calls rather than implementing the compression algorithms directly in code. Because of that, I'm a lot out of touch with the implementation details and common issues of ZIP libraries, so I'm afraid I can't give you any particularly useful advice on the coding side.
7 days ago Topic: Junctions or SymLinks? Gianluca Administrator	Well, the only thing SyMenu does today is create desktop shortcuts for SyItems that are removed when SyMenu closes. This behavior borderlines on a program that strives to be a 'good boy that doesn't dirty your system'. Anyway, what you're trying to achieve can easily be accomplished using the SyMenu Autoexec feature (on start and close) with an external tool, for example, Symlink Creator, which is already included in the suite. edited by Gianluca on 15/10/2026