Missing settings.json breaks whole application (and some other feedback)

[gepardec-wf]

Hi Wokhan!

The following happened on virgin Windows 11 installations with the Standalone 64 bit version of version 2.5 beta on two different systems. in this order:

1. In settings, Portable Mode cannot be activated in Settings. Error Dialog says: "Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Users...\AppData\Local\Wokhan Solutions\WFN\settings.json'.
2. In firewall settings, changing the configuration to block and notify outbound (enable notifications) seems possible at first, but when trying to apply these settings another error dialog occurs: 'Object reference not set to an instance of an object'.
3. when starting the notifier anyways, it just pops up for a second, then it disappears and nothing happens.

see images attached below.

probably unrelated:

4. in security log, the list consists of many empty entries.

after quitting the application and playing around a little, i found a manual fix:

1. manually create the above folder structure and place a new, empty setting.json file in there.
2. restart the application and the steps 1, 2, 3 now work. small bug: after applying the settings, the log area is cut off and cannot be scrolled.
3. the problem in step 4 still happens.

another unrelated minor "bug": The application title says Amd64, even tough I have an intel CPU. just seems to be cosmetics and wrong wording, but affects the user experience too ;-)

greetings!

Long time user of this great software.

BTW: Thanks for cleaning up the releases page and introducing the better notifier background task to fix the millions of notifier instances. Happy to see there are some new changes on the way. I personally would prefer a minimal version for download with just the main notifier functionality and the configuration of it. maybe you could reintroduce the version without the database to keep the wfn footprint to a minimum. also, there is still no simple solution to make windows update work, when blocking svchost and allowing only certain services. that would be the last killer feature missing, but i suspect that is the fault of its questionable implementation. some other software seemed to have found some kind of fix for that, but to me it looks more like a hack and I would rather not prefer to do it that way (henrypp/simplewall#677).

[hoasis2]

also, there is still no simple solution to make windows update work, when blocking svchost and allowing only certain services.

As you have already mentioned, this is unfortunately a general unsolved problem in Windows 10 and not WFN specific.

The only "solution" is AFAIK to copy svchost.exe and use the new path/filename in the service executable path.

[wokhan]

Hi there, sorry I also missed this issue.
2.5 beta had some issues I fixed in the nightlies - I know I should release a version 2.6 asap since it has a lot of improvements but I still had to fix some things first...
To be continued.... ;-)