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WinPatrol appears dead

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Joe Hone:
Back in the days of Windows XP I found WinPatrol to be a unique and effective security tool. Until recently it still had a place in my Windows 10 PC but while it appeared to be running I started getting alerts of programs starting up from Windows Defender and Malwarebytes Pro whereas WinPatrol stayed silent.

It was here on Donationcoder I learned of the two other WinPatrol products, WAR and WinPrivacy. I had them installed on my PC and laptop but they would use up all of the laptop memory. So I would open the dashboard and disable them only to have them enable themselves within about 15 minutes. Weird. I emailed WinPatrol/Brett Lowery asking how to fix this issue and didn't hear anything back.

So I did some checking. First, I visited the website only to get the warning it was unsafe. Meh, probably an expired security certificate. That happens. But the three products, WinPatrol, WAR and WinPrivacy, haven't had an update since 2017. And this is security software! Some internet searches produced unfortunate results. The consensus appears to be that after Bill Pytlovany sold it, the WinPatrol saw little to no continued development making it mostly ineffective compared to other options, and WAR and WinPrivacy simply flag everything and don't serve much purpose. But Lowery appears to be actively selling all three products, perhaps relying on the reputation of the old WinPatrol to generate sales.

Another solid, once effective product (WinPatrol - the others were always buggy on my computers) appears to have withered and died. Too bad.

wraith808:
It's still working well for me; I get alerts for the things that I need to get alerts for, so I hadn't noticed about the site.  PLUS information on the processes still works, and has appeared useful.  I know that he'd (Rui?  The guy that bought them) had been working on the ransomware protection more than WinPatrol, but it had never really bothered me, as I have it set up to block everything unless I OK it.  In fact, I just got an update right before this as Onedrive set up an update to start after reboot.

As far as the site, I'd try to contact him if worried before pronouncing it dead.  Not sure why yours would have stopped giving alerts; are you sure it's running?

cyberdiva:
I don't use WAR or WinPrivacy, and I've never found the PLUS information that users provide helpful. However, like wraith, I still get the usual warnings/alerts from WinPatrol (e.g., when something wants to add itself to the startup menu) on my Windows 7 desktop computer.   

Joe Hone:
I wasn't trying to be prophetic since WinPatrol was a valuable utility for me for years, but it is officially gone, website and all. Users report that it still works, but the learn function no longer does, which means it no longer "learns" whether a startup is allowed or not. I haven't found a suitable alternative :(. 

wraith808:
I wasn't trying to be prophetic since WinPatrol was a valuable utility for me for years, but it is officially gone, website and all. Users report that it still works, but the learn function no longer does, which means it no longer "learns" whether a startup is allowed or not. I haven't found a suitable alternative :(. 
-Joe Hone (August 06, 2021, 04:46 PM)
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I haven't had to reinstall it yet, but it does still work. It learns from my choices, but yeah, external links are down. Scotty might be long in the tooth at this point, but I still find WinPatrol worthy of being in my kennel.

As a note, from https://www.corporationwiki.com/p/2f4451/ruiware-llc

Ruiware, LLC Overview Ruiware, LLC filed as a Foreign Limited Liability in the State of Florida and is no longer active.
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