WinPatrol appears dead

[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)

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.corporat...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.

[superboyac]

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)

no alternative?!  so crazy.

[MilesAhead]

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)

no alternative?!  so crazy.

-superboyac (August 30, 2021, 10:30 PM)

Looking for alternatives I found this article

There seems to be some inaccuracies in it though.  I used WinPatrol on my desktop PCs for quite awhile.  I remember the original author spent a lot of time vetting people who were willing to take it over and selected one.  This was before 2013.  I don't remember exactly but I know for sure the original author did retire and sold the program and web site.  The main feature I liked was blocking apps autostarting.  It seemed like every program wanted to load into the tray so that startup seemed instant.  The more things change...  a recent Edge browser update pulled the same gimmick in Windows 10.  It started loading itself in the background on startup by default.

I see now too that Opera based on chromium, which used to be stingy on resources is now loading 14 exe instances on startup when the only tab is the speed dial.  So tedious.   

[Joe Hone]

Online reviews for a suitable replacement for WinPatrol state that there's nothing exactly like it, but several recommend Kerish Doctor. It's free right now on sharewareonsale dot com. I'll give it a spin and report my thoughts. Given the increasing sophistication of malware it's probably wishful thinking on my part, but I liked the peace of mind WP gave back in the day.

[dantheman]

VoodooShield
have always been quite generous with their basic, free for personal use version.
Just takes a bit of time to get acquainted with it to block any dubious app.

O%O ShutUP has been my fav to limit the unwanted stuff Windows 10 does on my laptop.

Last, but not least...
ProcessLasso (lifetime license available) - to control app processes.

[Dormouse]

WinPatrol was nice and simple, unless you chose for it not to be.

One lesson I took from it is that handing on such a project frequently fails however carefully it's done. I've seen quite a few instances of that. Also true for large company taking over a small; rarely ends with the product developing as it would have done if the original developers had the resources of the larger one. Even when the original developers stay on. As with WinAmp.

[rjbull]

There's still Chameleon Startup Manager, which has been mentioned several times in rather old DC threads.

[wraith808]

That's the thing about it- WinPatrol combined a few products into one. Still running it, though I am going to take a look at the suggestions in this thread.

[MilesAhead]

I forgot startup delay was one of the WinPatrol features.  It likely prompted me years ago to write DelayedCuts.

You have to manually add shortcuts using DelayedCuts.exe.  When you save the list it creates a shortcut to DelayedLoad.exe in the user's Startup folder.  It can be useful if some programs are dependent on others being already running etc..  By default it scrolls up a window by the tray showing which program is currently loading.  You can click the close 'x' on this window to skip that program.

The reason DelayedCuts insists you drag shortcuts on to add to the list is this guarantees the opportunity to specify the behavior of the program to be launched since you can specify most startup behavior in the shortcut options.

It is free to use at your own risk.  I use it every day on a Windows 10 Laptop so hopefully that indicates it is not obsolete on the newer Windows versions (yet.)   

Note that sometimes I find public library WiFi blocks my page.  I am not sure why.  But you should have no trouble downloading via your own ISP or similar network.