yup - the exe file was fine in each case; and I've manually copied the updated dat file from the program directory to the users/public/documents directory, so now they all seem ok.

Maybe it's all to do with the coollection file being on a networked drive, and somehow that's confused the program between being an installed version and a portable version...

Please describe your setup, so I can figure out what could go wrong. For the moment, I have no idea how the updater could call itself.

Did it use to work? Have you changed something?

It's always worked perfectly before...I think the first time I noticed a problem was a week or two ago, when I was trying to install a portable version onto a USB key; it produced this weird behaviour of spawning three copies of the Setup process then hanging (on one of the PC's).

My setup is three seperate (full) installs on different pc's; I have a link on each desktop to the coollection file that sits on a server. I have had the odd problem with this setup, if I'm not careful to close it on any other machines before making changes, it can lose the changes (I think i make the changes on one machine, which updates the server file; then when I later close an already-running instance on another machine, it 'updates' the server file with it's older version, without the changes).
I think there is some kind of lock detection built in (on one occasion I had a message pop up about how another instance was already using it, or something like that), but only once.

I did have a problem somewhere around the same time where my server file had somehow been overwritten with a default blank coollection file (4k size with no owned movies), I think this was where a computer had crashed with coollector open; fortunately I had a sufficiently recent backup I didn't really lose any data. But it might have had something to do with trying to install the portable version, I'm not sure.

This problem only happens with the portable version? or also with the other versions?

Did you upgrade some of your computer to Windows 10?



If you try to change the data but a change has already been made by another computer, you get a message saying that Coollector must reload the data to include the changes.

ah, yes, that was the message I got; but I think once or twice I've managed to accidentally 'get around' that, one time when some changes were lost (just some movies put into 'ordered' and 'wished', that dissappeared, the file had reverted back to the previous version), and one time when the whole file was somehow overwritten with the empty version.

the problem with the portable version (when I tried to install it and gave up) is the same one as I've seen on two of my full installs (one of which is much older than the one which worked, and on a much older install of windows 7, and one of which is much newer than the one which worked, and a newer windows install ) - three copies of the 'setup' process spawned and nothing more happened (same way that the updater process did when trying to update, and same way the installer did when I downloaded the file from the link you suggested.

I haven't gone near windows 10

(one other possibility for a cause at least of the data problems, rather than the updating problem, is that the network drive and a parity drive have to spin up when changes are made if they aren't already spinning, which can take 10-15 seconds; so some kind of network latency thing...can't see how that would affect the installer/updater programs though)

The portable version has only 1 difference with the normal version: a file called Portable.txt is created inside the folder.

If Coollector finds that file inside its folder, it behaves as a portable version, otherwise it behaves normally.

Please make sure that you don't have a Portable.txt in the same folder as your Coollector.exe.

just checked - definitely no portable.txt in any of the installs; so really no idea why the installer decided to act as a portable one

(it might have something to do with me making the HIPS stop some of the attempts to fire up extra copies, but I needed to do that just to get it to install at all...)

It's a complete mystery to me



Maybe, because I can't figure out how the updater would do that on its own.

well, I'll wait and see what happens with the next update