Norm, please see my reply (and question) in the comment immediately below. If you want further information please contact support here
http://zabkat.com/deskrule/contact.htm

deskrule support, I've read ALL of your comments here and not one answered the question. yes I downloaded it from GOTD site and followed the directions no pop ups about trail mode the first day but the second day popups with timer shows trail ware. It is completely uninstalled know. At least It it uninstall cleanly.

WaH.MT, if you installed and run it on the day of the promotion, it should stay "free" thereafter. Did you use the GAOTD installer or did you download it from the deskrule website? What's the version number indicated in ABOUT box? (this is in the drop down menu next to the HELP (question mark) button

deskrule support,

I extracted the files directly from the folder I downloaded from GAOTD into another folder and have the following in the folder Readme.txt, Setup.exe, and Setup.gcd. After installation, a new tab opened in my browser for DeskRule on GAOTD, so I thought it had installed correctly. The only ? I see to click is on the pop-up. When I click the question mark, it isn't doing anything except changing my mouse cursor to an arrow with a ? beside it for a couple of seconds and the pop-up window as well as the DeskRule window behind flashes a couple of times.

The pop-up says "This is a "try before you buy" application that may be evaluated for free for a limited period. Please purchase a license to remove all restrictions, including this dialog" It says I have 13 days left for evaluation. There are options for secure online order, I have an unlock key, and continue in trial mode. The same thing happens as yesterday when trying to use the program. If I try the secure online order, I can purchase the license from their website. Clicking I have an unlock key brings up another pop-up to restart the program and proceed running the license manager with administrator privileges. This brings up another pop-up instructing me to open the email I received when purchasing the program, copy out the registration key and paste in the box and click activate. I didn't get an email or anything, so I closed that box out. Reopening the program and clicking to continue as trial closes the program.

This is the third program I have gotten from GAOTD, but the first I had problems with. It did work for a day so I could see that I like it, so I guess that's a small plus. I appreciate your time in trying to help. I don't think there is any help for me anymore since the giveaway is now two days ago. Like I said before, I will most likely end up purchasing the program when I can scrape up enough. Thanks again.

Peter S, there is no limitiation in the license you bought the other day. This giveaway (free) does have update limitations, yours doesn't. You get guaranteed free upgrades for a year, probably more

Sigrid.DE , searching with deskrule is simple, you must tell it WHERE to search and WHAT to search for. Are you sure you told it to search somewhere where your files are located?

deskrule support,
just what I did with Deskrule, did set search to c:\users\xx\Downloads and nothing was found
whereas Agent Ransack was told to ransack the whole of the c:\partition = 85 GB filled with files and this freeware tool showed just those 12 videos in Downloads that I'd used as test pieces. Downloads itself occupies less than 1 GB, mainly larger files.
If your tool cannot even find by name with directory given then you can keep your swf files for demo purposes forever because with our without the tool is just useless. At least for me.
A programmer who calls non-support of flash a fad is living on a solitary island.

Sigrid.DE , have you evern been hit by a virus caused by flash? Or have you ever heard of one that has? Or have you ever heard of a single piece of software that's without vulnerabilities?

Tha flash videos inside deskrule are nothing to worry about. If you worry about them you shouldn't be installing deskrule to begin with, because if I wanted to harm you, I could do it with the program itself, not the demo videos

so try to be a bit less suspicious and I assure you that if you watch the demos, you will certainly find things by name in deskrule :)

deskrule support,
YOU are failing to comprehend that flash videos are as dead as a dodo because of the recurring security hazards they posed under Windows. Adobe decided not to patch these software leaks any more and users were advised to immediately deinstall players, libraries, whatever. The actual video format is also one of bygone days.
To answer your question about virus infection. No, not any time have I had to deal with malware over my very long time with personal computers, but as I am a little more in the know than some people it would seem logical.
However, if a freeware finds a number of specific videos in an amazingly short time searching a complete partition how come a normally quite pricey software finds nothing?
Golly, if videofile does not show up mp4 files, where is the field to narrow search down to file extension?
Come on, if you want to win me, then improve on your software.
It is your business, not mine :-))

Sigrid.DE , I assure you that if deskrule couldn't find filenames I would not be selling it. I don't know what you're doing wrong, but if you want to take this further please send me a support email and I will try to help you
http://zabkat.com/deskrule/contact.htm

therube, you tell deskrule where to search and what to search for. I recommend watching the demo video posted further up (see the description). If you leave the "where" to search blank it defaults to "My Documents"

xCodeRunner, maybe if you have a "little system". I tested it with around 20 TB of data and it is worthless. Every search takes more than half an hour...

Georg, you can expect that the bigger the job, the longer it takes to run. I suppose you were searching for content, text in files. To speed up these searches you can add your folders in the windows index, so they will become much much faster. For more information see here
http://zabkat.com/blog/desktop-search-precautions.htm

xCodeRunner, Georg
If you're going to write a complaint about the speed of a search or say how good it is, it is only useful if you describe the type of search you are doing.
20 TB if I'm correct the size of 250 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica you can't expect it to wiz through that can you?

Even that size if its indexrd search it should be pretty quick, on the other hand if you're looking at the content using wild cards you would expect it to take more or less forever.

deskrule support, sorry but your idea is nonsens. I can not add my 20 TB in the windows index. Would you know how slow this my system will make and how much space this will need? I hope... Many experts says it is best to turn off the windows-index! I have it run but only for the document-folder. It´s clear that your program finding files in this place very quick. But the not indexed partitions? Example: I have about 200.000 mp3´s. When I search for an artist it tooks half an hour. I hoped only the first time and than your program has made an index and it´s quick: NO! A new search will start the whole procedure from the beginning - so it´s unusable. I´ll stay with my freeware-tools that makes this job fantastic because they make an index.

@Salvia: That´s the problem: This program makes no index it only use the windows search index...

Georg, so you rely on indexing by your 3rd party programs but you don't trust windows own index. And then you blame deskrule. If your files are music and video, windows index is going to do just the tags, so the size will be nowhere near what you fear.

kc4cop, thanks for the kudos!
the demo videos have a standard progressbar at the bottom. You can pause and rewind to taste, in case you missed something

Spam Sorenson, this is a free version. Once you install it in time (today) it is yours to keep and test forever

Mavadelo, deksrule uses very little system resources. It uses the existing windows search index, if available, and where that is not as good as it should be, it has its own search engine. So if resource efficiency is what you're looking for, deskrule is a candidate for you

Jörgen, the installer works for (most) people below and I have tested it without problems for a number of systems. Perhaps your antivirus is blocking GOTD style installers?

Jörgen,

Way to go!

I agree Jorgen, your experience is the same as mine, in recent weeks. I am relatively new to GOTD but am having serious, second thoughts about bothering with these 'Offers'. It brings to mind the old adage, if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is. Two attempted downloads - Two fails! I wanted to install Privacy Drive by Cybertron Software. However, when attempting to install, I was informed files were corrupted. Only the other day, I would really liked to have installed Dr. Folder by YL Software, and when attempting to install found, yet again, I was informed the files were corrupted.

If you contact GOTD, in my experience, they are very polite but not particularly helpful and only want to "blame" the User and not take responsibility for the programs being offered - You're not doing this, or you're not doing that or - You need to turn off your AV/Firewall, yeah right, blah, blah, whatever! I will readily admit, I consider myself a bit of a software 'geek' and have probably downloaded, installed and trialled more software programs than most people have had hot dinners! I am not 'wet behind the ears' when it comes to downloading and installing software and my experiences with GOTD, to date, leaves me most unimpressed.

Looking at today's comments, I think GOTD need to start paying some serious attention to what their customers are informing them. . . .over to you.

I will keep my eyes peeled, watch out for one other program that ignites my interest. If I download and attempt to install and it fails due to 'corrupted files', it will simply be a case of '3-Strikes' and you're out and I will simply unsubscribe as it is too much hassle and will look for deals elsewhere!

Jörgen, some antivirus programs have web protection which can prevent you from installing. this happened to me.
I uninstalled my antivirus program, rebooted my computer, reinstalled the antivirus program, but did a customize
install to which I unchecked web protection. you also may have to remove it from your add-on in your browser. in my case
the program from GOTD would download but don't setup. it wouldn't install. try those steps and hope it work out for you.

Jörgen,
Surely there would be many more complaints if the setup file was at fault; looks like something on your system is causing the problem.

Have in the past had a similar problem but only intermittently, this was caused by an anti-key logger program, it could equally well be an virus detection program giving a false positive.

The biggest problem is that either an incorrectly described warning is given or no warning at all, not unusual in Windows.

deskrule support, when I disable the AV (Symantec Endpoint Protection) I can install anything (viruses included) except from GOTD.
As a long-time software developer I think it is rediculus to not investigate your software. The attitude of "it works on our systems, then it works" will never let software progress into something good.

mario, if uninstalling the AV software is the only way to install GOTD, then there is something *VERY* wrong with GOTD!
I have been developing software (for Windows) since the early 90's and never had any problem installing my own software or any other for that matter. GOTD excluded.

Jörgen,

"The installer doesn't work... GOTD setup.exe starts... and then hangs. I let it run for well over two hours..."

When you run the GOTD setup.exe, it phones home to verify the offer's valid, expands the installation file(s) contained in the setup.gcd file into memory, then runs it. If setup.gcd is very large [e.g. 300MB or more], expanding the contents of setup.gcd can take a little while, but the worst case I've experienced is still only a few minutes -- personally I wouldn't wait for that offer's setup dialog more than 4-5 minutes tops.

"I've done everything as described in readme.txt including shutting down AV beforehand. The only thing I haven't done, is rebooting in fail-safe mode."

It's your judgment call, & only yours [or maybe someone in your company's IT dept.], when it comes to installing any GOTD offer, whether you want to boot into Safe Mode, and what security software you want to run. Here's a bit of explanation In Case you or anyone else is interested in what's probably going on.

I would humbly suggest that if you haven't booted into Safe Mode, & the GOTD didn't work, then you most likely Did Not shut down your security software. You probably clicked the proper button(s) or selected the correct options in your security software, and that software might have even given you some dire sounding warnings as you did so, but in many brands of security software you did not shut down it's services. You can usually see them running in Task Mgr. or SysInternals Process Explorer, but you're often [usually] not allowed to shut them down, even using Windows Services dialog [Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services]. And that's where Safe Mode comes in -- usually your security software's service(s) will not run in Safe Mode... you can often also turn them off in Safe Mode so they don't start when you re-boot into Windows normally.

Booting into Safe Mode is a bit of a hassle -- more to some than others -- but it's not normally required... the majority of security software doesn't have a problem with GOTD offers the majority of the time. I have seen different brands/models of security software once or twice have a bad definition file that caused a false positive on a GOTD offer, but in my experience updating that software & that file cured it. There have been reports that rarely AVG has to be disabled, & loads of problem reports with Kaspersky, but as most people don't report what security software they're using when/if they have a problem, I can't really say more than that.

Note: In Windows 10, if you're using Windows Defender rather than 3rd party security software, in my experience you'll rarely [if ever] have a problem installing a GOTD offer. But if you do have cause to shut Defender down, e.g. for some other app install, in tests that I've performed, Windows 10's Windows Defender is different, with a sort of backup security service that runs when you shut the main Windows Defender service down by booting into 10's special Safe Mode without security software auto-starting.

Note: With Windows 10 Safe Mode is more complicated... after booting you might have to go through several screens to arrive at a numbered list of all your options, then re-boot, pressing the number key for the option you want. You will need your sign-in password, whether you normally use a PIN or not. You *may* have to choose an option that wouldn't otherwise be your 1st choice, because one or more options may just not work with your hardware.

Note: You can find directions on getting into Windows 10's Safe Mode here: windows[.]microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows-10/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode . I have found it useful personally in one or two cases to add a boot menu to a device running 10 -- that gives you the option of working your way to that numbered list screen that I mentioned above. To do that I used EasyBCD to add a fake option to the Windows 10 boot menu, keeping Windows 10 as the default -- Windows 10 already had [has] a boot menu, but if/when the only option is Windows 10, it won't show on screen with a delay for you to choose.

Jörgen, well Microsoft tech is the one whom found the third party software problem and fixed the problem using that method. so far I have no more problems and my antivirus program is as good as ever. Microsoft is the company that made windows so who am I to judge it worked for me. good luck, sorry you missing out on some great software.

kc4cop,

It is extremely likely that the Giveawayoftheday setup file will not run in "safe mode". A great deal of files will not run in safe mode.

It is also unlikely that the setup file would be able to check back in with Giveawayoftheday while you are in safe mode. Chances are great that his antivirus program is preventing the installation due to antivirus software running on the computer. Safe mode is not going to permit back and forth communication with Giveawayoftheday, the download of the setup file folder, or allow the running of the setup file.

mike,
Your comment is very informative and I'm sure that plenty of people will appreciate your help, but installing software in safe mode doesn't always work because in safe mode Windows only loads the very bare essentials to run. In most cases you need to have SafeMS on your machine to do this.
SafeMS can be downloaded from http://download.cnet.com/SafeMSI-exe/3000-2094_4-75724774.html free.

Jörgen, if you want to test the deskrule installer, you can get it straight from my website
http://zabkat.com/deskrule/
of course that won't be a free giveaway, it is a free trial.
GAOTD guys wrapped it in their own installer, which comes clean with virustotal. If you don't trust these guys what are you doing in this website? :)

kc4cop,

One needs Safe mode with Network for Internet access.

TK,
When I had Zemana anti-key logger installed now and again would get the message of a corrupted file.
The file wasn't corrupted as reported by the system it was just being blocked.
incorrect error messages cause a great deal of confusion and make it difficult to know exactly what is going on.

Don't recall ever having this problem in either XP or in Windows 7 except when it is caused by a antivirus or anti-he logger program.
That's all the point I was trying to make.

Jörgen, I have been using GOTD for years and have found nice software. I fully trust this site to offer clean software. I also started having trouble installing software after I had to get a new computer with Win 10. I couldn't install anything until I turned off AVG. I changed AV and I hope I won't have anymore issues but I know now that it is the AV that has preventing installs.

deskrule support, Hi, the answer to your (I quote): 'GAOTD guys wrapped it in their own installer', and 'If you don't trust these guys what are you doing in this website? :)' is - so you Guys, developers, who donate your Software for free here can trust GOTD and are protected from hackers' manipulations (licenses mainly)! It's not a matter of GOTD users not trusting this Site, as their Giveaways have long history of delivering safe downloads. Asking to switch off Av, or any other protective Agent at the time of downloading/installing any GOTD offer remains a big 'ASK', because for that (short, or longer) amount of time user's machines might be in vulnerable state.

Michael Cox, thanks for your positive input. Deskrule comes with many demo videos, please click on the little DOWN arrow next to the help (question mark) toolbar button. These demo videos will get you up to speed in no time!

Michael Cox,

With Microsoft really growing & expanding Cortana in 10, on iOS, & Android, and with Cortana being there, installed already, I'm actually a little surprised... Not being facetious, are there areas where DeskRule does better?

mike, i haven't tried this yet, but from my experience Windows 10 search everywhere and I search for files everywhere on my machines. I try searching for example files like .dat files and Windows 10 gives no personal files only web results, but when I use Search Everything or search from CMD I find everything I need. (Half of the time I use my Linux partition to search though).

I meant Windows 10 doesn't search everywhere...

deskrule support, The videos does not run with Edge, I have to switch to IE to run them!

Hans, these demo videos are SWF which need the flash plugin installed. I understand that everybody's going away from flash (must be a fad); at some point I will offer them in a different format

deskrule support,
to put you in the picture about what you refer to as fad, Flash is no longer supported by Adobe for security reasons, something you should be aware of by now.

100% agree with your suggestions.
"Everything" is so usefull and easy to use :)

Eitan, "DeskRule" can search by a very wide variety of file attributes. "Everything" searches only by name, so if you don't remember the name of a file or folder (at least part of it), "Everything" is useless. "Agent Ransack" is great, but does not cover the wide range of attributes that "DeskRule" does.

I am a huge fan of Zabkat's file manager, xplorer2, so I expect DeskRule to excel as well.

Eitan,

Just tried Everything. Astonishing speed. It's almost magic. Thanks.

Yep, Everything is magic. Especially comparing to the sh*t MS supplies, for many years now.

Lenny, agent ransak doesn't use an index, deskrule does. It would be very surprising indeed if you could produce actual timing results for an equivalent search that shows deskrule to be slower. For a comparison with AR see the table near the end of the website
http://zabkat.com/deskrule/

deskrule support,
I didn't actually make any comparison in the actual search times, I stated that in my opinion that setting up deskrule's search parameters was more time consuming and cumbersome compared to Agent Ransack, but that's just my opinion and anyone is more than welcome to express their opinion, I suppose it all comes down to a matter of personal preferences.

Lenny,
Looked at your comparison table and can't see any mention of Agent Ransack there. Perhaps you should make sure when passing judgement on someone's comments that you have your facts right, I didn't at any time make a comment about the speed of the search, which would depend on a number of factors like the number of files to search, HD capacity, and the search parameters entered making it difficult to get a true measure of the search speed and remember everyone's system is different.

ME, for the more "exotic" formats you must install standard windows property handlers. For example, if you install the (free) PDF-XChange viewer, it installs column handlers that can be used to search PDF attributes like Author. Once installed, restart deskrule and add a search field for PDF using the "legacy column handlers" category. Note that deskrule can search for any shell column handlers, even those from total commander plugins (see http://zabkat.com/blog/tc-plugins.htm)

Salvia, as stated deskrule is windows vista or later, not XP. However you can try my file manager called xplorer2 (see text near the top of this page), which works even in windows 98 (!) and has a decent search engine. Free trial, also comes in a free lite version

Salvia,
WHY are you looking for modern software, if you are still using XP?
Surely you should stick with software from the last century if you are sticking with XP??

To mention that a modern software offer does not run on XP is a pretty mean comment to a current software developer.

Mick, Everything can only search for filenames, Deskrule searches everything (no pun intended). If you search within indexed folders it is as fast as your other tool. For a comparison of features, see the table near the end of the website page:
http://zabkat.com/deskrule/

Drek Meek, I think it needs a system-restart to work from context menu because it looks very, very old. I deinstalled it after one look.

Drek Meek, weird errors could be down to your antivirus program. Try to start deskrule directly, browsing the installation folder, which should be:
C:\Program Files\zabkat\Desktop (search) rules\deskrule.exe
what happens?

Drek, worked fine on my installation - Win7 x64, with no restart necessary. Installed just fine from the GOTD installer, with no registration needed, and no need to turn off my Anti-virus. I've used xplorer2 for many years and have been satisfied with the search functions in that program, so never saw the need to move to DeskRule - so I'm thankful to be able to try out Deskrule for a while with today's offer. It shares the "utilitarian" look of xplorer2, but with my limited tests so far seems to work well.

Dimma, deskrule can search everywhere, including all drives and even virtual drives and archives. It can search for any unicode text, I suppose russian too. Why don't you give it a try and see, it's free today :)