String color in IDE

[Pete]

I did a scan on both the QB64PE 3.12 zip and the zip file you just posted. Both were fine, no malware found.

Pete

[bplus]

I did a scan on both the QB64PE 3.12 zip and the zip file you just posted. Both were fine, no malware found.

Pete

Thanks thats good news but what is going on?

i tried everything again and now the bas code is running from qb64pe v3.8 but neither v3.10 nor 3.12 But! no exe is being created in the downloads folder, this is CRAZY!

all seems to be OK from my Desktop??? The code runs from all versions of QB64pe.

[Pete]

It sounds like your windows antivirus is preventing the exe file from being created in the later versions. It might just continue that behavior. If you are running another antivirus, and your qb64 program folder is whitelisted, you may to look into disabling the Windows antivirus. Unfortunately, that's not one I've done before, so I'm not providing you with any experienced info here. Hopefully, someone else with additional insight and experience will read these posts, and chime in.

Pete

[SMcNeill]

Be certain to whitelist your QB64 folder.

[TerryRitchie]

Starting with version 10 Windows treats "special" folders differently (Downloads, Pictures, Documents, etc..) with something called Controlled Folder Access. Basically only applications that are whitelisted by Microsoft are allowed to make changes to those folders. This could be the reason you are getting false positives, QB64PE is not on Microsoft's whitelist. Running a compiled QB64 EXE file within one of the special folders will also be seen as a non-whitelisted application. This is just a hunch on my part and I may be incorrect.

What I have always suggested to people wanting to install QB64 is to install it at the root of the C: drive ( C:\QB64PE ) or on the desktop ( C:\Users\UserName\Desktop ). Even in Windows 7 using just Microsoft Security Essentials I have had one or two false positives over the years, but never when I kept the installs on the root of the C: drive or the desktop.

Note that Windows 11 moves the user Desktop folder into a sub-folder called OneDrive if you are using OneDrive to store a copy of your files in the MS cloud. Windows 10 might do this as well but I'm not 100% sure.

[SMcNeill]

Install on a data drive usually prevents any issues as well.  (Drive D: )

[bplus]

OK first time ever I had to whitelist QB64pe but I did and redownloaded zip above, extracted into Dowloads folder and ran the bas with QB64pe previously setup to run bas through QB64pe v 3.12 as default exe for bas files.

The QB64pe v3.12 folder was on my Desktop to avoid Windows checking for malware everytime i used it.

update: i forgot to mention the most important part, the whitelisting of QB folder on desktop worked! I extracted and ran bas code in Downloads folder without an viral alert and got the exe compiled normally.

[a740g]

Starting with version 10 Windows treats "special" folders differently (Downloads, Pictures, Documents, etc..) with something called Controlled Folder Access. Basically only applications that are whitelisted by Microsoft are allowed to make changes to those folders. This could be the reason you are getting false positives, QB64PE is not on Microsoft's whitelist. Running a compiled QB64 EXE file within one of the special folders will also be seen as a non-whitelisted application. This is just a hunch on my part and I may be incorrect.

What I have always suggested to people wanting to install QB64 is to install it at the root of the C: drive ( C:\QB64PE ) or on the desktop ( C:\Users\UserName\Desktop ). Even in Windows 7 using just Microsoft Security Essentials I have had one or two false positives over the years, but never when I kept the installs on the root of the C: drive or the desktop.

Note that Windows 11 moves the user Desktop folder into a sub-folder called OneDrive if you are using OneDrive to store a copy of your files in the MS cloud. Windows 10 might do this as well but I'm not 100% sure.

This is correct. It is done for timely detection and prevention of ransomware. The Desktop and Downloads directories are also monitored closely. I am not a fan of whitelisting. For me, I just create a directory under the user directory (%UserProfile%) called source and keep everything under that. This works out well for VSCode, Visual Studio, QB64-PE and git.

[Kernelpanic]

As @Terry wrote, the directories in question were introduced under Vista, as I recall, and are controlled accordingly by the system. MS imitates here the home directory under Linux.

@bplus - one can easily avoid the whole problem with these directories if you split up your hard drive. I've been doing this since MS-DOS times. As an example a 500GB HD:
C:\ - 200GB NTFS. This is where the system and various programs are located, not data.

Extended partition with two logical drives.
D:\ - 250GB NTFS. Here are programs and personal data such as texts, images, etc.
E:\ - 50GB FAT32 for old programs that don't run under NTFS such as CoralDRAW 9.0, and more.

So there are no problems. At least it never happened for me.

[TerryRitchie]

As @Terry wrote, the directories in question were introduced under Vista, as I recall, and are controlled accordingly by the system. MS imitates here the home directory under Linux.

@bplus - one can easily avoid the whole problem with these directories if you split up your hard drive. I've been doing this since MS-DOS times. As an example a 500GB HD:
C:\ - 200GB NTFS. This is where the system and various programs are located, not data.

Extended partition with two logical drives.
D:\ - 250GB NTFS. Here are programs and personal data such as texts, images, etc.
E:\ - 50GB FAT32 for old programs that don't run under NTFS such as CoralDRAW 9.0, and more.

So there are no problems. At least it never happened for me.

Partitioning is a good idea that has mostly been forgotten about when NTFS became the norm for volumes (Win2K and above). Partitioning also has the benefit of allowing hard drives to store more data since the cluster sizes of the volumes will be smaller.

I keep a second hard drive installed in my computer formatted with an exFAT volume for programs that don't like NTFS. Even old DOS programs will work with it since Windows will use VFAT to store the old 8.3 filename convention within the directory structure. exFAT breaks the 2GB partition limit of FAT32 and also allows files larger than 4GB to be created.

If you are using external media greater than 32GB (SD cards, CF cards, external SSD/HDD, etc.) exFAT is the preferred method to use since all of the major OS' support it. I believe Windows 10 and 11 will only give you exFAT as an option on media >= 32GB. (I could be wrong about that)