Moving from Windows 10 to 11 not working?

[1helices]

Your question

Version 9.5.0.1 (stable), target google, locale en-US.
Companion App installed (v2.0.19)

I have been using licensed and paid-for Video DownloadHelper under Windows 10 for Chrome and Firefox for several years.

I am transitioning to a new Windows 11 laptop. While the extensions are there, the balls remain gray, and it will not download videos.

What am I missing?

Please, advise. Thank you.

~ Mike

Addon & CoApp version and details

version: 9.5.0.1
target: google
channel: stable
lang: en-US
coapp: {"found":true,"new_version":false,"path":"C:\Program Files\DownloadHelper CoApp\vdhcoapp.exe","version":"2.0.19"}
license: {"unset":true}
platform: x86-64 win
UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/139.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
{
"download_directory": "C:\Users\mds\dwhelper\MDS",
"never_show_no_incognito_msg_again": true,
"view_options": {
"all_tabs": false,
"hide_downloaded": false,
"low_quality": false,
"show_button_clean": true,
"show_button_clean_all": false,
"show_button_convert_local": false,
"sort_by_status": true,
"sort_reverse": false
},
"open_count_store": 3,
"successfull_dl": 40
}

[jcfrog]

Hi,
Could you share an example of a video with this issue?

[1helices]

I cannot identify even one video where VideoDownloadHelper works on my Windows 11 laptop.

I have tried several videos where it works on my Windows 10 PC, none of which work on the W11 laptop.

[GrampaWildWilly]

I do not work for VDH. I am just another user. Also, please read #2214.

My setup is Windows 11 Pro 64-bit version 24H2 build 26100.5074, Firefox 142.0.1 64-bit, licensed VDH 9.5.0.2, CoApp 2.0.20. But this is on a regular desktop system, not a laptop. But I don't believe that should matter.

When you say "transitioning," what exactly do you mean? Did W11 come preinstalled on the laptop? What order did you install things in? I'm assuming you got the laptop with W11 preinstalled, added the 2 browsers, then ran the VDH browser extension installations, then closed the browsers, then ran the CoApp installer. That would be the order in which I would have done things. It was the order I did do things on my system. But this is a system I built from components, then I installed W11 myself onto this virgin box. Then I installed the other pieces in the order I list them above, although I have only Firefox, not Chrome. I did all of that in December 2023. VDH has not given me any problems.

Two possible solutions come to my mind. Possible. Maybe. Maybe these will work, maybe they won't. I don't want to oversell it. First possibility is that the CoApp is somehow not installed in a way that the browsers are finding it. I would uninstall the CoApp using Revo Uninstaller. Search the web for it. It's free for home users, paid for commercial users. I've been using the free version for years & it's always worked great. Revo runs the uninstaller supplied with the app, in this case the CoApp uninstaller, which does exist. But once that step completes, it scrounges around in the registry to get rid of any leftovers. Then it scrounges around on your disk space to get rid of any leftovers. Before it actually deletes anything, it lists what it proposes to do. Check those lists carefully. I've never seen it try to delete something I thought was wrong but it's best to be safe.

Once you have removed the CoApp, try to install it again. Assuming you have the CoApp installer somewhere separate from the CoApp's final destination, Revo won't try to delete it, so you should still have it. Just run it again. See if that clears things up.

Normally, you can just disable the VDH browser extension in the browser while you uninstall & reinstall the CoApp. But I think since you've got 2 browsers, it might be safer to make sure they are both closed while you do this.

The second possible solution involves antivirus/firewall. There are some old discussions in here on the subject. But it's been rather a long time since anybody reported anything that related to this. It seems like people have caught on & things have quieted down. I am using the antivirus built into W11 & it has never caused a problem with VDH. If you're also using that, then I don't know what the issue could be. If you're running something else, you need to tell it that every executable in the CoApp directory must be allowed to run. That would be to tell the antivirus to make exceptions for them & to tell the firewall to let them through. The CoApp directory is shown in the CoApp installer during the install process so pay attention to what it tells you.

I'm just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Do come back to say what you've tried & how you've gotten on.

[1helices]

Thank you for your thought provoking reply.

First, by transitioning, I mean that I need to replace my old Windows 10 workstation, that cannot run Windows 11, and I have this new Windows 11 laptop, on which I must run everything - actually a lot of software - that I currently run on that obsolete host.

Second, at first I cannot recall where the Coapp installed, much less find it to remove it.

Then, I decided to simply install Coapp over the top of what was already there.

Brilliant me, I finally noticed the instruction about closing all browsers PRIOR to Coapp installation - which I did.

After installation over the previous installation, I am able to download videsos via both Chrome and Firefox.

Thank you.

~ Mike

[GrampaWildWilly]

And you paid attention during the CoApp install so now you know where it is, right? Plus the VDH settings include information telling you where the CoApp is installed. It's pretty easy to find. Just read the settings as if you'd never seen them before.

When it comes to uninstalling, you go to Settings -> Apps -> Installed apps. There's a 3-dot control there that gives you the option to uninstall whatever app you might care to uninstall. You don't need to first know where it is. Our CoApp is there under the name DownloadHelper CoApp. Similarly in Revo, you don't need to know where anything is to uninstall it. It knows, probably from the registry, where the app is installed & it finds the app's uninstaller without any help from you.

[1helices]

If everything appears to be working as expected now, what is a good reason to UNinstall and reinstall Coapp?

[GrampaWildWilly]

I thought maybe there were registry issues that might be cleared by uninstalling with Revo. Just running the CoApp's uninstaller might not clear those. I don't know its internals. Revo would have cleaned those up. But your experience shows that the registry was not an issue in your case. So you might have been lucky. For future reference, Revo would be the tool to use since it runs the CoApp's own uninstaller but then does the extra steps I described earlier. Since you're up & running now, I say it ain't broke so there's nothing to fix.