V5.0.3 populated My Apps view with many portable apps never downloaded

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When I initially launched PMPC Home Updater 5.0.3 on 7 Nov 2024, it correctly detected 47 supported non-portable apps installed on my PC. However, it also populated the My Apps view with 98 out of the 100 supported portable apps before I could install even a single one. All 98 portable apps were displayed with a bogus version number of 1.1.1.0, with 20 identified as up-to-date and 78 identified as outdated (see attached screenshot). None of these portable apps appeared on the Uninstaller tab, although having an entry in My Apps and no corresponding entry in the Uninstaller tab should never occur and should have been caught as an error by the program. No files were downloaded to the configured Portables folder. The debug log contained related errors. I tried re-scanning the PC, uninstalling the portable apps from the My Apps view, and uninstalling and reinstalling PMPC, all to no avail.

I subsequently noticed among the reported Version 5 bugs that another user had reported a similar problem back on 23-24 Oct 2024. He had managed to resolve his problem without a response to his report by uninstalling a bogus item that appeared at the top of Uninstaller tab. His problem report was eventually closed with no further action on 27 Oct.

    V5.0 lots of apps showing up as installed that are not and never have been
    https://patchmypc.com/forum/index.php?topic=8146.0

I noticed that my Uninstaller tab also contained a bogus item. It consisted of an icon for AdwCleaner, a bogus version number of 1.1.1.0, a Publisher value of "OKI Data Corporation" and no values for DisplayName, UninstallArgs, or InstallDate as reported in the exported .csv file. Selecting the Uninstall option for the item produced no change (since there was no data UninstallArgs data). I tried manually uninstalling an unrelated, preexisting portable setup of AdwCleaner on the machine but that had no effect. I then searched the Windows registry for the occurrence of the Publisher name ("OKI Data Corporation") that appeared in this bogus item, and which was the name of the manufacturer of a former printer installed on my PC, all of whose drivers and software had been uninstalled when disposing of the printer. I did find the following InstallShield uninstall key which referred to a previously uninstalled utility program (ActKey) used with OKI printers and which contained the matching "OKI Data Corporation" text.

    HKLM\Software\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Installshield_(5985BA62-6CD88-4335- ...)

As the key did not include an identifiable uninstaller to run, I manually deleted the key from the registry and restarted PMPC Home Updater. This resulted in all of the erroneous entries for portable programs being removed from My Apps view and the bogus item being deleted from the Uninstaller tab, resolving the problem with 5.0.3 on my PC.

I also noted errors in the log file indicating that PMPC was looking for but could not find portable programs like AdwCleaner (and others) in the registry even though portable programs are not expected to have uninstall data in the registry; e.g.,

    [2024-11-09 15:55:28]  INFO  Application launch.
    [2024-11-09 15:55:28]  DEBUG  View MainViewModel has been loaded
    [2024-11-09 15:55:30]  DEBUG  View InstalledApplicationTabViewModel has been loaded
    [2024-11-09 15:55:45]  ERROR  System.Exception: Application AdwCleaner was not found in registry.
       at ModernHomeUpdater.ClientApp.ViewModels.InstalledApplicationTabViewModel.TryUninstallApp(InstalledApplicationViewModel model)
    [2024-11-09 15:56:00]  DEBUG  View ApplicationViewModel has been unloaded

Conclusion: There appears to be a problem for a small percentage of user installations with how PMPC Home Updater V5 is handling the uninstall entries in the registry when scanning the PC. I had none of these issues when running V4 on the same PC. This problem should be fixed or at least acknowledged and documented in the interim, providing troubleshooting information for affected users to recognize and possibly resolve the problem.