[Privoxy-users] Installation on Windows 11

[Ian Silvester]

My experience FWIW is that if I install as my daily driver account, even if that account has admin, upon reboot Privoxy throws an error that it cannot write to ./privoxy.log and dies. I find I have to use -install to avoid this issue. Same behaviour on Win 10 and 11.

Ian

On Thu, 1 May 2025, at 05:54, Fabian Keil via Privoxy-users wrote:
> Lee <ler762 at gmail.com> wrote on 2025-04-25 at 10:11:27:
>
>> On Fri, Apr 25, 2025 at 5:41 AM Fabian Keil wrote:
>> >
>> > PARISSE Michel via Privoxy-users <privoxy-users at lists.privoxy.org> wrote on 2025-04-23 at 12:26:32:
> 
>> > > I suspect that running the installation of privoxy has to be run in
>> > > administrator mode. If that is the case, could this be explicitly
>> > > documented in the section on windows installation?
>> 
>> Do you have a Privoxy icon on the taskbar?  that right clicking gets
>> you a menu showing
>>   Exit Privoxy
>>   Edit
>>   Enable
>>   Show Privoxy Window
>> 
>> I have a vague memory of installing privoxy as a service and that
>> disabling or removing the privoxy taskbar icon.
>> 
>> Was this the bit you followed?
>> 
>>   After invoking Privoxy with --install
>> 
>> if so, don't do that.  You can end up with something that works, but
>> that's about all I can say for it.
>> 
>> If you just double click on the installer it should ask where to install it
>>   the default being  c:\program files (x86)\privoxy
>> and it will create a shortcut for you in
>>   C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp
>> that will automatically start privoxy when you log in.
>
> Does this then run Privoxy as the same user as the one that's logged in?
>
> If I remember correctly the advantage of using the "--install" option
> is that Privoxy can be executed by a dedicated user (with the downside
> of not having the taskbar icon like you mentioned).
>
>> > Lee, do you know what the oldest supported Windows version is?
>> 
>> Windows 10 support ends Oct 2025, so I suppose Windows 10 is the
>> oldest supported version of Windows for another 6 months.
>> 
>> > I'm wondering if we still support versions that have no administrator
>> > mode. The documentation (doc/source/supported.sgml) claims we do but
>> > I suspect that it may be out of date.
>> 
>> The only windows machine I have is running windows 10.
>> 
>> https://cygwin.com/ has this bit:
>>   The Cygwin DLL currently works with all recent, commercially
>> released x86_64 versions of Windows, starting with Windows 8.1.
>> 
>> note the "released x86_64" .. 32 bit CPUs are not supported any more.
>> And a bit further down
>>   Cygwin 3.4.10 was the last Cygwin version supporting Windows 7,
>> Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
>> 
>> So you can't use the currently supported cygwin to build privoxy for
>> Windows 7, etc.  Which means using old software with known vulns :(
>
> I wonder if there are still users building Privoxy on earlier
> Windows releases.
>
> In doc/source/supported.sgml, we don't explicitly list the supported
> versions of other operating systems except for Mac OS X so maybe
> we shouldn't do it for Windows either.
>
> Fabian
>
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