Delphi packages I have disabled by prefixing their description with an underscore (and why)
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/07/19
There is a little trick to disable “Known IDE Packages”: you can stop Delphi from loading one by either making “Value data” of the registry blank, or prepending it with an underscore:
packages that might have been disabled, by checking any string entries where the data has been pre-pended with an underscore OR is blank
[WayBack] Access violation at address 00000000 read of address 00000000, when starting the IDE or opening a project after installing the updates
I’ve pre-pended underscores to some packages in the registry key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland|Codegear|Embarcadero\BDS|Delphi\#.0\Known IDE Packages] and intend to keep the list below updated over time.
Note that you have to prepend the description with an underscore: it is not sufficient to add these to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland|Codegear|Embarcadero\BDS\#.0\Disabled Packages].Empirically, the
Disabled Packagesseem to work only for packages starting withdclin their filename.
_Start Page IDE Package- It often crashes with exception C0000005 or without an error at all.
- XE8 and below versions are a security risk as key directly fetch information from the embarcadero web-site (which got hacked a few times in the past).
_Castalia- It
- interferes with the clipboard which means Ctrl-R / Ctrl-P macro recording/playback will often find an empty clipboard when pasting
- often causes out of memory errors and other bugs
- takes over keyboard actions interfering with my edit habits
- (like re-assigning the slash key when you have a character on a line selected making it a block: bye-bye replacing just one character with a slash now; we’ve always had Ctrl-Slash to commend out a line or block)
- Note you
- have to *also* disabled it in
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Embarcadero\BDS|Delphi\#.0\Known IDE Packages\Delphi]: - can disable (without changing the regsitry at all) it by appending
" /NOCASTALIA"(without quotes but with leading space) to the parameters of the Delphi shortcut (another little Delphi secret).
- have to *also* disabled it in
- It
_Embarcadero Community Toolbar- Especially in Delphi Berlin, but also in other versions it crashes the Delphi IDE it will crash because:
- With
looks like a simple toolbar, but performs all kinds of background web-traffic to these servers:
- With
- Both Embarcadero domains run from the same server that historically have a bad security track record. Usertility is unencrypted and – despite sending the data as a Form POST – performs a UrlEncode on all the data. Just read Usertility.pas and form your own opinion.
- Especially in Delphi Berlin, but also in other versions it crashes the Delphi IDE it will crash because:
_Embarcadero Tracking System Package- As it slows down IDE shutdown usage since AppAnalytics went down.
- Disabling this from a registry key or from the options does not work for everyone, but for some it works:
- [WayBack] If you find RAD studio slow to shut down (with the bds.exe process seemingly hanging round a lot longer than it should after closing it), it’s likely due to the Embarcadero Experience Program being enabled, and it having trouble for whatever reason in phoning home… – Walter Prins – Google+
- XE8 introduced the [Archive.is] Embarcadero Customer Experience Program – RAD Studio
–jeroen
related:
- [WayBack] Access violation at address 00000000 read of address 00000000, when starting the IDE or opening a project after installing the updates
- [WayBack] `Known IDE Packages` in Delphi prompted by a comment +Jeroen Wiert Pluimers made « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff
- [WayBack] Delphi: disable or change your welcome page to not use the Embarcadero site (as that site has been hacked twice this weekend) « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff
- [WayBack] delphi – How can I disable Castalia in XE8? – Stack Overflow
- [WayBack] Delphi Code Monkey: Delphi 10.1 Berlin Pro Tip: Renaming CommunityToolbar bpl and good riddance to it.
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
jpluimers said
From the G+ thread https://plus.google.com/+WalterPrins/posts/dkB11bnYV6o
Attila Kovacs:
+shlomo abuisak +Jeroen Wiert Pluimers It’s very individual, those are the bps’s I don’t use because I don’t need them or because it’s just slowing down the IDE, Livebindings complete, everything with fmx*, ibx*, LivePreview, ModernTheme, profilemgride, sdkmgride, svn*, getit*, trackingsystem.
Warren Postma said
Castalia is now merged in, but the Community Toolbar is another IDE package you could consider disabling this way.
http://delphicodemonkey.blogspot.ca/2017/01/delphi-101-berlin-pro-tip-renaming.html
jpluimers said
Thanks. I’ve edited the post.
Why I always disable Castalia in Delphi « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff said
[…] wrote about disabling Castalia before. This is yet another reason why I disabled it: on a fresh install it will throw errors at […]
David Berneda said
I’ve pending to submit new feature request, to support underscore in known experts too