Scary Experience with XYplorer Trial

[LNEL108]

I've been using XYplorer on a trial basis for 9 days. I've set it up as my default file manager and made a few other configuration customizations. Today I had a very weird and kind of frightening experience.

I clicked on the XYplorer shortcut on my desktop, and it wouldn't start. I clicked on the XYplorer icon in pinned to my taskbar. It wouldn't start. I looked in Task Manager, and there were several instances of XYplorer (32 bit) running. I closed them and tried starting the program again. It wouldn't start. I restarted my computer, XYplorer still wouldn't start.

So then I thought of reinstalling, and clicked on my Dowloads folder to find the install exe file. My Downloads folder wouldn't open. I figured that was because I made XYplorer the default file manager. And then Yikes! I noticed I couldn't open any folders. So I downloaded the install file to my desktop from the XYplorer website and reinstalled. That didn't help. It still wouldn't start, and I still couldn't open folders.

So I bit the bullet and uninstalled. After that, this is the strangest part, I noticed that XYplorer icons were still on my desktop and taskbar. So I tried to start it up and, lo and behold, it's now working. I have no idea why uninstalling, without reinstalling mind you, would fix it.

So it's working now. The only thing that I notice is that there's no listing of the program in Control Panel Uninstall listing, or in the Apps-->Installed apps list in Settings.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what I need to do to sort this out? This is a new Dell desktop with Windows 11.

Thanks! L

[eil]

Don't have a clue how it can work after uninstallation, but all that described "run, not showing window but hanging in processes" sounds as a behaviour of some "internal defence" blocking the proper work.(like say some virus monitor false-blocking unknown app)

[LNEL108]

Thanks for your thoughts, eil. Today, I started having a bunch of error messages (Failed to save tags, Save settings failed, Error 76, etc.). So, given that I no longer had conventional uninstall options (see above), I used Revo Uninstaller Pro, Hunter Mode, to uninstall XYplorer. Upon reboot and reinstall, it's working nicely again.

Thinking overnight about what happened yesterday, I'm suspecting my issues may have been triggered by some misapplication of, or (possible?) bug in, the "Allow multiple instances"/"Open new instance always" options in the Startup & Exit section of the Configuration menu. I recall that I had been experimenting with them about 30 minutes prior to the bizarre behavior described above.

[highend]

Failed to save tags, Save settings failed, Error 76, etc.

Sounds to me that you didn't have a "Startup.ini" file in the XY folder anymore and it started to act as the portable version, trying to write into a subdir "Data" (which it can't unless it's running with admin privileges)

[LNEL108]

Could well be, highend. I'm just guessing . . .

[highend]

You can try that *g*
Exit XY, rename that file, start XY, try to save settings, tag something & save, etc.

To get the old state, again exit XY, rename the file back...