xyplorer crashes unexpectedly

[stoik]

I happen to be quite extreme in regards to context menu and shell extensions. Because of various issues with shell extensions, I have completely stopped using the right-click context menu. I have entirely replaced it with the Custom File Associations (via drop-down button on toolbar). To copy or move from left pane to right pane, and vice versa, I use the copy/move toolbar buttons (not right-click drag-and-drop).

In other words, the crash can occur even after freshly starting my PC, and the first operation is "create new folder" in XYplorer.

I have already disabled all the shell extensions that can be disabled. Some cannot be disabled by default, e.g. "play with windows media player" cannot be disabled (thanks, MicroSoft !) without special registry tweaks. But surely, XYplorer should be resistant to such *very common* shell extensions. like e.g. Windows Media Player or Adobe Reader. That's like a car crashing when roads are wet after rain, yes you can blame the rain, but surely cars should be resilient to such common environmental circumstances. Total Commander, EF Commander, Xplorer2, none of them crash, but they are all so inferior to XYplorer in so many other features ! Windows File Explorer is becoming more and more idiotic with each new version of Windows.

[stoik]

But ... dear admin ... I will take Your hint, good advice, and will switch XYplorer from my current 32-bit context menu (as I am not using it anyways) to the 64-bit context menu, and lets see what happens. I will let You know. Maybe, with regular PC and XYplorer use, the context menu comes into play even without me being aware of it. Thanks for Your advice !

My comment about better resilience remains though. Probably some two thirds of PC users have never heard of shell extensions. You know, those Kim Kardashian brains ... They will just blame XYplorer, and move on to something "cheap and cheerful". Although, such brains probably do not use XYplorer in the first place (too damn clever for them).

[admin]

I take every crash as seriously as I can. But no one else is reporting the crashes you are experiencing. So it might be possible that I never can reproduce those crashes. Makes them hard to fix.

[stoik]

Dear Admin,

You are making a VERY FAIR point about not being able to reproduce my crashes, which makes it impossible for You to do anything about it.

But I am not so sure about "no one else having these crashes". The first thing I did was search this forum for "crashes", and I found PLENTY of entries. It is for this very reason that I did not open a new topic/post, but I joined this particular post - to avoid parallel discussions and thus wasting time.

Well, if You cannot reproduce it, than that is it. Tough luck for me.

The usual defensive posture of denial by some administrators, who cannot be bothered, is : "you are the only one wining about this", or "blame some other software - causing interactions", or (the most ridiculous one) "it's a Windows bug" (my comment : You are supposed to adapt to Windows, not the other way around). As a paying customer, I do expect some help. But I know that You are nothing like that, You spending time corresponding with me proves it, so I will keep an eye on this forum and keep hoping for a resolution.

Keep up the good work, and thanks again !

[stoik]

A bit more info (for whatever it is worth and if anyone is interested) : using exclusively the 64-bit context menu does not remove the crashes.

This is in response to the admin's suggestion from above.

[stoik]

And Yuxt, You started this post, but then You went silent.

Whatever happened to Your problem ?

Still just living with it ? I find that hard, because crashes often mess up my XYplorer settings in some pretty wired ways, like toolbar buttons start acting strangely, etc, so I restore settings from a backup of the Data folder.

Or did You solve this problem ? How ? Would You share that with us ?

Or did You just move on to another file manager. Sad, I still find XYplorer the best, if I could just get rid of these crashes.

[stoik]

OK, I narrowed this problem down, if any admin is interested.

Short answer : crashes happen when I create a new folder in a directory that has lots of sub-folders with lots of files.

Environment : (1) I do not use the tree (that is closed), just two panes. (2) I am using the latest version of XYplorer (24.50.01000). (3) In configuration, I have disabled the use of shell extensions in context menu.

Comment : I do not know for sure, but I suspect that XYplorer is busy analyzing the folder & file structure, and then a new command (create new folder) - in the midst of this - causes a crash.

How I got to this point : I was carefully analyzing your forum for crashes, so I ran into a post about "Run-time error '9' Subscript out of range". You can find it here - viewtopic.php?p=147798&hilit=subscript+ ... ge#p147798. Namely, my crashes were sometimes (but not always) accompanied by such error messages. I first disabled the use of any scripts (I was using some in customized toolbar buttons). That did not stop the crashes, but it did stop the script error messages. The user who created that post (steev) wrote "I get this popup message when I navigate to a directory with a large number of sub directories". So I started paying attention to this with my crashes, and indeed, they all happen when a new folder is created in a directory that is "loaded". I repeat, this happens randomly, so to reproduce it, You have to keep creating new folders many times until it happens. One attempt, no crash, "sorry, can't reproduce it, tough luck for You" - is not the right response, if You wish to address it (in my humble opinion).

In that other post that I quoted above, the admin labelled is as a bug (if I understood that correctly), and wrote "Thanks for reporting it". Doesn't my problem also sound like a bug, especially since I disabled the use of any shell extensions ?

Many thanks in advance to anyone who wishes to look into this.

[admin]

Short answer : crashes happen when I create a new folder in a directory that has lots of sub-folders with lots of files.

1) How do you create a new folder?

2) What is "lots of" in numbers?

[stoik]

1) How do you create a new folder ?
a. Menu -> Edit -> New -> New Folder,
b. sometimes toolbar button with script :
focus "L";
wait 50;
$folder = input("Enter Folder Name ...", , "Folder");
new($folder, "dir");

2) What is "lots of" in numbers ?
hundreds to thousands
the bigger the number, the higher the odds of crash.

But crashes are still relatively rare (especially with newer versions of XYplorer) - may be twice a day,
I can live with the relatively low frequency of crashes
the only nuisance is that occasionally it corrupts some of the settings and XYplorer starts behaving oddly,
so I have to restore settings from a backup.
By the way, I am using the portable version of XYplorer.
Thanks !

[admin]

Thanks, I'll watch it.

[stoik]

Thank You very much.
I do understand that, without reproducing it, You cannot do anything.
All I expect from You is to keep an eye on it, monitor Your own PCs for such occurrences, and watch this forum for similar reports.
Greetings !

[stoik]

Some good news and some questionable news.

The good news : I solved my problem ! No crashes now for 5 days.
Highly unusual, I usually have about 5 to 10 crashes a day. The random pattern of crashes, plus them occurring only after some length of use - on file-rich folders, suggested to me the possibility of memory leaks. So I started using a continuous RAM cleaner (I normally don't need it for Windows because modern Windows versions & their programs - e.g. File Explorer - handle memory very well), and voila, no more XYplorer crashed for 5 days ! By the way, the memory cleaner is "Mem Reduct" version 3.4 from henrypp (www.henrypp.org).

The questionable news : well, I am glad that not many more people are complaining to You about such a problem, as one earlier administrator suggested. On the other hand, this still begs the question : why is XYplorer the only program (among my many many programs) that is suffering from such a memory leakage problem. Even if it is just a victim of some "evil" shell extension, how come are all other file explorers (e.g. Total Commander, Xplorer2, Free Commander, Windows own File Explorer) immune while XYplorer is not ? Think a bit about that perhaps, especially if crashes are also occurring in slightly different circumstances. I do not any longer have a personal agenda here, my problem is resolved, and thank You guys for giving me advice earlier. Cheers !

[admin]

This "memory leak problem" is your theory, and I think that theory is wrong. If there were a leak, many users would suffer from it (including me), and some of them would report it (including me).

[stoik]

Thanks for Your reply.
Your point is very fair.

Any few short points I might make from here on, are not from any self-interest (my issue is fixed, "what do I care"), but because I wish this nice project well.

You are the expert (admin), I am just a humble user, although with lost of experience (since 1995) with file explorers and such. Therefore my logic is just plain/basic common sense, which sometimes should not be totally underestimated.

The reason you are not seeing many similar complaints is just what You suspect and say : I have some specific circumstances on my PC that You are not able to reproduce.

Here is my core argument : a memory cleaner fixed it ! At a time when I changed nothing else. And no other program has this problem. Even if XYplorer is just a "victim" of some shell extension (fair and logical thought), why is it the only victim ?

The only purpose of me drawing Your attention to this is not to deal with thousands of customers complaining of the SAME thing, because they do not exist (as You point out).

My point is : consider also other crashes is SIMILAR but seemingly somewhat different circumstances. Those and my story MIGHT be related. Now that IS just a theory, and it might be totally wrong. That is all I wanted do say. If so, building in some memory cleaning into XYplorer itself (for XYplorer only) should not be much of a burden - I have memory cleaners that are only 60 KB in size).

That's all. I won't bother You with this topic any more, since You obviously have read it. Thanks for You feed-back, greatly appreciated. Keep on the good work !

[admin]

A memory leak is easy to find, even in Task Manager. There is no leak as far as I can see. I think the crucial point here is the large folder condition, and intuitively I would rather bet on a race condition than a memory leak. Now a memory cleaner can also change the environment of a race condition which could it explain its impact. Race condition issues are notoriously hard to reproduce because there are so many factors involved, including hardware. It can come down to the brand of your mouse! So what I need to repro the crash is luck. Luck can strike at any time, so we can keep hope alive.