BUG: TC 7.02a going "poof" upon right-click

[ibauer]

This is just driving me crazy. In eight of ten times, Total Commander 7.02a simply vanishes upon right-click inside the file pane. There is no exception being thrown, it just goes poof. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2 with latest updates applied.

And yes, I already tried disabling all non-Microsoft context menu shell extensions with ShellExView tool, rebooting my machine, but to not avail. The problem still persists. I find myself using Windows Explorer far more than TC these days, because this problem does never happen with Explorer on my machine

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

[Clo]

2ibauer

Hello ! Welcome aboard !

…There is no exception being thrown, it just goes poof…

Are you sure that “poof” be the right word ?

• That said, please tell us which OS you are running, and other details…
- The EXE could be corrupted by a virus, or you are using an alternative Shell ?
- IMHO, you might save your setting files and reinstall TC from a fresh archive (from ghisler.com)…

 Kind regards,
Claude
Clo

[dott]

• That said, please tell us which OS you are running

I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2 with latest updates applied

[ibauer]

Hi all and thanks for your responses!

That said, please tell us which OS you are running, and other details…

As pointed out by dott, I've specified my OS details already. It's Windows XP Professional SP2 with the latest updates installed. What other details are you interested in? My machine has single core Athlon 64 CPU and 2 GB RAM (MemCheck86 test passed successfully). My hard drives are also defect free (tested using HDDScan and other simlar tools). My graphics board is nVidia GeForce 6600 GT and I'm running the latest version of ForceWare.

The EXE could be corrupted by a virus, or you are using an alternative Shell ?

The TC executable is not corrupt (tested with md5sum against the fresh new installation) and I don't use an alternative Shell.

you might save your setting files and reinstall TC from a fresh archive

I just did it, downloaded the installer from various sources listed on the home page, verified the md5sum and reinstalled. Nothing has changed so far.

[Lefteous]

2ibauer
Hi,

please try the test program which is located in the debug directory of the linked archive:
https://plugins.ghisler.com/addons/samplerightclick.zip

[ibauer]

please try the test program which is located in the debug directory of the linked archive:
https://plugins.ghisler.com/addons/samplerightclick.zip

I downloaded the archive and ran the test program after ALL context menu shell extensions had been re-enabled on my system. No matter how hard I try, I can't make the test program crash or go poof. Browsing menu subitems, selecting them (including the test menu item) works just fine. As soon as I close the test program and launch TC, right-clicking the same files as done previously with the test program, makes TC going poof again.

Oh well. I really like TC, but this particular issue renders it unusable to me. Can I get a hold of a special debug version of TC that produces some kind of a log, call stack dump at the crash time, etc.? I would be happy to assist finding out what the culprit is. I'm registered user of TC and can provide my credentials to the author of TC if desired.

[Lefteous]

2ibauer
this tool written by Ghisler claims to do the same as TC does. So it's very strange that it doesn't crash while TC does.
You might have to wait until tomorrow when the author visits the forum.

[ibauer]

Oh, well. Shame on me. I apologize to everyone for choosing an inappropriate word in my posts. Every time I wrote "poof" I was actually meaning "puff". I didn't intend to be offensive, it just happened that I picked a wrong word. Sorry about that again.

[ibauer]

this tool written by Ghisler claims to do the same as TC does. So it's very strange that it doesn't crash while TC does.
You might have to wait until tomorrow when the author visits the forum.

Yep, it's strange that noone else can experience this issue apart from me. Thanks to all for the suggestion you gave me so far, I'm looking forward to get some feedback from the author regarding this issue.

[karlchen]

Hi, iBauer.

Well, as Nirsoft ShellExview did not help locate the problem, maybe the source of trouble is not a faulty shell extension at all.
Maybe the source of trouble is located inside Total Commander itself, or to be more precise inside one of the plugins or inside the wincmd.ini.

In order to verify if this is the case launch T.C. and use a fresh, empty wincmd.ini file.
You can do so by going to Start => Run. Type in the following commandline:

[path_to]\totalcmd.exe /N /I=.\FreshTC.INI /F=.\FreshFTP.ini

and click on Run.
Note:
You will need to replace [path_to] by the fully qualified name of the folder where T.C. has been installed.

If using the right click inside this T.C. instance does not cause T.C. to crash, the you can be sure that the problem is caused by
+ either your normal wincmd.ini
+ or one of the plugins which you use.

HTH,
Karl
--
P.S.:
T.C. is used here on WinXP Prof SP2 (32bit, patches up-to-date) without any crashes. (Same is true for all the other Windows platforms we use T.C. on: Win2K, Win2003)

[tumasch]

I have exactly the same problem.

Rightclick onto one or more files, the context menue appears, and after a few seconds (somtimes more, somtimes less) TC is gone ...

I uninstalled 7zip and for now it seems to work.

[valrond]

I have the exact same problem. Right click to almost anything except folders and a few file types and TC just closes. It doesn't happen with windows explorer. I'm using Vista x64.

I haven't installed any new shell extension plugin, but it started to happen a week ago and now it's really annoying.

BTW, it also happens to freecommander. I tried it to see if it didn't happen there, but it's the same.

[ghisler(Author)]

Have you tried to find the problematic shell extension with ShellExView (32-bit version)?

[ibauer]

Hi Karl,

Maybe the source of trouble is located inside Total Commander itself, or to be more precise inside one of the plugins or inside the wincmd.ini.

OK, I've done exactly what you said and indeed TC does not crash when a fresh/empty configuration file is used. As I don't use any plugins, I started to make a modifications to the configuration one by one and checked whether or not the last modification will make it vanish...

...After probably a hour I have managed to see the fruits of my labor as I was able to pinpoint what is causing this instability. The only difference between a crashing configuration and non-crashing one is ...drumroll... language setting! If I use the Czech translation (the one that ships with the official installer), TC keeps vanishing shortly after right click, but when I change the UI language back to the stock English, I can no longer see the TC vanishing!!!

The good news is that I can finally use Total Commander. The bad news is that I can't use my preferred TC translation anymore, but I guess I could live with that.

[ibauer]

Hi Christian,

Have you tried to find the problematic shell extension with ShellExView (32-bit version)?

Thanks for the response. Yes, I've actually tried many things before posting my original message here, including disabling ALL non-Microsoft context menu shell extensions using ShellExView, as stated in my original message.

As you can see I have been able to pinpoint the source of my problem. It is the Czech language setting. When I switch to the stock English translation, all appears to be well.

Do you have any idea what in the Czech language file handling could be cause of such an instability?