[TC 11.00rc1] Crash when using Help > Index > Keyword

[brahman]

When I press F1 to open help, then click on "Index", then try to type the keyword "sort", TC crashes.

It seems it crashes on most words I type in after the second letter.

TC64 11RC1 with Admin rights, Win11 Pro 21H2, AMD Ryzen 5 3550H, 16GB RAM

[cpp64]

When I press F1 to open help, then click on "Index", then try to type the keyword "sort", TC crashes.

It seems it crashes on most words I type in after the second letter.

TC64 11RC1 with Admin rights, Win11 Pro 21H2, AMD Ryzen 5 3550H, 16GB RAM

os: win11 22h2 x64
tc: tc 11rc1 x64
with normal/admin rights.

--> Not confirmed.

When I press F1, I can't see the hh.exe in the Sysinternal's Process Explorer.
hh.exe (*.chm viewer) is not used by TC.
Perhaps TC's internal HTML parser(?) is causing the crash in the specific case. (in 21H2 ?)

[hi5]

I does happen for me too from time to time, it is not consistent and can't be replicated (e.g. perform the same again and it will work).

[ghisler(Author)]

Not confirmed. Btw, the help isn't part of my code, so even if I could reproduce it, there would be nothing I could do about it.

[white]

It's a Windows bug. I cannot find the original report any more, but I seem to remember that you have to open the help from 32-bit TC once to fix it.

(Click the ↑ symbol to go to the linked thread)

You probably can view more info about the crash by using Windows Reliability History.

[petermad]

When I press F1 to open help, then click on "Index", then try to type the keyword "sort", TC crashes.

Not confirmed here on Windows 7 and 10 - probably a bug in Windows 11's hh.exe

Does it also happen if you double-click on TC's totalcmd.chm file to open the help?

[cpp64]

2petermad

Not confirmed here on Windows 7 and 10 - probably a bug in Windows 11's hh.exe

os: windows 11 22h2 x64
tc: 11.00rc1 x64

I can't find the hh.exe in the Sysinternals' Process Explorer when pressing F1 on TC.
And also in the TaskList.exe, hh.exe is not listed.

But I can see the TC F1 HELP window.

Does TC open TOTALCMD.CHM internally ?

[brahman]

Ok, I made some more trials:

When I open Help with F1, NO hh.exe is shown in the process list, and when I enter 2 letters in "Help > Index Tab > Keyword" TC and Help crash together!

When I open Help by clicking on totalcmd.chm in the TC window, hh.exe IS shown in the process list, and when I enter 2 letters in "Help > Index Tab > Keyword" ONLY Help crashes but TC stands strong!

[Dalai]

When pressing F1 in TC, the help is embedded in its process, while still shown in a separate window. In this case it can be closed via ESC. When double-clicking on a .chm file, a separate process* is started; in this case the help can't be closed by ESC.

*) Usually this is done by hh.exe but technically such files can be associated and opened by any other program, e.g. xCHM or SumatraPDF.

Regards
Dalai

[white]

There's nothing new here. I already pointed out a possible solution given by Mr. Ghisler and pointed to a related thread.
Perhaps it is enough to run the following command once in the folder of your help file.

Code: Select all

c:\Windows\SysWOW64\hh.exe TOTALCMD.CHM

[brahman]

Further trials:

When I run TC64 not elevated, same behavior as in my post 10 minutes ago (crash).

When I run TC32 elevated and when I enter 2 letters in "Help > Index Tab > Keyword" results are REVERSED:
- NO crash at all when I open Help with F1, NO hh.exe is shown in the process list, and when I enter 2 letters in "Help > Index Tab > Keyword"
- crashes ONLY Help and not TC32 when I open Help by clicking on totalcmd.chm in the TC window (hh.exe IS shown in the process list) and when I enter 2 letters in "Help > Index Tab > Keyword"

Playing with TC32 in this way and then opening TCx64 and using Help, the problem did not go away - as someone suggested - but same behavior as before.

[brahman]

There's nothing new here. I already pointed out a possible solution given by Mr. Ghisler and pointed to a related thread.
Perhaps it is enough to run the following command once in the folder of your help file.

Code: Select all

c:\Windows\SysWOW64\hh.exe TOTALCMD.CHM

I did that now and there was no change.

I also opened an old TC v10 and same crash behaviour with TC64 and help.

Please also read my previous 2 posts about more tests.

[white]

Perhaps it is enough to run the following command once in the folder of your help file.

Code: Select all

c:\Windows\SysWOW64\hh.exe TOTALCMD.CHM

I did that now and there was no change.

Thanks for testing. So, there is no crash when pressing F1 in TC 32-bit and when using c:\Windows\SysWOW64\hh.exe, right?

Can you check the Windows Reliability History and confirm the crash occurs in C:\WINDOWS\system32\hhctrl.ocx ?

Have you done a restart yet? (no shutdown, but restart) Probably doesn't help, but always good to try if restarting Windows helps, since shutdown normally doesn't really shut down Windows.

[brahman]

Yes to all 3 of your questions.

Restart didn't help. Always reliably crashes!

I would like to make one comment:
I read the thread viewtopic.php?p=414672#p414672 in which Christian said, he cannot do anything and it is a windows bug.

So, I thought I try it with other chm files. Even much! bigger ones.

And the result was: None of them crashed when I entered 2 letters in "Help > Index Tab > Keyword".

So yes, it must be windows that does the crashing, but also: there must be something in TC's help file that causes the reaction of windows to crash. Otherwise it would happen with the other CHM files too.

So what is it in the help file that causes the crash and can it be corrected?

[white]

So what is it in the help file that causes the crash and can it be corrected?

Perhaps the better question is, what is in the 64-bit version of the help system that causes the crash.

Personally, I only had this problem for a short time when I reported it and then never noticed it again.

See also:
https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/79409