Nextstart freezes everytime I plug in a USB thumb drive.

Douglas · **Joined:** Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:40 pm **Posts:** 28

winstep wrote:

Douglas wrote:

Next, because I don't like quick launch icons showing in my task bar, I unchecked that in the quick launch settings in Nextstart. Then I rebooted, and the USB thumb drive issue returned. Hmmmmm, so I put a check mark back in to show quick launch icons, rebooted, and once again my thumb drive works fine. I can repeat this over and over. What that has to do with the issue is beyond me.

I'm going to restore my original backup, then put the check mark back in to show quick launch icons, reboot, and see if the issue is gone. Be right back.

So, if the Quick Launch icons are NOT being shown on the NextSTART taskbar you get the issue with the thumb drive and NextSTART freezing? If that is so, I think you just pointed me in the right direction to fix this issue.

I'll have to run some tests here too.

Yes. If I put the check mark in to show quick launch icons in the task bar, reboot.....all is well. Take that check mark out, reboot.....and the issue returns.

winstep · **Joined:** Thu Feb 26, 2004 8:30 pm **Posts:** 12285

Yay!

Pretty sure I figured it out and fixed it, thanks to your feedback and experiments! And I was right too, it did have something to do with the new CD Control internal command, although not in the way I was thinking. It also explains why NextSTART did not crash after resetting to factory defaults and THEN restoring from your backup.

So, here is what was happening: there is a dynamic array that holds the number of Quick Launch buttons in the taskbar. This array needs to be initialized to zero elements at least once, or you will get undefined behavior (i.e.; a crash) if you try to access it.

So, when you started NextSTART, because the taskbar was set to NOT display Quick Launch icons, this array never got initialized. When you inserted media in a removable drive (or a thumb drive), Windows would notify NextSTART of this so it could update any CD Control icon in the Quick Launch section, menus, etc..., with the type of inserted media. This routine was not checking first to see if Quick Launch icons were enabled or not, and would thus try to access the uninitialized array - CRASH & BURN!

Why didn't NextSTART crash AFTER restoring your backup? Because you had reset NextSTART to factory defaults just before doing this. NextSTART by default shows the Quick Launch icons in the taskbar, which in turn initialized the array. When you then restored your backup and inserted a thumb drive, the array had already been initialized by the factory reset, therefore NextSTART would not crash.

Simple way to test this: restart NextSTART. Enable the Quick Launch buttons and exit Preferences or click Apply. Disable Quick Launch buttons again. Insert thumb drive. Voila, no crash!

Right?

Douglas · **Joined:** Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:40 pm **Posts:** 28

Right! Glad we figured it out. Now i can run the most recent version. Thanks!

winstep · **Joined:** Thu Feb 26, 2004 8:30 pm **Posts:** 12285

I should make a v16.4 maintenance release in the next few days which is going to include this fix.

There was another problem with the GeoIP location code used for determining the user's location for the weather module which only became evident when the GeoIP service made an update to their servers on the 17th, and that needs to be fixed ASAP.

Winstep

Software Technologies

Winstep Forums

Nextstart freezes everytime I plug in a USB thumb drive.