Again WsxMMTimer unloaded.

What were you doing with the Winstep application at the time? Nothing again, I presume?

nope, not a thing, fullscreen video on gom player

Hmmmm... not familiar with it, but gom player uses the Multimedia Timers too. It should not interfere however, unless it does something really nasty, but I don't know what that could be.

WorkShelf uses a single multimedia timer (even though *each* process can use up to 16).

The multimedia timer is used in docks, the Shelf, the properties dialog arrow bouncing animation (the arrow you get when opening the dock and Shelf properties dialog in the Shelf & Docks tab in Preferences to let you know which properties dialog belongs to which dock) and in the Effects Panel. This guarantees the 10 ms timer resolution required for the effect animations.

As long as one of those is visible/open, the WsxMMTimer DLL remains loaded in memory. Since you always have the Shelf and a couple of docks visible, it should NEVER unload until you exit WorkShelf.

However, apparently that's not what is happening. Why? No idea. The only thing I know for sure is that it's not the Winstep application unloading that DLL.

are you sure it should go that high without dumping some of that memory? i dont remember ever seeing workshelf with more dan 20000 K memory before


since now i have reference date (version 16.12 was released 8th of dec, not sure when my autoupdate picked it up but i think 11th or 12th based on event viewer log) i was able to pinpoint my installations around that time more closely

before
free download manager (update) 5.12.2016
cybergost update from 5 to 6 -5.12.2016
discord update -7.12.2016
kvirc -5.12.2016

around the winstep update
winstep update -unsure
second life -9.12.2016
team viewer -10.12.2016
pot player update -11.12.2016
team viewer -10.12.2016
yahoo messenger - -12.12.2016
jap -ran once -13.12.2016
firefox update -15.12.2016

its also possible i ran Elder scrolls online, its mod manager and steam updates in this period but im not sure
no driver or windows updates

out of those programs i only use firefox, yahoo messenger and kvirc reguraly, pot player occasionally (not overlaping with crashes)

You know what? I might have found the 'guy pulling the trigger'.

You mentioned the crashes usually happen when you're not doing anything with the Winstep application. In fact, last time you were simply watching a movie.

Now try to remember: haven't most, if not all, of the crashes happened when the computer had been idle for over 10 minutes (i.e.; when you hadn't touched the mouse or keyboard for at least that long, as it would naturally happen when watching a movie)?

Dont think so, i think as often it would be while i was browsing or talking in KVirc. but ill pay attrntion to check it out

Probably easier if I just make a new build with the potential 'trigger' removed, to see if that makes the crashes go away.

Ok, download the new WorkShelf executable inside a zip file from HERE.

You will need to

1. Exit all running Winstep applications.
2. Unzip the contents of workshelf.zip to a folder in your hard drive
3. Copy the new WorkShelf.exe file to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Winstep\

overwriting the older WorkShelf executable already there.

will do, though i haven't had a crash since lat night (i leave my laptop running) my best guess is that it would be KVirc (hard to say if the crashes only happend while it has been running), have it shut down now,
or some malware, still running deep scans (founf only a pup 'esgscanner' so far)

it crashed twice today, once before replacing worshelf.exe, nonce after, i'm gonna try to exclude programs from running to see if i can pinpoint the conflict, but its hard to say when the crash happens so irregularly. i will update as anything happens

In the new version you have I removed a call to CoFreeUnusedLibraries. All that call does is remove *unloaded* DLLs from memory. A bit like garbage collection: the memory manager tends to let 'dead things' linger around for a while in case they might be needed again soon - this is a good approach in terms of performance, but can make the application *look* bloated even though all that memory is immediately released if the system needs it - unfortunately for many users perception is everything.

It was the only thing I saw in the code that *might* be remotely behind WsxMMTimer being unexpectedly unloaded (even though CoFreeUnusedLibraries should never cause that because there are active references to that DLL at all times, it's not marked as unused).

Still, it was worth a shot.

Don't know what to tell you, Winstep Xtreme never crashes here. It's running 24/7 on my Windows 7 development PC and on a Windows 10 machine I have.

Normally there are two places where Winstep applications are extremely vulnerable to 3rd party applications: buggy shell context menu extensions (those options added by 3rd party applications to the context menu of files in Explorer, e.g.; Play with VLC media player, 7-zip sub-menus, etc...) and Control Panel applets.

The first group can crash the Winstep application when you right click on a file item in a dock or the Shelf: by default (this can be turned off so only simplified menus are shown) Winstep will try to give the user all the options he would see in the context menu if he had right clicked that file in Explorer. Unfortunately this means 'foreign' code will run inside the Winstep process to create those 3rd party owner-drawn menus - if the 3rd party context menu handler does not properly clean up after itself or crashes, it takes the Winstep application down with it.

Buggy 3rd party Control Panel applets can crash the Winstep application when displaying the contents of the Windows Control Panel in a Shelf tab or in a menu. When asking the shell to enumerate the contents of the Control Panel, Windows will initialize some of those 3rd party control panel applets from within the Winstep process. A bad/buggy DLL can crash or trash the stack (the latter happened with software from Logitech webcams, for instance!), something that will, in turn, crash the Winstep application.

The problem with all of the above is not just the crash - but the fact that the REAL culprit is never identified. Instead the application itself takes the fall, making it seem buggy and unstable when, in fact, it isn't.

For instance, that Logitech issue I mention above: it's a true story, happened some years ago. It was a real nightmare and took a long time to figure out that all the users experiencing the crash had a Logitech webcam in common.

I ended up having to buy a Logitech webcam myself to finally figure out exactly what was going on and work around it. And I say work around it because it's not something you can fix - you can't fix code that does not belong to you. And when that code belongs to the most popular manufacturer of webcams in the world - and also the most unresponsive to emails, etc... - well...!

Anyway, AV solutions, etc, (and, of course, malware) also have the bad habit of injecting code into your process. There is nothing you can do to avoid this. Again, it's the Winstep application that takes the fall if that code crashes or ends up doing something unusual that causes it to crash.

If there is a conflict with any of the programs, good chance its KVirc, since not only its one of the recently installed software, but its also only one i shut down for the night, and i don't remember any crashes waiting me in the mornings

i'm going to avoid using KVirc for a bit to see how many if any crashes i get

its gonna take a few days to be sure since crashes happen irregularly, sometimes often sometimes not for a while

Not sure why it would be causing the winstep to crash, it seems to be common free irc software, doesn't affect nether context menu or control panel and it isn't heavy on the cpy/ram/gpu

Malwarbytes, panda cloud cleaner and hitman pro scans found few small infections, pups and such, nothing that should affect winstep
still have to run spybot and avast full scan

As for AV, only active AV i have is avast, had it for years, no problems with winstep before, and it hasn't updated recently.
Rest are on demand second opinion scanners that i haven't ran in at least a month (don't even let spybot run its background services as i find it annoying popping out at random times)

I doubt very much it's KVirc. I just noticed I have it installed as well (although I never use it, can't remember the last time I went to IRC).

I remember installing it because it was one of the few applications that did not respond correctly to clicks on the system tray icon (tray icons on the Winstep application, of course), and I needed to fix that issue.

No crashing so far since i havent been using KVirc but again this:
http://prntscr.com/dle7ba

i can open 'sounds', 'tasks', 'tray' and 'advanced' tabs in preferences, but the rest give this error
modules shelf and tab don't respond to right click, i can i can expand the shelf, select different tabs,launch shortcuts that are visible but cant open any sub docks

after some experimentation with the shelf, a different crash than before (while double-clicking on a shelf tab to expand it into 2 lines at the same moment email checker said its notification):

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: WorkShelf.exe
Application Version: 16.12.0.1195
Application Timestamp: 585644b2
Fault Module Name: WorkShelf.exe
Fault Module Version: 16.12.0.1195
Fault Module Timestamp: 585644b2
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 003fbeed
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1050
Additional Information 1: 9617
Additional Information 2: 9617f2e993d4bce2188b98cd5b56e4cb
Additional Information 3: 5b41
Additional Information 4: 5b4196b4037a7467025da007dae206dd

i have turned Yahoo Messenger off now too, and now i'm running only software i have been using regularly for a while now without any issues or conflicts with winstep