Found winstep crashed when i woke up, same dll unloaded error, rolled back to 16.9, so far no issues, will update

No crashing so far on 16.9
Only difference in visuals i could see between 16.9 and 16.12, while winstep is running in background was the overlay on email checker module, could it be causing the crash somehow, perhaps in combination with my setup or custom icon?

You can turn that off in v16.12 if you want.

But no, if it would cause a crash it would be an immediate crash. GDI+ is unforgiving. Plus, I have the email badge turned on here and, as I told you, no issues at all.

I did find a crash type of bug in the mean time (which I fixed already, of course): if you moused over a document icon while it was still 'morphing' into a thumbnail and you had an animated mouse over effect on (fire, swirl, etc...) the application would crash hard. Insta-crash, by the way - GDI+ does not validate incorrect parameters, it just crashes on the spot.

Look, for all I know it could even be a bad audio codec in your system. The new voices in v16.12 use MP3 files instead of Wav files like before. But I guess you would have noticed if the crash was tied to a voice notification.

Do you have any ideas how to catch the cause of the bug?
24 hours isn't definitive, but it does seem its something that changed from 15.9 to 16.12 to be causing it

haven't had any issues with audio before. cant say for sure how many times crash coincided with audio notification, i'm gonna keep 16.9 a day or two more, to be sure, then upgrade again and try turning off overlay and audio

So, what happened? Did the crashes stop with v16.9?

hmm it seems i didn't post my previous reply so im editing

sorry for not writing sooner but was waiting to collect my info, so i dont keep repeating the same
had 16.9 for couple of days without issues
upgraded back to 16.12, had a freeze (not full freeze, just right click not working on any docks/modules/items/shelf, subdocks not launching, and that second dll missing i described before, when opening certain tabs in preferences)
then disabled icon overlay, and replaced voice with chime, had no issues for couple of days, then after switching back to voice couple of 'freezes' and then

just now had a crash, maybe 10-20 of minutes after the voice announced i got new mail (notification about your post), i think the 'freeze' and the charsh are 2 symptoms of the same bug, im gona try turning off voice and turning on overlay now

"For some time I am a user of Winstep Nexus and actually very satisfied. But recently, the program has ended with an error message after about 60min, and I have to restart it again and again. What can be the cause. I therefore ask for your help."

I've been getting more reports of crashes in v16.12.

So it seems something is indeed wrong. Problem is, it doesn't happen here on ANY of my machines EVER - and I run the software 24/7.

This is beginning to smell like the Logitech webcam and the Intel/nVidia video card combo issues. In both cases the culprit was 3rd party software interfering with normal operation: the Logitech webcam control panel applet corrupted the stack every time the contents of the Control Panel were displayed in a menu or in the Shelf, crashing the application, and the Intel/nVidia driver caused an abnormal value to be returned when subclassing windows which, in turn, caused sub-classing to fail and a subsequent host of weird behavior.

These type of issues are *extremely hard* to diagnose because they require figuring out *the one thing* all the users with this issue have in common. As you can see, very few actually come forward - so far you're the only one complaining in the forums.

The user who sent the message above, by the way, is also running Avast.

What can i do to help? If you think avast could be the culprit i can uninstall it and replace it with something else for a few days

So far it seems that email checker voices are the trigger, although it doesn't happen when the notification sounds (or at least not every time)

It could very well be. That was one of the major changes in v16.12, going from .wav voice files to .mp3.

For instance, here whenever the MP3 voice played a LAV icon appeared in the system tray (it was actually annoying because this made the Windows taskbar briefly flicker into view until Winstep hid it again - fortunately there are options to turn the icon off).

Anyway, LAV is a multi-format audio decoder that is bundled with the K-Lite Coded Pack. The icon briefly appearing on the tray meant it was activating every time the Winstep application played an MP3 file. Now imagine it's corrupting memory somewhere every time it activates...

As for Avast... personally I use Eset Smart Security as I'm actually a beta tester for them (although I don't beta test much, to speak the truth). Never gave me any problems.

But hold on a while more to see if the issue is indeed related to the new MP3 voices or not before targeting Avast.

i think i havent installed any standalone codec packs on this installation.
only audio connected items appearing on my installed programs list are

ac3filter
openAL
quick time alternative
real player alternative
WebM project directshow filters
Xiph.org open codecs

players:
Aimp3
Amarok
Gom player and Gom audio player
Kodi
VLC
foobar

along with my audio drivers

haven't had problems with alarm manager using mp3 files, though i dont run it often since i mostly use free alarm manager (it has an added benefit of the alarm being able to be closed only with button click or alt-F4)

after the new year im gonna play around with mail checker settings some more, testing different voice settings and different voice packs to se if they trigger the crash too

What's the benefit? Didn't quite get that, sorry... that it can be closed with the keyboard?

sorry for being vague, benefit is for me since i have a sleep disorder and hard times waking up, it is harder to close so more likely i wont just close it without even looking up and go back to sleep

So you can only close it with ALT+F4?

I could add something like that... an anti-'turn it off and go back to sleep' mode.

yes, only alt-f4 and clicking on the off button
escape/enter and other things activate snooze

I set up winstep alarm manager to activate an alarm i previously used every hour, and it caused 'freezes', not every time it rang, but several times today.

Not sure why it didn't when i used it before, was there something different about my system or about earlier winstep versions, or i simply didn't use the alarms often enough

later ill try rolling back to earlier versions to test the alarms there

(alarm is using one of my mp3 files)