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 Post subject: Winstep Media Player has stopped working
PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 8:35 pm 
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Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2019 11:01 pm
Posts: 25
Location: Chicago
This one has been nagging me since I started using Winstep Nexus.

Regular access violation and stack overflows. Seems to be only on my Win8.1 machine. The Win 10 machines seem happy.

Attachment:
2019-03-17_15-29-46.png
2019-03-17_15-29-46.png [ 142.82 KiB | Viewed 8302 times ]


Here is the stack overflow:

Code:
Version=1
EventType=BEX
EventTime=131972400045814596
ReportType=2
Consent=1
ReportIdentifier=16504c73-4826-11e9-80e1-5cf370664474
IntegratorReportIdentifier=16504c72-4826-11e9-80e1-5cf370664474
WOW64=1
NsAppName=WsMMPlay.exe
Response.type=4
Sig[0].Name=Application Name
Sig[0].Value=WsMMPlay.exe
Sig[1].Name=Application Version
Sig[1].Value=17.2.0.0
Sig[2].Name=Application Timestamp
Sig[2].Value=58856f6e
Sig[3].Name=Fault Module Name
Sig[3].Value=mciqtz32.dll
Sig[4].Name=Fault Module Version
Sig[4].Value=6.6.9600.17415
Sig[5].Name=Fault Module Timestamp
Sig[5].Value=54504791
Sig[6].Name=Exception Offset
Sig[6].Value=00001aa6
Sig[7].Name=Exception Code
Sig[7].Value=c0000409
Sig[8].Name=Exception Data
Sig[8].Value=00000002
DynamicSig[1].Name=OS Version
DynamicSig[1].Value=6.3.9600.2.0.0.768.101
DynamicSig[2].Name=Locale ID
DynamicSig[2].Value=1033
DynamicSig[22].Name=Additional Information 1
DynamicSig[22].Value=e8b2
DynamicSig[23].Name=Additional Information 2
DynamicSig[23].Value=e8b20f4d01d8b29869e2cb0850494195
DynamicSig[24].Name=Additional Information 3
DynamicSig[24].Value=2534
DynamicSig[25].Name=Additional Information 4
DynamicSig[25].Value=25343fb00ee3aa1474f63c97f32d15ca
UI[2]=C:\Program Files (x86)\Winstep\WsMMPlay.exe
UI[3]=Winstep Media Player has stopped working
UI[4]=Windows can check online for a solution to the problem.
UI[5]=Check online for a solution and close the program
UI[6]=Check online for a solution later and close the program
UI[7]=Close the program


The access violation:
Code:
Version=1
EventType=APPCRASH
EventTime=131970816052645799
ReportType=2
Consent=1
ReportIdentifier=48dce3e0-46b5-11e9-80e1-5cf370664474
IntegratorReportIdentifier=48dce3df-46b5-11e9-80e1-5cf370664474
WOW64=1
NsAppName=WsMMPlay.exe
Response.type=4
Sig[0].Name=Application Name
Sig[0].Value=WsMMPlay.exe
Sig[1].Name=Application Version
Sig[1].Value=17.2.0.0
Sig[2].Name=Application Timestamp
Sig[2].Value=58856f6e
Sig[3].Name=Fault Module Name
Sig[3].Value=mciqtz32.dll_unloaded
Sig[4].Name=Fault Module Version
Sig[4].Value=6.6.9600.17415
Sig[5].Name=Fault Module Timestamp
Sig[5].Value=54504791
Sig[6].Name=Exception Code
Sig[6].Value=c0000005
Sig[7].Name=Exception Offset
Sig[7].Value=000015d6
DynamicSig[1].Name=OS Version
DynamicSig[1].Value=6.3.9600.2.0.0.768.101
DynamicSig[2].Name=Locale ID
DynamicSig[2].Value=1033
DynamicSig[22].Name=Additional Information 1
DynamicSig[22].Value=8fed
DynamicSig[23].Name=Additional Information 2
DynamicSig[23].Value=8fed79b02f57c8b6a429e4eca59d0504
DynamicSig[24].Name=Additional Information 3
DynamicSig[24].Value=114c
DynamicSig[25].Name=Additional Information 4
DynamicSig[25].Value=114c933d976051d85252b8f8aea948ca
UI[2]=C:\Program Files (x86)\Winstep\WsMMPlay.exe
UI[3]=Winstep Media Player has stopped working
UI[4]=Windows can check online for a solution to the problem.
UI[5]=Check online for a solution and close the program
UI[6]=Check online for a


Suggestions ?


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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Media Player has stopped working
PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 8:48 pm 
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Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2004 8:30 pm
Posts: 11930
This is EXACTLY WHY the Winstep application uses WsMMPlay.exe as a *proxy* to play MP3 media files instead of doing it directly.

Your problem is a (are) buggy audio codec/driver. When an application tells Windows to play an audio file, the 3rd party code that does the actual playing runs within the process space of that same application. If the code is buggy and trashes the stack or corrupts memory, it's the host application that ends up crashing through no fault of its own, usually with no indication of the TRUE culprit.

For instance, had you not noticed that this was not happenning on your Windows 10 machine, you would have likely concluded that WsMMPlay.exe was a buggy pile of steaming c*rp. :) Now imagine if the main application was crashing instead, even worse.

In reality WsMMPlay.exe is as simple and as bug free as it can get. It is just taking the bullet for the main Winstep application (poor thing).

So, try uninstalling any 3rd party codec packs you might have installed on your system and installing a different one - personally I use the K-LITE codec pack, hasn't given me any problems.

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Winstep Xtreme - Xtreme Power!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies


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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Media Player has stopped working
PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 4:33 pm 
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Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2019 11:01 pm
Posts: 25
Location: Chicago
I'll give it a try.

My first thought is why don't I see this with any other apps playing .mp3s ?

What is being done here which is different than every other app ?


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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Media Player has stopped working
PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 4:55 pm 
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Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2004 8:30 pm
Posts: 11930
Good question and one I don't really have an answer for because I don't know what the other apps are doing.

All WsMMPlay.exe does is use the Windows mciSendString API call to play the files. All the actual playing is done by Windows itself, but, of course, the required 3rd party DLLs etc will be run *inside* the WsMMPlay process.

If one of those DLLs is buggy or badly coded and trashes the return stack or something like that, you get unexpected behavior, such as crashes. Actually this is the first time I read about WsMMPlay actually crashing, before I started using it you got REALLY WEIRD behavior in the main application itself.

If you want to know how difficult it was to diagnose and eventually work around bad codec/filter problems by using the WsMMPlay.exe 'proxy' player, feel free to read THIS THREAD. All 12 pages of it. :)

This is not new. There used to be a Control Panel Logitech webcam applet that also trashed the stack - it caused any application that simply enumerated the contents of the Windows Control Panel (required to display the Control Panel tab in the Shelf or the Control Panel menu in NextSTART) to crash.

Explorer *seemed* immune to it, but probably because Microsoft already had plenty of experience with buggy 3rd party DLLs and did this enumeration on a separate 'sacrificial' thread. Figuring out what all the users experiencing this issue had in common (the Logitech webcam Control Panel applet) was also a novel by itself.

Once I figured out what the cause was, I was able to work around it - but not fix it, because I cannot fix buggy 3rd party code. Logitech also had no incentive to fix it (assuming they were even aware of it) because Explorer itself did not crash (although EVERY OTHER application that enumerated Control Panel items would - I know because I tried several).

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Winstep Xtreme - Xtreme Power!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies


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