Greetings,

I have not been able to keep Nextstart running for more than few hours. This has been the case since prior to WSX 8.5. With the newest release it is slightly more stable but still dies regularly. Most of the time it's just an exception handler error dialog box, I clikc it and Nextstart closes. Every now and then I also get an event log entry. This was the last event log entry I received.



I'm running XP SP3. Let me know what other info you'd like to know.
In comparison, Workshelf goes for weeks without any incidents.

Any pattern to the crashes in terms of what you are doing?

Unfortunately no. I thought it was the snapshots so those are off but it didn't change anything. Sometimes it is when I try and click on a running task or a systray icon, other times it crashes and I'm not interacting with NS in any way.

Is there a way to run it in debug mode so I can capture logs for you?

Unfortunately no. Since it seems to crash even when you aren't doing anything, is there any way you can keep an eye on it via the Windows Task Manager?

Collumns to check for the nextstart.exe process are GDI and User objects, Handles and Commit memory.

Also, since the errors seem to happen on ntdll.dll, check out the following page HERE.

Anyone else reading this has been having similar problems with NextSTART?

I have updated my video card driver. Given this is an asus laptop, many of the drivers are old. In order to achieve this update I had to use the mobility modder from driver heaven. I am now running 8.12 of the ATI catalyst. I'll work on the rest of the drivers as time goes on. Change one.. let things sit for a day or three, rinse and repeat.

I was just about to post a similar thing, Jorge.

When I first ran NS 9.5, I got the "Error: Access Violation" error dialog, and I clicked "cancel" and restarted NS, which seemed to work OK apart from the systray which disappeared. I just assumed it was a glitch and rebooted, and it has worked fine ever since (2 days?)

But a few minutes ago, I tried to start the NS prefs dialog (using the context menu from one of the app thumbnails, as I wanted to see if I could refresh the thumbnail display), and I got the same UAE or Access Violation error.

I clicked "Retry" and NS seemed to continue loading the prefs dialog, but I immediately exited.

There are no events listed in any of the event logs that refer to WX (or anything else!8))

I restarted NS (after checking that there wasn't any process left over), and it's doing very strange things with the sys tray again.

My NS taskbar and systray are docked at the bottom of my windows primary/WS secondary monitor, with edge bump activation and replace windows task checked.

But when I activate the taskbar with the mouse, I get the windows start bar (without any system tray), and the NS start bar also visible in semi-transparent mode.

I didn't intentionally change the default transparency of NS, but just prior to the crash, I had "accidentally" changed the transparency for a running task using the context menu from the task's thumbnail. I immediately reverted the transparency of the app the same way (i.e. from the thumbnail's context menu).

But the NS transparency isn't consistent along the taskbar - the taskbar buttons (running tasks) are less transparent (more visible) than the rest of the taskbar.

And I just noticed, the NS taskbar doesn't show my systray either. It's not detached or floating, just not there.

If I start NS prefs, and "re-apply" my current theme, the taskbar then goes to normal (opaque) and I see the quicklaunch AND the systray, but when I exit the prefs, it reverts to the strange look and feel.

Naturally, I have screenshots if that would help!

But if there are some logs you'd like, let me know and I'll get them.

Screenshots are always nice. One picture is worth a thousand words!

This is what the taskbar area looked like when it happened.... I hope the other 992 words are OK!

This is the entire monitor width from just to the left of the monitor all the way to the rightmost edge (where the systray normally hides)

The NS crash problem just happened again.

When I double-clicked the NS prefs systray icon, the "bogus" start menu appeared briefly, but instead of the prefs dialog showing, the UAE appeared and the bogus start menu went away. And again the systray has disappeared from both NS and Windows...

Maybe the new systray code is getting choked by the OS tray management? It's interesting that when the systray disappears in NS, it also disappears in windows, and I can't get it back without logging off (at minimum) or rebooting. And this has happened with all versions of NS that I've had on the x64 box, so it could easily be an OS issue, not necessarily a NS issue.

If there are any additional settings you'd like to see, let me know and I'll do what I can!

I sincerelly have no idea what might be going on there, other than it looks extremelly messy!

One thing: the tasklist, although apparently a child window of the startbar (i.e. contained by), is in reality a completely independent window, with the startbar as its 'owner'. This is so because layered windows cannot be child windows, and explains why the startbar can be semi-transparent and the tasklist not.

As for the systray disappearing, with the new systray code you no longer should have to log off to get it back. Running NextSTART again should be enough to bring it back.

I understand what you mean by the different "applets" appearing as a single entity. That makes good sense!

Unfortunately, restarting NS doesn't bring back the system tray. I found a utility online to do it (it's a bit of a kludge, and it's overkill, but it does work and I don't have to go into the system settings to force the taskbar/explorer reload).

The problem with non-zooming Nexus icons is also back after a couple of system reboots. The icons "start" to zoom, but they only get about 2 pixels bigger, and they stop. The icon text does move out of the way as if the zoom was happening, but nothing displays. Turning up and down the rendering quality doesn't seem to make a difference...

Is there a log or something (I have debugview installed, and the full XP x64 SDK) I could maybe get to you to give you some idea of what's going on?

I'm still getting crashes. With 9.5, most of the time NS just disappears with no error or anything. Sometimes it happens when I try and click a task icon, other times it just happens and I'm not touching NS at all. When it does throw an error it is with the ntdll.dll

Could this be NS fighting with .Net applications?

Nah. NextSTART doesn't use any .Net components.

What puzzles me is that NextSTART on your system crashes even when you are doing nothing with it!

Either something hooking into it is causing it to crash, or... I don't know. Try running it with the task snapshots disabled for a while to see if that solves anything (disable the snapshots and then restart NS, just in case).

However, if it were the snapshots, WorkShelf would likely be crashing as well...

Perhaps another possibility is the new systray?

Show thumbnails was already disabled so disabled Window Peeking. However when I restart NS Extreme, the window peeking is no longer disabled. The checkbox is unchecked. I will manually keep setting it for now.

It looks like the non interactive crashes actually occur if I move my mouse over the start bar. It just happened when the mouse went over the start bar (not where there are any task/systray/buttons) and Nextart just disappeared. No crash popups, no explorer, nothing just gone. I didn't click on NS or touch it in any way.