Everything has been working since I installed Winstep extreme. I had been using just the dock portion for many months before that. Now, upon boot of my box (Winstep set to launch on start-up) or manually launching Winstep Extreme, I am getting a message that says "Workshelf has stopped working". The taskbar replacement portion works and loads fine. The details in the dialog box are:



I am on Winstep Extreme 11.6 and Win7 x64. UAC (including registry visualization), Windows defender and firewall disabled. Using Outpost firewall and Nod32 AV. Outpost is sometimes an issue, but it really isn't this time. I checked it thoroughly and workshelf (in the Extreme package) has worked for weeks with Outpost and I have not updated Outpost since August.

I installed an Upek fingerprint reader on my box this weekend. It uses software called Protector Suite: http://www.upek.com/solutions/psql/default.asp. This is the only significant change I have made to this box in the past 2 weeks besides installing some games (Fable 3). This problem started after I installed the fingerprint reader and software, so I believe this may be the culprit.

I have recently played with Winstep's settings a little but not a ton. I don't think I made any changes that would be considered significant. I can't remember when was the last time I unlocked and locked my dock, but its been a while. Of course I only recently purchased and registered Winstep extreme, but I don't think that would cause any issues.

This is the very first serious problem I've had with this app, so I have 3 questions:

1) Where are the log files, if there are any?
2) Is there a way to reset my settings without the app being loaded (since it crashes on load). I have several good backups of the settings, so reset is not an issue.
3) Anyone see anything like this before and have a quick solution?

Thanks!

Edit: BTW, this forum ignores the search term 'workshelf'. I think this is a bad idea, makes it tough to find relevant posts when this is the portion that is breaking. Used google site search, but Google sucks at message board searching. So if there was an answer somewhere here and I didn't find it, I'm sorry.

Edit 2: Some extra info I just noticed. After workshelf crashes and I exit the taskbar replacement and my windows taskbar comes up (I have the hide windows taskbar setting enabled), the start button is missing. I can click the space where it should be and my start menu popus up like normal. However the orb icon is gone. After I stop the winstep service, the orb icon comes back. It doesn't happen every time, but more like 3 out of 5 times. Weird.

Ouch. I'm afraid to say you are pretty much solo on this one.

The c0000374 exception code is usually associated with Heap corruption.

Also, see the module name? 'StackHash_xxxx' is used by Windows when the error occurs in an area of memory that is NOT associated to a code module - this usually means that the app tried to run code on an area of memory that contains data instead of actual code. This in turn triggers a DEP (Data Execution Prevention) exception.

My guess is that something is corrupting WorkShelf's stack and causing it to jump to a random location in memory. You could try to add WorkShelf to the DEP exception list, but, even if that managed to prevent it from crashing, it would simply 'mask out' the error, leaving the application in an undetermined state.

Since WorkShelf was running perfectly fine for a long time, like you, I suspect that 3rd party software is the real culprit. I would start by uninstalling the Upek fingerprint reader and the Protector Suite to see if that cures the problem.

If you want to try resetting WorkShelf to default first, you can try deleting the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinSTEP2000\WorkSHELF key in the Registry (but make a backup of that key before deleting it, just in case).

Having registered the software should also have nothing to do with this problem: I mean, you were already running Xtreme as registered for a while before running into this, right?

Thanks! Yikes that error sounds ominous. I am a bit hesitant to uninstall the fingerprint software at this time as I encrypted a bunch of files using it this past weekend and I would have to decrypt them before uninstalling the software. So I started with the settings reset.

That worked, kind of. It loads fine (repeatedly) with the default settings, but if I restore any settings at all, it crashes on "applying settings". Nextstart is completely unaffected. I tried uninstalling the whole thing and reinstalling it to a different directory (has helped with troubleshooting in the past) but the same thing happens.

This problem did start after I registered it. I really don't think its related, as after I just did the reinstall, I registered it and its not crashing. It only crashes when I try and restore any settings.

What happened is I bought Ultimate and was using workshelf from it for a long time. Then I redid my desktop (I added a 4th monitor) and decided to try the entire extreme suite. So I uninstalled Ultimate and installed the trial for Extreme. I like everything and that's when I came here to ask how to upgrade.

I'm stuck. I could live with Nextstart having issues but my whole UI has been based on Workshelf for a while now. Its kind of funny, but I have to hunt through all kinds of things to do basic stuff. Driving me nuts.

This is probably something stupid I am missing. Is there a kind of workshelf checklist of settings that can cause issues? I mean if the default settings loads fine, then something in my settings must be screwing things up. If I can go through a list, I can figure out which one it is and edit my registry to change it without loosing all of my settings (starting from scratch will take me hours to fix).

Right now, I will keep an eye on this thread and go through the settings one by one and see if I can reproduce the crash.

Thanks!

Ah crap, it was something stupid!!

So I clicked the desktop tab on workshelf (still with the default settings) and it crashed.

The protector suite put this icon on my desktop. Its not a shortcut but like a widget, called Personal safe. This was the problem.

Once I went into that app and removed the widget, I could click the desktop tab no problem. I will reload my settings now but I think that is it.

Edit: Yup that was it!

Glad you figured it out.

This particular case reminds me of what happened a few years ago with a buggy (but very popular!) Logitech web cam control panel applet. It's a story I never get tired of telling because it illustrates perfectly how difficult these things are to troubleshoot:

At one time I started getting a lot of reports concerning NextSTART and WorkShelf crashing whenever you opened the Control Panel menu or the Control Panel tab in the Shelf. Usually something like this means a corrupt control panel applet, but there were just too many reports. I obviously could not reproduce the problem here, and the vast majority of users didn't have this issue either.

So it took a long time to finally be able to figure out the common denominator to all the users suffering from this problem: they all had Logitech web cams.

Now, as you know, Logitech is a very popular maker of peripherals, so this was a very serious problem: even though it was not a bug in the Winstep applications per se, it caused them to crash, so users naturally assumed that the applications themselves were buggy.

Note that Explorer itself is somewhat protected from a buggy applet bringing the whole shell down, but other applications are not.

Because I did not own a Logitech web cam at the time, initial troubleshooting steps were made with a very patient customer, who, in the course of one day, must have installed about twenty different troubleshooting versions of Winstep Xtreme.

That enabled me to pin point where the software was crashing, but it didn't tell me why. To figure that out I was forced to buy a Logitech web cam, which I didn't need at the time (great hardware, awful software), in order to be able to install their web cam software.

Turns out that, when enumerating Control Panel items and retrieving their icons, etc..., the control panel applets are initialized within process. The Logitech control panel applet would corrupt the stack at this point, blasting away the enumeration routine's return address - when the routine that does the enumeration attempted to return, it would return to some random location in memory because of the corrupted stack, causing the application to crash (somewhat similar to what was happening to you).

The fix to this problem was as convoluted as its diagnosis was: I discovered that Windows had a mechanism based on a Windows Registry key ("Control Panel\don't load") that prevents certain applets from being enumerated, so, whenever the Logitech camcpl.cpl file was detected in the System folder, the enumeration routine would first add it to this exclusion list, THEN do the enumeration, THEN remove the applet from the exclusion list (so it would still appear in the Windows Control Panel), and THEN manually add a file reference (e.g.; 'C:\Windows\System32\camcpl.cpl') to the enumeration, thus still allowing the applet to appear in the menu and the Shelf without it crashing the application.

In the end, I was left with the bitter taste of having been forced to work around (and being blamed for) someone else's bug.

Yikes, I don't think I would've been able to track that one down. Had a similar problem with Logitech and an app (can't remember which one anymore it was a while ago). The explorer shell wouldn't load or something serious. I spent a while trying to track down the problem and eventually figured it was a conflict with the app and my keyboard's software. If the keyboard was not plugged in, everything worked and then I could plug in the keyboard after the shell had all loaded. Both companies were worse than useless and I had to pick one of them to stop using. I remember regretting buying from either of the companies. I haven't bought a Logitech product again.

Bottom line, the fact that you went through all of that and got the problem tackled is extremely impressive. I said it elsewhere, but I wish all software companies were like you.