TC10 64bit stops working (disappears)

[Alan]

Recently I have had problems with TC suddenly disappearing while I am using it to view thumbnails of pdf and other files so that I can reorganize them into different folders. Here is some information reported by Problem Reports in Windows 10...


Source
Total Commander

Summary
Stopped working

Date
‎2021-‎09-‎27 16:39

Status
Report sent

Description
Faulting Application Path: C:\Program Files\totalcmd\TOTALCMD64.EXE

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: TOTALCMD64.EXE
Application Version: 10.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 00000000
Fault Module Name: pdfview.wlx64
Fault Module Version: 1.0.9.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 56f2b0f9
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000000074d6
OS Version: 10.0.19042.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 3081
Additional Information 1: 58ec
Additional Information 2: 58ec34e5dd159d6dfcbe9450d2cc9ce7
Additional Information 3: 11ae
Additional Information 4: 11ae2854c34aac45bcc6c2322a358f4e

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 0200f38860771142cb4140025698a942 (1963921291297204546)

... It seems that the module pdfview.wlx64 is the main culprit (or perhaps just a victim) but I don't know if that is part of TC or part of Windows.

When TC disappears, it has sometimes been while I am actively using it, and sometimes while I am making notes on paper and not actively using the computer. So there is a variable time delay between anything I do and when TC disappears.

There are no pop-up error dialog boxes from TC or Windows; Windows and other programs keep on working as if nothing happened and TC was never there.

When I restart TC it works without reporting any problem, but it has usually forgotten the most recent folders that it was displaying when it disappeared. It may or may not disappear again during that computer session.

This could be a PC problem; there have been many in the past, but my PC seems to be reasonably stable now except for this issue. The symptom of a program disappearing is not happening to other programs. When TC disappears there may or may not have been other programs running.

Let me know if you need more information from me.

[Hacker]

Hi Alan,
pdfview is a plugin and here is its thread on the forum - Ann: pdfview lister plugin released!.

HTH
Roman

[ghisler(Author)]

Try updating Ghostscript, it's possible that you have an old version which cannot handle a specific PDF and crashes the pdfview plugin with the results.

[Alan]

Even with the latest ghostscript and pdfview plug-in installed, the TC disappearance continued to occur. My interim solution was to remove the pdfview plug-in. However, the disappearance happened again. Here is the crash report from Windows Rliability Monitor. This time it points to a different module.

Source
Total Commander

Summary
Stopped working

Date
‎2021-‎10-‎05 17:38

Status
Report sent

Description
Faulting Application Path: C:\Program Files\totalcmd\TOTALCMD64.EXE

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: TOTALCMD64.EXE
Application Version: 10.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 00000000
Fault Module Name: tcunzl64.dll
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 516d1c2c
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000000000000184c
OS Version: 10.0.19042.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 3081
Additional Information 1: 5c05
Additional Information 2: 5c0513bd4062cba71456b4a085c4c210
Additional Information 3: 20d8
Additional Information 4: 20d83cd848454323e1f51fb652a836d2

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: f68dc7e57e2044d761665e1d3a9fc67a (1253793025899873914)

At the time of this disappearance I was scrolling quickly through a thumbnail view of a folder.

I don't know if these crash reports are truly useful; on the face of it they point to the culprit, but maybe they just point to the messenger. In this case TC had already vanished, so I doubt it was able to report anything.

- Alan

[ghisler(Author)]

That's odd, tcunzl64.dll is used for:
1. Packing ZIP archives
2. Unpacking the types bzip2 and ppmd from zip archives.

Try renaming the file and then close and re-open Total Commander to check if there is any change.

[Mindstone]

Here's my report:
2021.12.11: I've had the exact same issue with tcunzl64.dll causing sudden shutdown. I've managed to isolate the particular image that crashed TC in thumbnail view mode. TC would attempt to render its thumbnail and would crash immediately. The crash would occur consistently only with this particular image in this particular folder when switching to thumbnail view mode. Rendering image thumbnail at any other folder would not result in crash.
After I tried to rename problematic image I could no longer recreate the problem, even after I renamed it back to its original name.

I don't know how TC exactly handles thumbnails. Maybe it has something to do with TC attempting to render corrupted thumbnail (that was reset after file renaming) or something like that.

2021.12.12 update: It keeps happening to random images in random folders. In those folders I also notice significant amount of thumbnails that are completely black or have glitches and artifact noise. I didn't really change anything in TC setting when this crashing behavior manifested itself. The only thing worth mentioning is that for the last couple of days I keep continually transfering a lot of data using the third party application between my HDDs. I don't open those HDDs with TC, but maybe the file transfer could somehow mess with the way TC displays thumbs. It's still 1 or 2 days till the end of file transfer; I'll report if something changes after that.

[ghisler(Author)]

What file types are these files with black or corrupted thumbnails?

[Mindstone]

Black ones are almost exclusively .png, noisy and glitchy ones are mostly .gif and .png with occasional .jpg. I don't think they're file type-dependent. I've also noticed corrupted win7 folder previews https://mega.nz/file/hI9CyLKA#YNMitRrnQsqWlU3Mc7PAUGU8ZRBZ9eFsHrsjTaZonB0.
At the moment I'm pretty sure: files that suffered the most are in the folders I accessed during the high background HDD activity for the last couple of days. I haven't faced this problem before, and I find no glitchy previews in any other random folders now.
Also renaming them and restarting TC occasionaly may not fix the crashing for the first time.
Also an image may cause a crash even after being moved to a different folder.
Also renaming files with glitchy previews fixes the problem, but giving them back the original name occasionaly brings the bad preview back. This reminds me...

Is there a way to flush thumbs for all or particular folders in TC? Update: yep, deleting %TEMP%/tcthumbs.idb solved the problem. At least for now. Now I just hope that glitches won't get back for no particular reason.
The glitches started to appear on folders of disk 1 whlie I transfered files from disks 2 & 3 to 4 via FreeFileSync 11.8. New glitches appeared while I deleted the contents of disks 2 & 3 using WipeFile 3.2. The tcthumbs.idb and all software was located on system disk 5. I still have one more disk to transfer and wipe. I wish I could provide more substantial data using some activity logger or something, but I suck ass at programming and debugging.

[ghisler(Author)]

It sounds like the tcthumbs database was damaged. If it happens again and the database isn't too big (only a few MBytes), then I would appreciate receiving it for analysis.

[Mindstone]

I failed to replicate glitches in tcthumbs.idb during the last data transfer between HDDs. Maybe data transfer has nothing to do with it but the sheer size of the database. By the time glitches start to appear tcthumbs.idb was about 1.4GB. I know there is a way to disable or compact it but can I limit its max size?

[ghisler(Author)]

No you can't - I don't think it's the size, though.

[Mindstone]

I've finally managed to get the same error while tcthumbs.db was relatively small.
Here it is: https://mega.nz/folder/xYdSHZpT#xAy-cno8peOyeDJm5acgxA
I also specified the faulty thumb path that causes shutdown in case if it matters.

[ghisler(Author)]

I will test it, thanks a lot!

[ghisler(Author)]

2Mindstone
I have checked your file and it's not faulty, it doesn't cause any kind of crash. So the error is probably in the image cache itself.
That would be a file in the same directory named tcthumbs.idb.
According to the tcthumbs.db you sent me, the problem image should be at offset 28941 and have a length of 25954 bytes.
If you still have the tcthumbs.idb file, could you send me the first 100kBytes of it too, please?

[Mindstone]

I've added the *.idb, the link is the same. It's not too big as well.