How do I stop the Helper application from starting?

It is causing both windows and DOPUS to lose all thumbnail capability.

Do you mean DOpusRT.exe? You can prevent it from running at Windows startup by turning off Preferences / Launching Opus / From the Desktop.

But DOpusRT.exe is not involved in thumbnailing in any way, so it should not make a difference to any issues related to it. What makes you think it is involved? Please give more information on what you're seeing and what has led to that conclusion.

whenever task manager shows that directory opus helper application is running, I lose all my thumbnails in dopus and explorer. i need to kill the helper, kill explorer, delete explorer thumbnail cache before thumbnails can be generated again. whenever the helper app comes back on, it deletes my thumbs. So Frustratating. I have Hundreds of thousands of thumbs. it takes forever to recreate them.

But DOpusRT.exe would always be running, if that feature is turned on.

I doubt you need to kill DOpusRT.exe at all. Try only exiting the other processes and leaving DOpusRT.exe and I bet it will have the same result.

I'd also recommend against killing DOpus.exe, as doing so can corrupt your configuration data. Use File > Exit Directory Opus instead to make DOpus.exe exit.

The Helper app (DOpusRT.exe) would not delete your thumbs, either. Opus will re-launch it, if the feature it is tied to is turned on and you launch Opus, but the fact something else happens at the same time is pure coincidence. DOpusRT.exe simply has no connection to thumbnails.

That batch file clears the icon cache. It has nothing to do with thumbnails, and neither does dopusrt.exe. I'm sorry you don't believe us, but it really doesn't.

I was rude and i put the wrong link in. Sorry. Just realized that you are a Developer. But I am Really frustrated here. This has been going on since I purchased the program. I should have asked for help earlier instead of getting frustrated. I'm not trying to be insulting. In fact (I know it's hard to believe -lol) I'm a typical Canadian who tries to read and figure things out before I complain. I can't remember where i got it but somebody was having a similar issue. looks like this:
taskkill /f /im dopusrt.exe
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
del /f /s /q /a %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\thumbcache_*.db
start explorer
exit

Try removing the line from your batch file that kills DOpusRT.exe. I expect it won't make any difference whether you leave DOpusRT.exe running or not. It's literally not involved in generating, requesting or caching thumbnails.

If you think DOpusRT.exe is involved, I think the problem has been misdiagnosed. DOpus.exe can trigger requests to the shell to generate and cache thumbnails, but not DOpusRT.exe.

But, even then, it's similar to when Explorer.exe requests a thumbnail. If you're finding the shell thumbnail generation system is going wrong system-wide, it's not likely to be caused by Opus. It's probably a bug in one of the thumbnailing components something has installed, or in Windows itself.

For what it's worth, I noticed a problem on my machine recently where having more than 8 thumbnail threads (which is how many physical CPU cores I have; I don't know if that is connected), and generating folder thumbnails, would make the shell stop generating thumbnails until the machine was rebooted. Reducing the number of thumbnail threads in Opus's Preferences made it so that Opus didn't trigger the problem anymore. But Explorer still did trigger the problem, which shows the issue isn't actually Opus, but something outside of Opus.

Sorry. my bad. and now I lost the link to the suggested batch file. looking now. But for some reason thumbnails won't display properly in Dopus. i can restart explorer, exit out of Dopus, but until I kill the helper, neither works. And I usually end up having to rebuild the explorer cache, when Dopus has it's own cache turned on and populated. Why should explorer's cache matter? and of course rt shouldn't make any difference. I'll keep plugging away at it. Maybe somehow I have too many shell extensions as suggested by Leo. Thanks Leo. Going to take a look at that tonite

Awesome thoughts and ideas. Thanks for the help and overlooking my rudeness.

Explorer's cache matters for thumbnails that come via the shell. (Folder thumbnails, often video thumbnails.) Opus has its own cache for things that it (or one of its plugins) generates, but Opus doesn't cache things which come from the shell, since shell already caches them. (Caching something twice would just use extra disk space.)

Make sure you're exiting Opus via File > Exit Directory Opus and not just closing the window. Opus (DOpus.exe) stays running in the background, by default, unless explicitly exited.

You can prevent DOpusRT.exe from running at all by turning off the setting I mentioned earlier, if you want to test its involvement. It would be surprising it if made any difference to an issue involving thumbnails.

Thanks Leo. I'll try a few more things now that I have a better understanding. Does seem to be on the windows or other shells interferring rather than a Dopus issue.

1 Like