It's just guessing, but maybe something is wrong with folders in FileTypes? Something that freeze Opus when you hold your pointer over directory? Is this happens when you're using only keyboard without mouse?
No it typically happens when I use the mouse to change folder directories. That is, when I try to click on the favorites, or to open a subfolder.
Well, I don't know about favorites, because it's just menu in Opus, so it's probably not related to filetypes. But, just to be sure, open FileTypes from Opus menu (Settings > File Types), double click on "All Folders" in "Directory Opus File Types" section and check "Never show an InfoTip for this File Type" box in "Info Tip" section. Do the same for "All files and folders" just to be sure. This is probably not a solution, I'm probably wrong, but its worth to check anyway.
This does not resolve the problem.
I recommend disabling all other non-Windows shell extensions using ShellExView then rebooting, to see if that helps. From the look of the dump, the problem was being caused by a 3rd party DLL but it wasn't clear which one, although Dropbox looked most likely as it had an active thread.
Shift-click in ShellExView lets you select multiple extensions at once to disable many at the same time. Sorting by the Product Name column is a quick way to group the Windows and non-Windows extensions. (Windows ones will have "Microsoft Windows Operating System" there.)
If you have any script add-ins installed in Opus, disabling those is also worth a try, since they can run when you change folders, but the crash dump didn't indicate any scripts were running so it's probably not them. (Still, worth a try in case something a script did left things in a state which would later freeze after the script finished running.)
Antivirus, firewall and similar software is another possibility for something that might be causing freezes if they've decided the process can't be trusted or allowed to access the files/folders you're browsing. They'd usually show something in their logs if they were involved.
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Is there a way to get some help for this problem? It is persisting and getting worse. Can I send another crash dump? It is almost making DOpus unusable. I'm not really sure how to disable every third party extension, or how to narrow down which could be causing the problem.
Did you try the suggestions Leo wrote in his last post? (The one right above your last one.)
When you run ShellExView, it shows a list of all the extensions. You can sort them by the Product Name column if you want to leave the Windows ones alone.
(Although, recently, the Windows File History extension has caused some problems, so I would not always rule them out entirely. They are just the ones I would be the least suspicious of, unless the others had already been ruled out.)
If you right-click an extension in the list, you can disable it. You can also select an extension, then hold shift and click another to select all of the extensions in-between, then right-click and disable lots of them at once.
Disable some or all of the extensions, then reboot and see if the problem is then solved. If it is solved, one of the extensions you just disabled was the cause. Turn a few back on, and see if it comes back. Repeat until you've narrowed it down to a particular extension.
On the other hand, if the problem is still there when all of the extensions are disabled, then we know we are looking in the wrong place, and can think about other things to look at. Antivirus is another thing which can cause extreme slowdowns in some situations (e.g. folders with lots of large installer .exe or .zip files can cause major problems for some antivirus tools).
If you are using a Windows insider build then that is another factor, as they have had some issues lately as well. (If you don't know what a Windows insider build is then you can ignore this as you have to opt into them explicitly and you'd know if you had.)
It's not a Windows Insider Build. Is there a certain type in Shell ExView? When I open Shell ExView, I get 333 items. That seems virtually impossible to troubleshoot.
- Select all 333 of them using shift-click.
- Right-click.
- Disable
All 333 are now disabled.
- Reboot
Is the problem still there? If it is, re-enable them all; the problem wasn't caused by any of them and we can stop thinking about ShellExView and extensions entirely.
If the problem is gone:
- Re-enable half of the extensions, then reboot.
If the problem is back, you know one of the ones you just re-enabled was the cause. Disable half of them and repeat until you've narrowed it down.
If the problem isn't back, you know all the ones you just re-enabled are OK. Re-enable half of the remaining disabled ones, and repeat.
At each step, you only have to consider half as many things as before, and it soon whittles down to just a handful of potential extensions. At that point it often becomes obvious which on it is (e.g. a PDF-related component, when the problem happens in a folder full of PDF files).
An alternative is to start uninstalling things, but that's a lot more work to undo afterwards. Using ShellExView makes it easy to toggle things on and off without affecting anything else.
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Disabling and enabling did not work. I did a complete uninstall and reinstall. That seems to have worked, except that just now I had a crash. I have the dmp file for the crash - I wonder if someone can tell me if this crash was related or was caused by something else. I don't have the ability to read the dmp file.
Thanks.
dopus.20170218.121103.zip (37.1 KB)
If it happens more than once, try turning off Preferences / Display / Transition Animations / Enable transition animations, and please send any other crash dumps that are generated.
The code the dump points to looks unlikely to be the cause of the crash itself, so it may be a symptom of something else corrupting memory within the process. (That could be Opus itself doing it, or a shell extension or similar 3rd party DLL that's loaded into the process.)
I've also made a couple of changes to the code the dump points to, adding some extra checks to it, in case the dump is pointing to the right place.
Turning off transition animations will prevent that code from being used entirely, in the mean time, but you may find it just moves the crash to another place, if it is what I suspect it is.
Just so I am clear, you want me to continue to check for crashes while using my current version (12.3.6 beta) and upload any future crashes to help you figure this out? And if the problem becomes too pervasive, a potential workaround is to disable transitions?
If you've only seen one crash so far then I'd recommend leaving the animations on as they probably aren't the real cause of it. But if they keep happening, try turning them off to see if it helps.
Whatever happens, please send any crash dumps as they may help us locate where the problem is and either fix it (if it's in Opus) or help you know what's causing it (if it's somewhere else).
One thing I've just noticed: You have a very old version of Notepad++ according to the dump. (12/May/2014)
Certain old versions of Notepad++ had a bug that caused crashes in other programs.
Notepad++ fixed this problem very quickly in an update, but a lot of people still have the old problem version installed even today. (I'd love to know why, if you can shed any light on it! Is something else installing it and needs updating, or something like that? Maybe we can get in touch with them.)
Please try updating Notepad++ in case the old version's shell extension is causing all the problems in this thread.
Ok. I updated Notepad++, but the version I had was not that old. I had v 7.2.2 from 12/2016 according to Programs and Features.I updated it to the most recent 7.3.2. I don't know where to check the "Modules" screen you have above.
I will keep running animations and upload any crashes. One thing that I can think of now - the freezing and crashing I have noticed has been occurring when changing folders or clicking a dropdown to change folders (e.g. favorites). So it could be something related to animations.
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I just found and fixed something similar, which may be the same thing you were seeing. There was a bug where if you were a few levels deep inside an archive's subdirs, then went up until you were at the archive's parent folder, then there could be a crash on the folder change. (Archives would be the main trigger but there are some other combinations of folder types which could probably do it as well.)
We'll have a fix for that in the next update. But if you do get more crashes, please keep sending the dumps so we can investigate them. It's always possible the two are unrelated.
OK. Thanks. I will upload any future crashes to this thread.
This is an old thread, but I have been suffering from Directory Opus not responding for a while and have fixed it following advice I found here.
I use Directory Opus Lite (v12.21 x64) on Win10. Symptoms were:
DO locking up, not responding (never while actually in use, but randomly when I came back to it).
Sometimes the Folder Tree panes wouldn’t work but the file panes would still respond.
Right click was always slow (I did not realise that was a symptom until I read this thread!).
Sometimes when not responding DO could be terminated by clicking on the ‘x’ top right. If so DO would not start again until the computer had been restarted. Sometimes it might start partially but the panes would not populate.
Sometimes when not responding DO could be killed from Task Manager. If so DO would not start again until the computer had been restarted.
Occasionally the whole computer would freeze, requiring the power button to be held down to force a power down.
Having read this thread, I downloaded Shellexview, and took the nuclear option of disabling all non-Microsoft shell extensions (100s of them). I have had no problems with DO since. I also have not noticed any differences in any other programs.
Thanks Leo.
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again, old thread but i was struggling with much not responding 4 days into my 30 day trial and it was pretty unusable for me. i liked what i had seen however and investigated.
disabling approcimately half of my right-click extensions seems to have done the trick (even though i was getting it when clicking the top menus entries also).
if the smooth tunning continues it'll be license time soon for sure.
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