Hi All!

My colleague and I are writing the start menu replacer for Windows 8.

At the moment it's free, open-source and works under ХР, 7 and 8.



What it can do, what it will do, how does it look like, download 7z archive, etc. - welcome to GoogleCode:
power8 - Yet another Start menu replacer for W8 - Google Project Hosting

I appreciate if you will find a moment to evaluate this software.

Not bad.

Once I rebooted, does however crash explorer.exe for me. Reproducibly.

Windows 8 CP x64.
Had set to auto start. Rebooted. Crashes explorer.exe.

Airbot,

hello and thanks for the report.

as for Explorer, let's say exactly, it just hangs, no crash. Power8 runs in a separate managed process and cannot crash Explorer. Hang however is possible. It may happen when P8 crashes and thus stops respond to a system, but (!) Windows Error Reporting doesn't allow the P8 window to close. As this window is hosted by Explorer - well, it waits for WER to shut P8 down.
To solve the problem simply close the "Power8 stopped working" window when it crashes - and Explorer won't hang.

The second, more interesting, the P8 crash itself. It appears, some CPL file in your system behaves improperly, what results in Access Violation at the place where it just can't happen Can you please provide a list of "*.CPL" files in C:\windows\System32 ?

The crash dump is reporting the reason for the crash as a driver hang, but not pointing out which one is at fault:

Code:

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  DRIVER_HANG

All of your drivers are excellent besides one:

Code:

0: kd> lmvm WinRing0x64
start             end                 module name
fffff880`0adb1000 fffff880`0adb8000   WinRing0x64   (deferred)             
    Image path: WinRing0x64.sys
    Image name: WinRing0x64.sys
    Timestamp:        Sat Jul 26 09:29:37 2008 (488B26C1)
    CheckSum:         00011908
    ImageSize:        00007000
    Translations:     0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4

I'd delete that then reboot. After, you can check regedit here to delete the corresponding key (it may be a little hard to find):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services

---

Code:

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck CFFFFFFF, {1, 0, 0, 0}

TRIAGER: Could not open triage file : C:\Program Files\Windows Kits\8.0\Debuggers\x86\triage\modclass.ini, error 2
Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!DbgkpLkmdSnapThreadInContext+84 )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

0: kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

Unknown bugcheck code (cfffffff)
Unknown bugcheck description
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000000001
Arg2: 0000000000000000
Arg3: 0000000000000000
Arg4: 0000000000000000

Debugging Details:
------------------

TRIAGER: Could not open triage file : C:\Program Files\Windows Kits\8.0\Debuggers\x86\triage\modclass.ini, error 2

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  DRIVER_HANG

BUGCHECK_STR:  0xCFFFFFFF

PROCESS_NAME:  explorer.exe

CURRENT_IRQL:  0

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER:  from fffff80331352923 to fffff80331352b0c

STACK_TEXT:  
fffff880`0bbb91c0 fffff803`31352923 : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : nt!DbgkpLkmdSnapThreadInContext+0x84
fffff880`0bbb9710 fffff803`30ebe3df : fffffa80`0e715400 00000000`00000000 00000000`000e0082 00000000`00501903 : nt!DbgkpLkmdSnapThreadApc+0x3b
fffff880`0bbb9740 fffff803`30ebd5a3 : fffff880`012cf180 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 fffffa80`0f11b138 : nt!KiDeliverApc+0x15f
fffff880`0bbb97c0 fffff803`30ebc96f : fffffa80`09e19cd0 00000000`000008d0 00000000`00000000 fffffa80`09d09100 : nt!KiCommitThreadWait+0x5c3
fffff880`0bbb9880 fffff803`3125a2c5 : fffffa80`0e764640 fffffa80`00000000 fffff880`0bbb9900 fffffa80`0e715400 : nt!KeWaitForSingleObject+0x1df
fffff880`0bbb9910 fffff803`31308bcd : 00000000`000000ff 00000000`000000ff fffff880`0bbb9c40 fffffa80`0e7154a8 : nt!PspExitThread+0x805
fffff880`0bbb9a50 fffff803`30ebe54f : fffffa80`0da8b8a0 fffff803`30f089aa fffff803`31150180 fffff803`310e4c00 : nt!PsExitSpecialApc+0x1d
fffff880`0bbb9a80 fffff803`31022ac0 : 00000000`03fbfce0 fffff880`0bbb9b00 fffff803`313046e0 00000000`00000001 : nt!KiDeliverApc+0x2cf
fffff880`0bbb9b00 fffff803`310282ba : fffff880`0bbb9cc0 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000020 00000000`00000000 : nt!KiInitiateUserApc+0x70
fffff880`0bbb9c40 000007fb`d0be581a : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : nt!KiSystemServiceExit+0x9f
00000000`00c8f588 00000000`00000000 : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : 0x7fb`d0be581a


STACK_COMMAND:  kb

FOLLOWUP_IP: 
nt!DbgkpLkmdSnapThreadInContext+84
fffff803`31352b0c 488d542440      lea     rdx,[rsp+40h]

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX:  0

SYMBOL_NAME:  nt!DbgkpLkmdSnapThreadInContext+84

FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: nt

IMAGE_NAME:  ntkrnlmp.exe

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  4f7658cb

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  X64_0xCFFFFFFF_nt!DbgkpLkmdSnapThreadInContext+84

BUCKET_ID:  X64_0xCFFFFFFF_nt!DbgkpLkmdSnapThreadInContext+84

Followup: MachineOwner

Looks interesting.

But as it requires .net 4 - it won't be any use in a decent Win 8 pe - which is where something like this is needed.

I can get most .net 2 apps working in there.

Ya, even Rainmeter, which Airbot is likely to have since it was very popular on sevenforums.

This download link contains a May 2, 2010 version of the driver. It's a good idea to simply extract it from the download then copy and paste it over the version on the machine now (in whichever folder it is in with software - it is not in normal driver folder and debugger will not tell me, which is rare) - then reboot.

OpenLibSys.org

Originally Posted by GMan

Ya, even Rainmeter, which Airbot is likely to have since it was very popular on sevenforums.

This download link contains a May 2, 2010 version of the driver. It's a good idea to simply extract it from the download then copy and paste it over the version on the machine now (in whichever folder it is in with software - it is not in normal driver folder and debugger will not tell me, which is rare) - then reboot.

OpenLibSys.org

Rainmeter tends to use its own plugins and WMI. Easiest way to locate it, is to search for it. On my system WinRing0 and WinRing0x64 (dll and sys) reside in the same folder as the Open Hardware Monitor executable, which I have as a non-installer application.

GMan, Calico,

thanks for details and windbg.

Airbot,

does the P8 crash problem still occurs?

SIW2,

yes, it needs WPF... Is it impossible to integrate .N4 Client profile into WPE?

Originally Posted by AgentMC

Airbot,

hello and thanks for the report.

as for Explorer, let's say exactly, it just hangs, no crash. Power8 runs in a separate managed process and cannot crash Explorer. Hang however is possible. It may happen when P8 crashes and thus stops respond to a system, but (!) Windows Error Reporting doesn't allow the P8 window to close. As this window is hosted by Explorer - well, it waits for WER to shut P8 down.
To solve the problem simply close the "Power8 stopped working" window when it crashes - and Explorer won't hang.

The second, more interesting, the P8 crash itself. It appears, some CPL file in your system behaves improperly, what results in Access Violation at the place where it just can't happen Can you please provide a list of "*.CPL" files in C:\windows\System32 ?

Yeah, it hangs explorer rather than crashing it. Although the first time it happened, I couldn't even get explorer to come back on the desktop without ctrl+alt+delete rebooting. Plus although I can kill off P8 and now get explorer back on the desktop, P8 will just crash everytime you try to run it again after it's initial crash.

Originally Posted by Calico

WinRing0x64.sys is an OpenLibSys hardware access library driver, used by quite a few third-party applications. For example, Open hardware monitor. I think RealTemp and Crystaldiskinfo also use it. there are others.

It's from the Intel Core series gadget I use from orbmu2k. In it's options it lets you install winRing0 to get the temps without having to run an extra program like realtemp just to use the gadget. He doesn't update it anymore though, so it's outdated. One of my favorite gadgets sadly.

Originally Posted by GMan

Ya, even Rainmeter, which Airbot is likely to have since it was very popular on sevenforums.

This download link contains a May 2, 2010 version of the driver. It's a good idea to simply extract it from the download then copy and paste it over the version on the machine now (in whichever folder it is in with software - it is not in normal driver folder and debugger will not tell me, which is rare) - then reboot.

OpenLibSys.org

Problem with it is that it seems this gadget uses one extra winRing0 file that the one from Openlib doesn't have.
Gadget has WinRing0x64.dll that the linked driver doesn't have. So I can replace the old drivers, but don't have a new version of that .dll file.

I uninstalled the wingRing0 drivers anyways, and also uninstalled the gadget, and tried with no gadgets loaded on the desktop as well but P8 still does the same.