Hello
I have a problems with last 2 betas (4,5). When I am afk for 20-30min (after 10min are monitors turn off automaticaly) and then come back there is graphic issue.... icons in system tray is missing / invisible, sometimes there is black wallpapers, and icons on desktop are blinking / missing , context menu is black while there isnt cursor on it. Then I must force turn off explorer.exe and run it again from task manager. Then is everything ok. With beta 3 or without running disp.fusion is everything ok.

I am using win 7.

I have exactly the same problem on both my machines.
Both are running Windows 7 and are equipped with nVidia cards with 270.33 drivers.

nVidia card with 275.33 drivers too

Nobody else having this issue?
Or maybe other people are not connecting this strange Windows 7 Aero behaviour with DF?...

same problem here!

Windows 7 64bit, ATI Catalyst Driver.

I switched back to final Version ...

I've hit this issue a couple of times, too. Killing explorer.exe fixes it for me as well.

Memory leak in the hooks?

You can use beta 3 ... only beta 4/5 have this issue

I am having the same issues... Beta 5. (ATI latest drivers, x64) Can I get a copy/URL of where to download beta 3? Because this is starting to slow down my work... I won't complain though, because I love your software; and expect to run into some things when running the beta version. Thanks!

Thanks, got the email with the installer. I am leaving Beta 5 on here (to hopefully help you out) and will copy you the info from the troubleshooting tab here in a little bit.

Wow, thx for the quick update! I will see how it goes over the next day or two.

Explorer issue seems to persist (at least for me) though Beta 6

Would it be possible to access prior builds?

Thanks for the hard work!

I may have found a settings that helps prevent/isolate the issue:

Settings Advanced Settings General: Application Hooks Disabled Value = 1

Since setting, I have not have the issue occur in 4+ hours.

Restarted DF.

Of course, you lose some functionality, but it does seem to create some stability.

Unfortunately the problem still exists in beta 6... :/

Ya, problem still exists in beta 6. Going back to beta 4 and will try for a while.

I am using beta 3 for 3 weeks without any problem. Beta 4 and 5 = 2 days of using and many problems with explorer.exe after some afk time.

I just saw this post after installing the newest DF 3.4 beta6. I had issues with explorer.exe where windows became unclickable and re-drawing on explorer windows were painfully slow. I hope this fixes it I also had an issue where WinSCP wouldn't restore (my temporary workaround was to move it to my primary monitor where restore window functioned correctly), and I saw this issue was potentially fixed in this release. I welcome the aeropeek/menubar fixes as well. Great job. Keep up the good work. I have experienced no other issues FYI.

I am with tester2's comment above. Running Beta 4 because of explorer issues... seems to be affected with idle/locked computers. Example, was running Beta 4 all day yesterday, no problems at all. Locked my workstation at the end of the work day, came back this morning, logged in, and explorer is all messed up. I am going back to beta3 again to test that. Seems to be happening in Beta 4, 5, and 6; at least for me. Will give Beta 7 a try when you release it. Thanks...

Just wanted to post some observations with Beta 6 to help development.

explorer.exe still crashes. There is no rhyme or reason on my win7x64 pro system. I have had explorer.exe crash several times per day since the installation of beta 6 and I haven't locked the machine (as noted by another user). Therefore I can't say locking induces explorer crashing. I can say that leaving the machine idle does have an effect on "stability". Also, noticed that my icon cache became corrupted after killing/launching explorer. Not sure if DF has anything to do with that. And what I mean by icon cache corruption is that, for example, my text file icons have the evernote icon, outlook is displayed by putty, and so on.

i love aeropeek and the enhancements in the newest betas and i'll have to rollback to beta3 for now (for stability's sake).

Just to be clear, I'm simply providing info, and I'm more than happy to beta test Hopefully the "hook" fix in beta 7 helps.

I am having this same issue in DF Beta 6. The issue is that the GDI object count in explorer.exe creeps up, hits the 10,000 mark (which is the limit of GDI objects for a process), which then crashes the explorer process. From using process explorer, it looks to be something to do with interactions with SHLWAPI.DLL with the explorer process. Typically the GDI leak happens if you have some calls that are not disposing of a GDI object correctly, such as a Font or Bitmap or whatever. They can be nasty little beasts to track down as well. Let me know if you need further diagnostics to help with the issue.

Bob

I am on Win7 64bit with SP1 installed.

Just updated to Beta7... we'll see how explorer behaves over the next day or two. Thanks!

I'm experiencing the same issue in beta 7.

Windows 7 Ultimate, SP1 (x64)

Back to Beta3...

NO!!!! lol... we'll see what happens when I come back from lunch....

I'm seeing the GDI objects climbing slowly in explorer.exe as well with beta 7 (Win7 x64 SP1). It's up to 6,000 GDI objects and will crash once it hits 10,000. In the time of writing this response the GDI object count has risen by about 100 GDI objects on explorer.exe. Correction, it's now at 6,100 GDI objects.

Bob

I just sent a log for your review. I have since returned to Beta3 and compared some of the log entries between the two versions.

I also see the GDI count go to 9999

That is fantastic news. I was just about to send a debug log as my GDI objects are at 9,893. Looking forward to the new release (and the end of crashes).

Bob

Confirmed that there is no longer a GDI object leak. Thanks!

I too, can confirm that B7, Test2 has been stable for the lat few hours.

Thanks for the fix!

OK, so what was it...?

Awesome... nice catch!

I can confirm beta 7 test2 ... 2 days without problem

Same here.. running Beta 7 Test2 and no problems...

This problem is now BACK, with Windows 10. Please investigate and patch again for Windows 10

Yes, something very similar to that old problem affects windows 10.
I've had this issue on two computers with win10.

The error is erratic. It happens after a computer is awoken from sleep, but not always and severety differs when it does occur. Also, i'm not 100% sure, but I think that sleep isn't the only time it occurs. It was a long time ago I used the other computer and the current one is completely new so the error has only happened once on this one so far.
Symptoms are the following, but not always all of them:
No desktop wallpaper, some/all tray icons missing
No time/date showing
Tasks open in taskbar either only showing icon and no text or nothing at all.

Here's the file you asked for and also an update.

The problem occurs even without the computer going to sleep (I've turned it off). Seems to be related to how long explorer.exe has been running.

Great! Now I know.
Is there an interval that is safe or should I disable it completely in the meantime?

This still appears to be a problem even with version 9.5. Been dealing with explorer.exe crash/hang issues for over a year and noticed it came back on a fresh Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18362.476] reload.

So following your notes above, I have done the following:

a. DF, Desktop Wallpaper, Wallpaper Settings, Uncheck “use transitions when changing wallpaper”
b. DF, Options, Aero Colour Settings, check “don’t change the aero color

I then increased my 3-screen wallpaper rotation (landscape, portrait, landscape) down to 1, 2, 3 minute rotations. I've been running 6+ hours without a crash so far. I've put my rotate times back to normal as this bug appears to be worked around for now.

NOTE: I never reboot, only sleep/hibernate, so my W10 has uptime of 3-4 weeks at a time before a true reboot. Wondering if that factors into this bug, is this still some form of GDI leak?

I still see a brief 1-3 second stutter of my system when the wallpaper rotation occurs, especially if I am in a window that is explorer.exe derivitive such as a save-as dialog box, or just plain file explorer. The dialog window I am on may even briefly show "(not responding)" during the wallpaper updating, but if I just pause 1-3 seconds it all comes back to life.

But so far at 1.5 days I have not had a crash/hang situation.

here you go Keith, my 3 monitor DFpro file.

Nope, that was the 2nd thing i changed as noted earlier.

b. DF, Options, Aero Colour Settings, check “don’t change the aero color

-

The stutter is hardly a problem, especially if don't see any of tweaks to try. As long as explorer.exe stays unhung this is great.

But I'll try any tweak you want, just give a me a to-do list.

i fresh rebooted, then set my wallpapers to 30s, 60s, and 90s respectively. The stuttering definately is getting worse the longer I allow the system to rapid cycle wallpapers, I would say it was almost 99% stutter free after a fresh reboot. My normal rotation is 5/10/15mins.

Sounds good, just let me know if you need any further debug/diag info. I'll keep my rotation cycles back to normal 5/10/15min ranges ... and if stuttering gets bad, reboot at least for now.

This may or may not be related, or could just be a contributing factor at least, see https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/1219858/Windows-10-update-Microsoft-fix-File-Explorer-problem-November-2019-Update ; which talks about bug fixes for "was noted to address a problem where the app would have trouble rendering when using multiple monitors.". My explorer.exe hangs definately occur when i have multiple copies open, usually on 2 if not all 3 monitors.

But since we have determined my stutter issue gets worse the longer my system uptime/DF rotates wallpapers I'm pretty sure its DF as the majority source.

-

I'm still testing, but with new 9.6 i've had a few more full explorer.exe hangs than usual. I did check to make sure my two DF config changes were in place. I will keep posted in the event explorer.exe hangs continue to be worse on this new release.

I've had a similar experience since upgrading to 9.6. I've always had the stutter when wallpapers change...sometimes up to 6 or 7 seconds, and then I have to wait once the system starts to catch up again for my mouse clicks to catch up with me.

I haven't ever tried any of the tweaks mentioned earlier in this thread and I can start exploring those.

But the biggest issue has been that after running for a while, certain explorer.exe functions begin to fail. Today it was my Windows key, which I use a lot. And the final symptom before I have to go in to task manager and kill displayfusion.exe is usually clicking on a taskbar icon on the taskbar on my 2nd or 3rd monitor. At that point, the spinning circle comes up and I can no longer switch tasks by clicking on icons on the extended taskbars, or alt-tab. The primary taskbar still works though.

Aaron,

I never correlated the windows key issue, but your symptoms seem similar to mine and I am sticking to my note that 9.6 seems worse. I've been doing a ton of screenshots using WindowsKey-Shift-S lately and that does seem to be aggravating the hang issue more. I never kill Displayfusion though, i taskmanager kill explorer.exe via a .bat file i created that nukes it with taskkill.exe and then starts a fresh explorer.exe process. Maybe I should add nuking displayfusion.exe and restarting it within my same .bat file.

here is my cheap .bat file which i have on my start menu/desktop, but at times have to run via taskmanager.exe when the system is really cranked off.

@echo off
echo #########################################
echo ## task killing hung explorer.exe
echo #########################################
taskkill /F /FI "IMAGENAME eq explorer.exe"
echo.
echo #########################################
echo ## now restart explorer.exe
echo #########################################
c:\windows\explorer.exe

Okay, I think I've determined the windows key issues was NOT related to displayfusion.

I have made the tweaks listed earlier in this thread with aero colors and animations, and today explorer did NOT stop responding, so this is a positive move for me.

I'll try a few more days after new year's and see, then I may put those settings back the way I had them to see if the problem comes back.

Yes, i did misunderstand you. So as of today I now have the following tweaks applied:

a. DF, Desktop Wallpaper, Wallpaper Settings, Uncheck “use transitions when changing wallpaper”
b. DF, Options, Aero Colour Settings, check “don’t change the aero color"
c. Window 10 OS Settings (Start Menu, Settings, Personalization, Colors, uncheck "Automatically pick an accent colour" option in the Windows settings”

I will reboot and update in a few days.

I am facing a similar issue. explorer.exe stops responding after computer wakes up from sleep. I have to restart explorer.exe from task manager. I have 2 monitor setup with AMD graphics card. It appears DF is trying to change wallpaper when computer goes to sleep. Is it possible to disable the wallpaper change when computer goes to sleep.

Windows 10
DF Pro 9.7.1

Keith -- It has been a year now since I applied the tweaks. What I can confirm is that the explorer.exe hanging seems to be less, but still confident that DF is part of the issue somewhere. I've also now attributed a higher than average CPU load on the system with DF running, and not just when the process is trying to rotate my 3-screen images. I can clearly hear my laptop fan trying to keep the system cooled even when DF is not in screen rotate. If I taskman terminate DF executable, the CPU fan cycles down in less than 15 seconds.

The tweaks have reduced the explorer hangs, but not sure why when DF should be idle between my ~15 minute wallpaper rotates it is still consuming enough cycles to un-throttle my CPU.

Love the product, just hoping for some more tips to mellow it out.

-BRIAN

Keith, I do not have acronis or any other disk image OS image restore type utility installed. Lots of other stuff, but not Acronis.

Keith I am on stock 9.7.1 but I can try the beta, which i am installing 9.7.2.-beta4 now.

Probably not helpful, but I recently had a similar issue with explorer.exe crashing when the system was idle. While I initially expected that DF might be the problem, in my case it turned out not to be. For me the workaround, if not the solution, was going from using DP to HDMI for a specific monitor. I don't really understand why that fixed it, but the problems disappeared.

Dimdem66 -- interesting feedback on the display connection types. I can't really alter my config.

1) laptop 1920x1080 built-in display
2) portrait mode 1440x2560 Displayport
3) landscape mode 2560x1440 displayport

Screens #2-3 are dual-shared with my work laptop using HDMI, and that PC only has HDMI.

If I could make the explorer.exe issue happen at will or within X number of hours I could swap cabling and do more testing with my main home PC rig, but that is not my case.

-

I do disconnect via Win10 display panel the 2-3 screens when I am in WFH mode on my other laptop, and I still see the explorer.exe issue with just the laptop LCD, and same goes for the high CPU usage while DF.exe is alive.

kill DF.exe and i do not see these problems.