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it happens not always, but often...
Opening a MXM or right clicking on it can crash the explorer.
This is VERY annoying...

I think i noticed this behavior for the first time with 3.0.0.1 but i'm not sure about it. Maybe v3.0.0.0 too.

beta v3.0.0.2
Win 7 x64 SP1

The Explorer thumbnails plugin has not been changed, so it will have nothing to do with using version 3.0.0.x. It is suspicious that you say it happens when you open or right-click, because the plugin is not asked to do anything at that time -- it is only called by Explorer to generate the thumbnails. Some questions would be:

• Does it make any difference which MXM files you are dealing with?
• Does it make any difference which view (details, thumbnails, etc.) you are using?
• Do you have other Explorer plugins installed (especially ones that add items to the context menu)?
• Can you think of anything special I should try in order to reproduce such a crash?

I'm also on win7 x64 (and the plugin is compiled on that, by me), and have observed no such problem.

i think i have to evaluate this a bit more. Yes you're right, it should be related to the preview only. I can't say if it is a specific MXM-file. I don't think so.
It doesn't make a difference if thumbnail or list view is enabled. But i always have the preview active, so maybe i should disable this. I can't recreate it, but it never happens with the first MXM i open.
I also have problems with the thumbnail display of maxwell file types since the update to v3.
I deleted the registry entries of mxm, mxi and mxs to get a reassignment, but it doesn't work - maybe this got something wrong with the preview?
I have now deleted the new entries again and reimported the reg for these types from a working installation of another machine. Maybe this will fix the crashing...

If you want to clean things up, you can remove the shell extension using Programs & Features, then go into the Maxwell 3 folder, shell subfolder, and execute maxwell.shell.x64.msi (that will set up all the registry stuff as needed). Once installed, you should also find there's an x64 folder inside of Maxwell 3\shell, which contains some simple batch files for manually registering & un-registering the shell extension dll, should you find it necessary to do that.

this was the first thing i tried, but it didn't fix it. But i'll do it again.

The reimport didn't help... Nothing has changed.
But the big thumbnails are working now. Before i could only see the preview at the bottom of the explorer window (since the first v3 installation)
The MXM/MXS/MXI symbols are still missing.

I've reported it long before, explorer crashes esp. when you copy big mxi's over network, it appears that explorer cannot generate the thumbnail if the mxi file is not fully copied.

The topic was about mxM but this is another problem i have on this machine too since maybe a year. Sometimes when i copy a MXI and i want to rename it i get a crash - no network involved, only a local copy from the rendernode temp to another folder.

The MXM crash problem is still there even afer a complete reinstall of Maxwell (3.0.0.6) and update to 3.0.1.0

it's from start of ver. 2.
as I understand it, explorer is trying to generate a thumbnail from a file that is not complete yet so it crashes.
it also happens if you copy an mxs to another computer and try to open it before copy is complete - most time maxwell will crash since the file is not complete
(however I sometimes rendered half houses etc...)

Once again... i'm speaking about material files, mxM not mxi - the mxi renaming crash is another problem i have since maybe one or two years now. But the MXM-crash is a new one which occurs since the update to V3.

Same here...
Most of the times I open a material, change it (or not), save it, explorer crashes...
Only with V3, V2 never had this annoying crashes.
Cheers

Please provide more details -- version of Windows, x86 or x64, relevant 3rd-party Explorer plugins, which size of thumbnails are being used in Explorer when the crash occurs, and any other detail you can think of (e.g. seems related to old MXMs, or new MXMs, or MXMs with text assigned to their description, and so forth). Because, until I am able to observe a crash here, there's not much I can do except suggest going to Programs and Features and uninstalling the Maxwell shell extension.

Hi JDHill,
I'm running win 7 x64, no 3rd-party plugins for explorer and maxwell version 3.0.1.0 (just updated)
I must say that when I uninstal maxwell shell extension there are no more crashes, but now I lost my thumbnails in explorer, only the mxm icon appears...
Any Idea?
Thanks

Unfortunately, no clues so far, and in fact, the plugin is compiled on win7 x64. It's to be expected that you won't have thumbnails without the shell extension installed, since that is what provides them.

So the problem seems to be from the shell extension itself right... Any idea on some future fix on this issue?
It's great to have explorer not crashing all the time, plus the material editor crashed every time I create a material type and then converting it to the advance editor, and now it's all working fine but not having the thumbnails is a massive drawback...