[numerobis]

There is a similar problem with SketchUp 2015 files with the x64 version installed:
http://forums.sketchup.com/t/sketchup-2 ... lorer/3720

For me this happens immediately when i enter a folder that contains skp2015 files and the preview window is enabled.
Disabling the preview window or renaming the preview handler dll's fixes the problem (but then there is no preview anymore).

[Asmithey]

I can not seem to figure out how to fix this. I have been having problems ever since I installed Maxwell v3 with MXED crashing win explorer.

Description
Faulting Application Path: C:\Windows\explorer.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.1.7601.17567
Application Timestamp: 4d672ee4
Fault Module Name: maxwell.shell.dll
Fault Module Version: 3.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 5298e127
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000001cb2c2
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: a288
Additional Information 2: a288c839592098b811def515e22db6b5
Additional Information 3: 04ab
Additional Information 4: 04ab62a8339a1696ea40f24bab4cae0d

[JDHill]

Please reboot the machine, go to Programs and Features (without doing anything else), uninstall the Maxwell Shell Extension, reboot the machine again, and then see if you can still observe crashing, noting whether you do. Then, go into your Maxwell 3 folder (in Program Files) and run the shell/maxwell.shell.x64.msi installer, reboot again, and once again see if you are able to observe crashing.

[Asmithey]

Ok. I will try it. I am getting this as well with MXED...

Description
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.
Faulting Application Path: C:\Program Files\Next Limit\Maxwell 3\mxed.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: mxed.exe
Application Version: 0.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 53395302
Hang Signature: faa1
Hang Type: 0
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: faa177e90dd9acb30bcfd8ae90b65ca1
Additional Hang Signature 2: 57b4
Additional Hang Signature 3: 57b4727e46c2ce8a977c62dd04fe608a
Additional Hang Signature 4: faa1
Additional Hang Signature 5: faa177e90dd9acb30bcfd8ae90b65ca1
Additional Hang Signature 6: 57b4
Additional Hang Signature 7: 57b4727e46c2ce8a977c62dd04fe608a

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 85613248

[Asmithey]

I did just as requested. Uninstalled the shell. Rebooted and it was MXED was crashing. Rebooted installed shell. MEXD crashes immediatly every time try to open MXED. Everything opens ok. MXED runs ok inside Studio.

Edit: Now Maxwell Render is crashing

[Asmithey]

I did just as requested. Uninstalled the shell. Rebooted and it was MXED was crashing. Rebooted installed shell. MEXD crashes immediatly every time try to open MXED. Everything opens ok. MXED runs ok inside Studio.

Edit: Now Maxwell Render is crashing. I am going to re-install Maxwell
Edit: Uninstalled Maxwell Suite/ Reinstalled and have the same problem. MXED crashes whenever I try to open it.

[JDHill]

None of this is making much sense, so let's please try to simplify the scenario, by rebooting, uninstalling the shell extension, and then rebooting again. If, during further testing, you reinstall Maxwell, make sure to de-select the shell extension in the installation customization page in the Maxwell installer.

Next, please make sure any type of intrusive 3rd-party software, such as virus scanners, etc, are not running, both when installing Maxwell, and when trying to run its applications.

With the shell extension out of the picture, let's then uninstall Maxwell, completely delete the Program Files\Next Limit\Maxwell 3 directory, rename the Documents\Maxwell directory, and once again reinstall Maxwell. This is to ensure that you are not somehow ending up with files from a previous version in your Maxwell installation, say, due to their being locked during installation.

The next idea is to try temporarily renaming any directories, and/or deleting any shares, where you may be keeping MXM files and/or referenced textures, etc. This is to see whether there could be a corrupted file, or somesuch, which is being accessed by MXED as you start it.

All this said, please understand that what you describe really makes no sense, so far, and could possibly indicate deeper issues on the machine -- screwed up permissions, preventing necessary components from being accessible, corrupted or misconfigured support files (e.g. the Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables required by these applications), and so forth.

[Asmithey]

"All this said, please understand that what you describe really makes no sense, so far, and could possibly indicate deeper issues on the machine -- screwed up permissions, preventing necessary components from being accessible, corrupted or misconfigured support files (e.g. the Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables required by these applications), and so forth".

As you said above. I am pretty sure this is what is going on. Non of my other machines on the network have ever done this.

Here is some more interesting things that happened after my "clean install". I opened the folder where the current project I have been working on is located. I noticed three materials were displaying the MXED logo thumbnail preview. These are on my projects hard drive. I tried to delete them they would not delete. I tried to delete them from another machine over the network. They would crash explorer on other network machines.

So, I attempted to drag them to my desktop on my C drive....All hell broke loose. The computer when into a loop. Windows continuously crashing and restarting. It had use the task manager to open control panel and uninstall Maxwell Render. Once it was uninstalled the looping crash stopped. I was then able to delete the bad MXED files. I did another clean install.

Windows is still behaving badly with MXED. It will save on some materials yet still crash on some leaving a black preview of the material.

I have only a handful of programs installed on this machine as it is only a month old.

Form-Z 6.7.3, Form-Z v8, Blender 2.71, Maxwell Render, Unreal Engine 4 and Photoshop....That is it. One thing I have not mentioned is that The only other program that is not working is Form-Z 32 bit version. It will not launch. It crashes at the initial splash screen.

It seems like it hit the fan when I installed the 32 bit version of Form-Z. The first 5 projects I did Maxwell had no problems on this machine.

I think it has something to do with these (Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables required by these applications)

I will try renaming the shared folders I know there are some materials with shared info.

Edit: I think I am going to do a clean install of the OS. I installed all the programs before installed Anti-Virus. One thing that I did that may have not been a good I idea is that I installed programs before windows did all of its 500 updates. It is windows 7 x64 SP1. Maybe I should let the OS go through all its updates before I install my programs. Could this be an issue with my video card? The drivers are always current.

[JDHill]

It doesn't sound like something that would be caused by a display driver. I'm not going to tell you to reinstall your OS, but if it were my machine behaving this way, that's probably what I'd do, unless I was able to find a definite cause and solution, for the behavior. Because, I wouldn't like running in a state where I have to wonder when the next strange issue is going to crop up. I can't say I've had any issue with Windows Update, but personally, I probably would let it do its thing, before investing the time in installing my applications. And for what it's worth, I don't personally run any anti-virus/malware, beyond whatever Windows has built in.

[Asmithey]

I have complete 5 projects on my new machine this year. I had no issues. it seems the issues started when I installed Form-Z 32 bit version. Actually, I did have anti-virus installed when i installed that but I did disable it.

[Asmithey]

So I formatted the hard drive did a clean install.. no antivirus. Open a material and MEXD crashes explorer. I am at a loss.

I wonder what QTCore4.dll does...

aulting Application Path: C:\Program Files\Next Limit\Maxwell 3\mxed.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: mxed.exe
Application Version: 0.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 53395302
Fault Module Name: QtCore4.dll
Fault Module Version: 4.8.5.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 51ffa07d
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000000000005a2b2
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: e600
Additional Information 2: e6003ccf88370238e5edab166e6ac1a2
Additional Information 3: 35ac
Additional Information 4: 35ac0c9c189a5219536310232ec51c03

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 22983217

It seems that MXED will crash windows if a the window is open where the materials are located. So I have been trying another method where I open (double click) the material from the explorer window then close the explorer window, make changes to the material then save it. So far no crashes. I will keep trying this method to see if it actually works....

[JDHill]

QtCore4.dll is the main Qt library, and Qt is the UI framework used by all the Maxwell applications. It's not likely this is being caused by Qt; dealing with memory corruption is like playing hot potato with a hand grenade -- it can blow up in your hands, but that doesn't mean you were the one who pulled the pin.

The question is, why the crashes, even after a clean OS install? The factors now are similar to before: is the Maxwell shell extension installed, are other shell extensions installed (any number of applications may install extensions, so have you yet installed anything but Maxwell on this OS), is MXED possibly trying to access a resource that is corrupted (texture on a share, etc). We need to narrow things down, remove variables, and note any change in behavior. There is always the possibility of a hardware problem, too, since this is spanning OS installs: bad overclock setup, failing memory, failing HD, etc.

[Asmithey]

I got rid of all the shared information in each material.

The order of install was...Quick Time, Form-Z x64, Maxwell, Blender x64, Photoshop x32. That is it.

The computer is only about a month old. I would hate to think something was failing already. I know it is a possibility. All of the hardware is the latest and greatest technology. Maybe not the greatest but the latest for sure. Which could be a bad thing as well. This all started out of the blue a couple of weeks ago. It was running great with no issues the whole month of January. When I did the new reinstall of Windows yesterday, I let windows go through all of the updates as we discussed. May be I should try Maxwell and MXED without letting Windows update. Maybe the updates are the issue. Maybe since the components are fairly new technology there are going to bugs associate with windows updates.

Just a thought.

Also, I did list one change in behavior in my previous post. Explorer does not seem to crash if I have the window that shows the material previews closed at the time I edit and save materials. It seems to only crash windows explorer if the window is open when I edit and save the materials. I need to test further though.

Also, sometimes when I send from Blender to Maxwell render Blender will crash shortly after I send the rendering to Maxwell Render And I get this.

Description
Faulting Application Path: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: blender.exe
Application Version: 2.7.1.0
Application Timestamp: 53ab381a
Fault Module Name: pymaxwell.pyd
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 53cc0cba
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000000115d5
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: c402
Additional Information 2: c402d8f6221d7bd2a031967800dff663
Additional Information 3: b023
Additional Information 4: b02379e9a1f75b259d21b868ca4830d5

[JDHill]

Also, I did list one change in behavior in my previous post. Explorer does not seem to crash if I have the window that shows the material previews closed at the time I edit and save materials. It seems to only crash windows explorer if the window is open when I edit and save the materials. I need to test further though.

This is what tends to implicate a shell extension. Shell extensions are plugins for Windows Explorer, which are called when viewing a folder, or right-clicking on an item, and so forth. However, with crashes in MXED, Blender, etc, happening as well, and not just explorer.exe, the situation is not clear.

[Asmithey]

Ok. I have some updates. I had a friend who is a tech guy for a company here in town log into machine and trouble shoot. We reproducing the problem in multiple scenarios on multiple drives in multiple ways. We even, at the OS level, ran the machine with only 4 cores and 4 gigs of ram to trouble shoot. We still had the crashes under those scenarios as well. Now I feel absent minded sometimes. I swear I uninstalled the Maxwell Shell x64 and reproduced the problems. I think maybe I forgot to reboot or something.

But, when HE did it, using multiple scenarios on multiple drives in multiple ways, the problems did not occur with the Maxwell Shell uninstalled. And as soon as well reinstalled the Shell. The problems came back.

He set up a VM on my system to trouble shoot install configurations of my programs. Like Maxwell by itself, Maxwell + Form-z, etc......
Now we know this is a software compatibility issue we need to find what is the cocktail that is causing windows explorer to crash with MXED and the Maxwell Shell.

I could not remember if I was having issues on my other windows 7 machine. I have not been using Maxwell v3 very long. I tried it on my other machine and it too is experiencing issues with the previews.