Vista Makes BBPro 1.7.2 Die

[bwiley]

My hair has just gone gray. I installed Windows Vista yesterday and now when I start Breezebrowzer Pro vers. 1.7.2 I get the message "Breezebrowser Has Stopped Working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program."

Then I have no choice but to push the close button and the screen returns to Windows.

Please note that I have BBPro vers 1.7.2. I read that Vista should work fine with BBPro vers. 1.7.0 or above, so I don't know what the problem is.

Any ideas?

I disabled both of my firewalls to no avail.

Thanks,
Bill

[DavidB]

From what you say, I think you may be using a BB Pro installation originally made under XP, and that you have installed Vista on top of XP. Although this is supposed to be possible, I'm afraid that anything other than a clean install of an operating system will give problems, some of which may be difficult to fix.

If everything else is working satisfactorily, I would uninstall BB Pro as fully as possible (including using a registry cleaner if you have one). I would then download the most recent version of BB Pro to which your licence entitles you, running the install program as administrator to be on the safe side. If that doesn't work, please come back.

An alternative is to disable User Account Control, to see if that makes a difference. But BB Pro normally runs perfectly well with UAC enabled, so that will not be the root cause of the problem.

Hope this helps.

[bwiley]

You're right about the fact that I installed Vista on top of XP and I already had BBPro on the drive. Naturally I didn't want to uninstall programs if I didn't have to, but I will give it a try.

Thanks for the insight. Maybe tomorrow my hair will look a little more natural than today.

Bill

[bwiley]

I did as stated, uninstalled my old BBPro and DL, did a registry clean and then installed the latest versions of both programs.

I still have the same issue - BBPro crashes when I click on a folder for the image files.

The Error message appears with this in the box:

Error: Access violation at 0x7605d3fe (tried to read from 0x12000012), program terminated.

Then I get: BreezeBrowser Pro has stopped working. A problem cause the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program.

So now it crashes with both version 1.7.2 and the new version. What's the problem and what else can I do? All my other programs seem to be working fine after installing Vista Ultimate.

[DavidB]

As I said before, these things can be tricky, particularly if you are not starting with a clean Vista installation. I haven't used Vista Ultimate, but have successfully installed BB Pro on Vista Home Basic and Home Premium, 32 and 64-bit versions.

'Access violation' can mean a whole lot of things (including memory conflicts). Sometimes it can happen when the program, by default, tries to access an area that Vista will not allow you to access unless you have administrative rights, and, even if your user account can run as administrator, it will not do so by default. Try right-clicking on the BB Pro icon, and selecting 'Run as administrator', to see if that makes a difference. If it does, this isn't the solution, but we're getting there.

If running as administrator doesn't help, I'm out of ideas, short of a full, clean re-install of Windows - very much your last resort, I know, but actually the best thing you can do in the interests of long-term system stability. I doubt that this is the issue here, but Vista is also much more resource-hungry than XP; I personally would not run Home Premium (and therefore Ultimate) with less than a dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM, which is the spec. of the 'basic' laptop I have just bought for my wife.

I think Chris is on holiday now (or will shortly be), and I suspect that he may find in any case that your symptoms are hard to replicate. In which case, it would be very interesting to hear from anyone out there who has had similar problems, particularly with Vista Ultimate.

I hope this helps.

[DavidB]

[Duplicate post removed]

[bwiley]

Thanks, I'll try the administrator rights thing and report back.

Got to find an answer; Breezebrowser is as important as Photoshop to me.

[DavidB]

I now have another idea, in case you need it.

Vista, about which I'm learning all the time, has an application called the Event Viewer. It's one of the Administrative Tools; how you access those will depend on how you have your Start Menu set up; failing all else, they are in Control Panel.

When Event Viewer opens up, there is a classic Windows tree in the left hand pane. Expand 'Windows Logs', and you will see (among other things) 'Applications' and 'Security'. If you look at either or both of these after a BB Pro crash, they may give you a hint of what is going on. It would obviously be useful for Chris to know which .dll module is giving the problems. More directly, if you see in the Security log that access to a particular location was blocked, that will also provide a useful clue.

I hope this is useful.

[bwiley]

I tried the "Run as Administrator" and that didn't make any difference.

So after the program crashed again, I looked in the Event Viewer, Applications and Security, like you said, and below is the information in Application:


8-10-08
Event 1000 Application Error

General:

Faulting application BreezeBrowser.exe, version 1.8.1.0, time stamp 0x4863a724, faulting module kernel32.dll version 6.0.6001.18000, time stamp 0x4791a76d, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0004d3fe, process id 0xce0, application start time 0x01c8fb1d2f7c55ad.


Details:

BreezeBrowser.exe
1.8.1.0
4863a724
kernel32.dll
6.0.6001.18000
4791a76d
c0000005
0004d3fe
ce0
01c8fb1d2f7c55ad

I hope all that means something to you and Chris. I shot a wedding yesterday and for now, I'm doing everything on my laptop. Life isn't the same w/o BBPro on my desktop.

Thanks,
Bill

[DavidB]

I hope all that means something to you and Chris.
What it means to me is that the application is generating problems when it accesses the kernel, and that is fairly fundamental; it's going to be a function of the Windows install or the BB Pro install, or both. It is also, sadly, going to be a function of your particular setup, unless, by some very odd chance, no-one else has tried installing BB Pro on Vista Ultimate. This is going to make the problem hard to reproduce on another system.

Short of that Windows reinstall, I suggest that you check that the BB Pro reinstall was really as clean as you thought it was. Uninstalling BB Pro leaves a number of files and registry keys behind Some of the files you will want to back up, for example bespoke HTML templates, keyword catalogue(s) and PTLens files if you have a registered version. The rest must be deleted if you want a clean re-install. Registry cleaners do not always remove all traces of an uninstalled program.

The main BB Pro Registry key is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\BreezeSystems\BreezeBro wserPro\100

If you use regedit to look at the contents of this key, you will see a number of values (for example those whose names begin with 'MRU') which record previous browsing history and settings you have made. If any of these go back to before the time you installed Vista, the uninstall was not complete. You should try another uninstall, this time with manual deletion of remaining files and any Registry keys that refer to BB Pro (use the Find facility in regedit), and then reinstall from your fresh download.

Before you reinstall, it's also worth checking your security software log(s) to make sure that your antivirus is not mis-identifying BB Pro as malware (Kaspersky did this to me recently, but at least it told me, so I was able to create an exception). If you find parts of BB Pro in the quarantine area, then that will most likely be the problem. In such cases, you either tell your antivirus to make an exception, or disable it temporarily while doing the install. On a bad day, you need to do both.

If none of that works, and you want to put off the Windows reinstall, I'm afraid that I've run out of ideas. I think Chris is on holiday, so he may not be posting for a couple of weeks. I do hope someone else can help; no need to spare my blushes.

Best of luck.

[bwiley]

Thanks, David B.

You've given me some things to check out. Before I installed Windows Vista, I did an uninstall of BBPro 1.7.2, but when I looked in Windows Explorer after I installed BBPro 1.8.1 and it crashed, I noticed that some of the old BB files were still there. I didn't do anything with them, because they weren't shown in Uninstall at all. So I was reluctant to just delete the old files from Windows Explorer.

I will go back and check them out and follow all of the steps that you mention. You may have hit the nail on the head. We'll see.

Thanks,
Bill

[bwiley]

Back again now that I finally have time to work on this.

I have some elementary questions:

Where do I go to find the BB Pro Registry key?

How do I use regedit to look at the contents of the key?

I've never done this before.

Thanks,
Bill

[DavidB]

Reasonable questions, Bill. I tend to assume people know these things, because it saves writing things down unnecessarily, but folk should always be free to question anything they don't understand, as you have done.


How do I use regedit to look at the contents of the key?
Start Menu - Run - then type in 'regedit', and press Enter. What looks like an Explorer window with the file tree in the left hand pane opens up. Registry keys are arranged in a hierarchical tree structure which looks like a folder/file structure, and which you navigate in the same way. When you get to the key you are interested in, you will find the value(s) contained in the key in the right hand pane.

Now here's the health warning. Changing anything in the Registry can be dangerous unless you know what you are doing. So all I am advising is that you look at values; do not amend or delete anything.


Where do I go to find the BB Pro Registry key?
The main BB Pro key is

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\BreezeSystems\BreezeBro wserPro\100
[Ignore the space; it is inserted by the forum, I think for security reasons]

You can see that this is written like a file path; navigate to it in the same way. When you will get there, you will see a whole series of values, many of which you will recognise; these are your BB Pro settings. The names of the settings are mostly pretty easy to decipher; Chris has laid the key out rather well, so, for your purposes at least, it should be fairly easy to find your way around.

I hope that this gives you what you need.

David

[bwiley]

Thanks, David B. I'll dig into this tonight when I get home. Sorry to drag this on, but I do want to get my BBPro working again.

[bwiley]

Still have program with BBPro dying.

Did scan with program called Advanced Registry and got a message that showed “Registry Error.”

“Missing file C: Program Files\BreezebrowserPro\PTlicense.dat

The missing key value “PTLensLicenseFilename” points to a missing file c:\Program Files\BreezeSys\BreezeBrowserPro.

What actually happens when I try to start BBPro is this: I double click the icon on the screen and BBPro comes up. When I click on “Computer” on the tree in BBPro, I get:

“Error: Access violation at 0x7758D3FE (tried to read from 0x13000013), program terminated."

Seems strange because if I click on “Bill” on the tree and then “Pictures,” it takes me to the pictures in the folder and works fine. No problems. The issue seems to occur only when I try to access the drives inside “Computer” on the tree. Inside that I keep all my pix files on a 250gb drive inside my computer and 2 750gb external HDs.

Previously I uninstalled BBPro 1.8.1 and then reinstalled it – same issue. I did notice in Windows Explorer than there were still some files from old versions of BBPro, but was paranoid about deleting anything. Also, I had seen them before in the past and there was never a problem.

I’ve also taken all firewalls off. The only thing I’m not quite sure about is if there could be an issue with permissions/access. I have no problems accessing any other program though.

Thanks for any ideas.
Bill

[DavidB]

Bill

I'll be interested to see what Chris says when he gets back, but the fact that BB Pro is working at all is interesting.

I suspect that PTLicense.dat is a red herring. It is the licence file used to validate an install of the registered version of PT Lens. If you have the registered version, you should have kept a copy of this file, and copy it into the BB Pro installation, as explained in the readme that comes with PT Lens. If you are only using the cut-down version of PTLens that ships with BB Pro, don't worry. I'd expect any problems with PTLens to surface only when you are using lens correction in RAW conversion or proofs. Chris can correct me if this is wrong.

The fact that BB Pro fails specifically when you try to access a Windows hard-wired location does point back to the fact that you installed Vista over XP. One thing you could try is right-click on the BB Pro icon on your desktop, select Properties, then the compatibility tab, then the option to run the program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (SP2). If that makes a difference, we're getting there. But, whether it works or not, it's not the real solution.

You really do need to try a full, clean install of BB Pro, as if it had never been installed on the machine before. If you do not like to delete files, just move them to another location, out of the way. Likewise, as you have a partly working BB Pro, use the option on the file menu to save your settings to a .reg file (again safely out of the way) before you uninstall. Afterwards, you can safely delete at least the main BB Pro key in regedit, then run your registry cleaner to see what else it finds, before you attempt to reinstall. If, after a successful install, you want to recover your settings, I can advise separately on that.

Hope these ideas are useful to be going on with.

David

[bwiley]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try again tonight and let you know.

[Chris Breeze]

It sounds as though the problem is when BBPro tries to expand the folder tree from "Computer" and enumerate the subfolders. I've never had this problem on any of my Vista test PCs but did come across a similar problem caused by NetWork Magic when the PC wasn't connected to a network. Please could you try the latest beta version, BBPro v1.9 beta 2, which includes a fix for the Network Magic problem?

BTW I don't think running BBPro in XP compatibility mode will work because it interferes with the software protection libraries causing them to think BBPro is being hacked and so they deliberately cause it to crash.

[bwiley]

Thanks Chris. I'll download the Beta version this weekend and give that a try. Seems like l've tried everything else (at least that I'm capable of doing).
Bill