Topic: My XMplay is acting up on start

[JEH]

Hi there,

when I start XMplay (or double click a playlist), there's no XMplay starting (the cursor shows it's doing something). This happens since maybe 2 months ago, before that, everything worked perfectly. I did not change anything around the time this started.
I have to go then into the task manager and find the XMplay process and kill it. When I tried to start XMplay by its icon, then nothing happens, but I can then savely start XMplay by its icon. When I tried to start it by double-clicking on a playlist, immediately after killing the stuck process, the program starts and the music plays. I have the XMplay folder in C/win/programfiles. I also have this folder sitting somewhere else, sort of as a backup. When I delete the folder in programfiles and copy that one, it works as it should - but the next day, when I try to start XMplay, it's doing exactly the same as I have described. Doesn't matter if I try XMplay from that backup-folder or from the one in programfiles. Doesn't matter if I put the folder on read-only.

I can only guess that's some kind of windows update causing this? I remember very faintly, that I had this once before many years back, could never fix it, and after 2 or 3 months I started using VLC to play music. Then, when I tried again later (quite some time later, maybe a year or two, might or might not have been on a new PC) it worked again to my utter surprise. And it did that until that "2 months ago" I mentioned.
I also went a week or so ago to look if there's a new version (had 3. and found the 4.0 one and installed this, didn't help.
Changing the skin (I thought maybe it's the skin, I use a really really old one (X-RD2506), doesn't matter. Deleting the ini file doesn't help either.

Does anyone have any idea?

thanks, Jürgen

[Ian @ un4seen]

To hopefully find out what's going wrong, please get a dump file from the stuck XMPlay. You can do that by right-clicking on the XMPlay process in Task Manager and selecting "Create dump file". You can then upload the dump file (after ZIPing) here:

   ftp.un4seen.com/incoming/

[JEH]

Hi there, thanks for trying to help me.

Here's the link to the dump:
https://www.safaribears.de/Stuff/xmplay.7z
The dump file was too large to upload (63 MB unpacked, 17 MB 7z-packed). It got refused.

Hope it helps. Cheers, Jürgen

[Ian @ un4seen]

The dump file shows that XMPlay was in a DdeInitialize function call, which is used to initialize DDE support. I can't find any information on why DdeInitialize might get stuck, but DDE isn't usually needed anyway these days (File Explorer doesn't send files to XMPlay via DDE since Windows XP) unless you're doing something like described here. So here's an update that has the option of disabling it:

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe

Please try adding a "NoDDE=1" line to your XMPLAY.INI file and see if you still have the problem then.

[JEH]

Hi Ian,

I see it's 4.0.0.5 now. One thing I forgot to mention, I think: it does that freeze thing only at the first start. When my system is newly booted and I start XMPlay, it freezes. I kill the process, from then on I can start and close XMPlay the whole day and it never freezes again. Next day the same.
So, after downloading your .5 version and adding the DDE line to the .ini, I did a reboot, just to be safe and I tried again.

It works! Must really be this DDE stuff. Thanks for the help!

BTW I had a hard time finding the .ini. I looked at C:\Program Files\XMPlay and at \AppData\Roaming\XMPlay, I think that's where I usually found them.
It not being there (there were older ones, but not of today, and I changed a setting just to be sure (by the time stamp) that I am dealing with the one in use, I made a scan of my C drive and found it there:
\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\XMPlay

is that new, or is that just for the bug hunting?

Jürgen

[Ian @ un4seen]

It works! Must really be this DDE stuff. Thanks for the help!

Good to hear that disabling DDE does indeed prevent the problem.

BTW I had a hard time finding the .ini. I looked at C:\Program Files\XMPlay and at \AppData\Roaming\XMPlay, I think that's where I usually found them.
It not being there (there were older ones, but not of today, and I changed a setting just to be sure (by the time stamp) that I am dealing with the one in use, I made a scan of my C drive and found it there:
\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\XMPlay

is that new, or is that just for the bug hunting?

No, that isn't new, or at least shouldn't be. Are you sure things were different before? Modern Windows doesn't normally allow apps to write in "Program Files", and it redirects the files to "VirtualStore" instead. You can avoid that either by moving the XMPlay folder (eg. "C:\XMPlay") or by enabling the "Store per-user config/etc" option (which will put the files in the "%AppData%\XMPlay" folder).

[JEH]

I will try that, thanks again. :-)