In the last two hours I've had Explorer (the shell) crash and restart three times. The last time I grabbed the extended error message. (Interestingly, even though Explorer was halted, the scratch pad still worked.)

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name: BEX
  Application Name: Explorer.EXE
  Application Version: 6.1.7600.16404
  Application Timestamp: 4a765076
  Fault Module Name: Mpeg2DecFilter.ax_unloaded
  Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp: 4a9b7207
  Exception Offset: 1531aa20
  Exception Code: c0000005
  Exception Data: 00000008
  OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
  Locale ID: 1033
  Additional Information 1: 0a9e
  Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3: 0a9e
  Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

All three times I was doing the same thing. I had a DVD in my drive. AnyDVD was removing the encryption. I was running Vidomi, a freeware program for extracting video segments out of DVD VOB files. (I'd link to it, but it doesn't seem to be there any longer.) I'm using its "Select Source Range" popup to scan through the VOB files to find frames for the top rotation.

I also have Thumbs Plus running. It has a mode which will grab anything put into the scratchpad and store it, if you set it up to do so. So when I find an appropriate frame in Vidomi, I use Alt-PrtSrc to grab the window, and Thumbs Plus automatically creates a file of it in my Grabs directory. The result is this:

Which is a 3:2 raw frame grab, plus some associated cruft. Downstream from this point, I have a Thumbs Plus batch file which extracts out just the 720*480 screen segment, and then I can use other tools I own (mostly PSP8) to resize and correct the aspect ratio and add labels, and voila! Top rotation pictures.

I've been using this process, or a variation of it, for years now. It worked fine in XP. It worked fine in Vista. This evening it's managed to crash the Win 7 Explorer three times.

What's peculiar is that in all three cases I had been taking frame grabs for quite a while before it died. It's not like it bagged it the very first time I attempted to do anything.

UPDATE: And it just died a fourth time. I think I'm going to try copying all the VOB's onto my HD and see if I can do it from there, so that I'm not using AnyDVD interactively.

UPDATE: And doing that, no problems at all.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the problem is with Explorer trying to create thumbnails for the VOB files on the DVD, with AnyDVD running.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon. Explorer just bagged it again, while I was trying to copy VOB files from the next DVD onto my HD. I think I'm going to turn off the "Details pane" for the time being.

UPDATE: Now I'm sure that's what happened. When it crashed, I had just sweep-highlighted the VOB files I wanted to copy, and the drive access LED started blinking. It ran like that for maybe 30 seconds, and then the Explorer crashed.

After it restarted, I turned off the Details pane (which is where that thumbnail would have been displayed) and after I sweep-highlighted the VOB files, there was no blinking. And the copy ran smoothly.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Vista at 07:25 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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