Thumbnails by LDView

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hi all,

When I installed LDView I configured it to generate the thumbnails in Windows Explorer.
Lately when opening folders with LDraw files Explorer crashes almost every time.
How do I stop LDView from generating thumbnails?
This is getting very annoying (sorry about that Travis ;-)

Jaco

[Magnus Forsberg]

Hi all,

When I installed LDView I configured it to generate the thumbnails in Windows Explorer.
Lately when opening folders with LDraw files Explorer crashes almost every time.

I think it has something to do with the updates of Win10.
I'm experiencing something similar. Explorer doesn't crash, but it seems to not remember having created thumbnails. Everytime I restart my pc from Hibernate-mode and open a folder, all the thumbs are gone and LDView have to regenerate them.
Annoying, indeed...

[Willy Tschager]

You have to unregister the LDViewThumbs.dll (based on the 32 or 64) using C:\Windows\System32\regsvr32.exe.

The easy way would be uninstalling the AIOI which unregisters at shutdown.

w.

[Travis Cobbs]

Hi all,

When I installed LDView I configured it to generate the thumbnails in Windows Explorer.
Lately when opening folders with LDraw files Explorer crashes almost every time.
How do I stop LDView from generating thumbnails?
This is getting very annoying (sorry about that Travis ;-)

Jaco

First of all, I cannot reproduce this problem in my fully updated 64-bit Windows 10. So, unfortunately, I'm not likely going to be able to track down and fix whatever is causing it. The thumbnail generator is actually quite simple, since it spawns an external instance of LDView.exe (or LDView64.exe) to do the actual work. But figuring out why it is crashing Explorer is well-nigh impossible without me being able to reproduce the crash.

Willy's instructions will uninstall, and regsvr32 can be used to turn off thumbnail generation manually without uninstalling. If you want to manually unregister (using regsvr32), you would do the following:

1. Hit the start button, then type 'cmd' (without the quotes).
   
2. Right click on "Command Prompt".
   
3. Select "Run as administrator"
   
4. Type 'cd "\Program Files\LDView"' (without the single quotes, but with the double quotes) and hit return.
   
5. Type 'regsvr32 /u LDViewThumbs.dll' (without the quotes) and hit return.
   
6. Hit OK to acknowledge that it successfully unregistered.
   
7. Type 'regsvr32 /u LDViewThumbs64.dll' (without the quotes) and hit return.
   
8. Hit OK to acknowledge that it successfully unregistered.
   
9. Reboot. (Possibly not necessary.)
   

If you have 32-bit Windows, skip steps 7 and 8. If you installed the 32-bit LDView in 64-bit Windows, the path in step 4 should be "\Program Files (x86)\LDView", but quite frankly you should uninstall the 32-bit LDView and then install the 64-bit one. I have tried both in my 64-bit Windows, and both appear to correctly generate thumbnails. Note that LDViewThumbs64.dll is installed in 64-bit Windows, whether you are installing the 32-bit LDView or the 64-bit one. (In fact, in 64-bit Windows, both DLLs are installed by both versions of LDView, because 32-bit programs can show thumbnails in their open and save dialogs.)

I would appreciate it if you used the AIOI if you would uninstall the whole AIOI and then install LDView standalone with Explorer thumbnails enabled. If they then work, then that probably indicates a problem in the AIOI (which doesn't use LDView's standalone installer). If it still crashes Explorer, then at least we know that the AIOI isn't the source of the problem. Note that I'm not expecting the AIOI to be the source of the problem; it's just one variable that is (relatively) easy to check.

[Travis Cobbs]

I would appreciate it if you used the AIOI if you would uninstall the whole AIOI and then install LDView standalone with Explorer thumbnails enabled. If they then work, then that probably indicates a problem in the AIOI (which doesn't use LDView's standalone installer). If it still crashes Explorer, then at least we know that the AIOI isn't the source of the problem. Note that I'm not expecting the AIOI to be the source of the problem; it's just one variable that is (relatively) easy to check.

I installed the AIOI (which I see appears to be 32-bit-only), but I still couldn't reproduce the Explorer crash.

[Steffen]

could you post the contents of your registry tree below

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Travis Cobbs\LDView

here? maybe that could help for analysis. You can save that registry subtree by using regedit.exe

[Jaco van der Molen]

Hi all,

When I installed LDView I configured it to generate the thumbnails in Windows Explorer.
Lately when opening folders with LDraw files Explorer crashes almost every time.
How do I stop LDView from generating thumbnails?
This is getting very annoying (sorry about that Travis ;-)

Jaco

First of all, I cannot reproduce this problem in my fully updated 64-bit Windows 10. So, unfortunately, I'm not likely going to be able to track down and fix whatever is causing it. The thumbnail generator is actually quite simple, since it spawns an external instance of LDView.exe (or LDView64.exe) to do the actual work. But figuring out why it is crashing Explorer is well-nigh impossible without me being able to reproduce the crash.

Willy's instructions will uninstall, and regsvr32 can be used to turn off thumbnail generation manually without uninstalling. If you want to manually unregister (using regsvr32), you would do the following:

1. Hit the start button, then type 'cmd' (without the quotes).
   
2. Right click on "Command Prompt".
   
3. Select "Run as administrator"
   
4. Type 'cd "\Program Files\LDView"' (without the single quotes, but with the double quotes) and hit return.
   
5. Type 'regsvr32 /u LDViewThumbs.dll' (without the quotes) and hit return.
   
6. Hit OK to acknowledge that it successfully unregistered.
   
7. Type 'regsvr32 /u LDViewThumbs64.dll' (without the quotes) and hit return.
   
8. Hit OK to acknowledge that it successfully unregistered.
   
9. Reboot. (Possibly not necessary.)
   

If you have 32-bit Windows, skip steps 7 and 8. If you installed the 32-bit LDView in 64-bit Windows, the path in step 4 should be "\Program Files (x86)\LDView", but quite frankly you should uninstall the 32-bit LDView and then install the 64-bit one. I have tried both in my 64-bit Windows, and both appear to correctly generate thumbnails. Note that LDViewThumbs64.dll is installed in 64-bit Windows, whether you are installing the 32-bit LDView or the 64-bit one. (In fact, in 64-bit Windows, both DLLs are installed by both versions of LDView, because 32-bit programs can show thumbnails in their open and save dialogs.)

I would appreciate it if you used the AIOI if you would uninstall the whole AIOI and then install LDView standalone with Explorer thumbnails enabled. If they then work, then that probably indicates a problem in the AIOI (which doesn't use LDView's standalone installer). If it still crashes Explorer, then at least we know that the AIOI isn't the source of the problem. Note that I'm not expecting the AIOI to be the source of the problem; it's just one variable that is (relatively) easy to check.

Ok I’ll look in to it Monday since it is my computer at work that has the problem.

[Travis Cobbs]

could you post the contents of your registry tree below

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Travis Cobbs\LDView

here? maybe that could help for analysis. You can save that registry subtree by using regedit.exe

The thing is, the LDView Thumbnail DLLs don't generate the thumbnails. All they do is construct a command line which they use to launch LDView, which generates the thumbnails. So, if LDView crashes during the process, the thumbnail generation will fail, but it shouldn't crash Windows Explorer.

[Johann Eisner]

could you post the contents of your registry tree below

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Travis Cobbs\LDView

here? maybe that could help for analysis. You can save that registry subtree by using regedit.exe

The thing is, the LDView Thumbnail DLLs don't generate the thumbnails. All they do is construct a command line which they use to launch LDView, which generates the thumbnails. So, if LDView crashes during the process, the thumbnail generation will fail, but it shouldn't crash Windows Explorer.

I think the same.
Had the same problem on a Win7 system, but only generating thumbnails from big models. When i generate a instruction from this models with LPub, LDView crash also, because my system RAM was to small. Solved this problem by changing the memory usage in LDView. LDView is slower, but it helps.

[Jaco van der Molen]

OK, I just removed everything from the registry that had LDViewThumbs.dll in it.

I dit not installed LDraw with the AIOI.

[Jaco van der Molen]

OK, I just removed everything from the registry that had LDViewThumbs.dll in it.

I dit not installed LDraw with the AIOI.

Just to inform you all: once I removed the registry entry for LDViewThumbs no crashes for the file explorer have occurred on my Windows 7 pro PC.