VPEPreview access violation errror

[ZensoftBelgiumHZ]

Hi,

Since a couple of weeks the PREVIEW in VPE crashes. Users login on a terminalserver. The preview appears minimized on the screen for a second and then it stops with an error.
But not for every user and not every preview. Seems as the preview doesn't allways works with this version of .NET-framework.

The application is developed in OPENEDGE/PRogress, using VPE-control version P32.720.

VPE crashes on a dll of .NET-framework : clr.dll.
Is this a known issue, or related to an update of windows or .NET-framework?

SOme extracts of logfiles after the error and eventviewer:

Progress OpenEdge Release 11.7 build 1684 SP04 on WINNT
Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Fault address: 68DC57D6 01:001847D6 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\vpep3272.dll

Registers:
EAX:17CCC590
EBX:00000000
ECX:17CCC665
EDX:00000001
ESI:0FF68FB1
EDI:0FF69001
CS:EIP:0023:68DC57D6
SS:ESP:002B:004FDFFC EBP:000000CC
DS:002B ES:002B FS:0053 GS:002B
Flags:00010202

Call Stack:
Address Frame
68DC57D6 004FE010 VpeGetReleaseNumber+A8D6
68C55055 004FE034 Ordinal999+15055
68C556AB 004FE060 Ordinal999+156AB
763C967B 004FE0DC SelectObjectImpl+12B
68C6F642 004FE108 VpeSetBusyProgressBar+8B2
75086E3A 004FE16C CallWindowProcW+6CA
750937EF 004FE1AC IsRectEmpty+20F
75085A69 004FE1B4 GetWindowLongA+59
68DFD6FE 004FE380 VpeGetReleaseNumber+427FE
75086E3A 004FE3E4 CallWindowProcW+6CA
750937EF 004FE458 IsRectEmpty+20F
74AE2E8C 004FE4B8 NtUserDispatchMessage+C
7507BB40 004FE5A8 DispatchMessageA+10
6EB51E09 004FE5E8 LogHelp_TerminateOnAssert+749
6ECDFF7B 004FE628 GetMetaDataInternalInterfaceFromPublic+34D1B
6ECE0055 004FE948 GetMetaDataInternalInterfaceFromPublic+34DF5
6DA912D1 004FEA60 0003:000782D1 C:\Windows\assembly\NativeImages_v4.0.30319_32\mscorlib\a5a47e8e5e2880adecca43eb928673f1\mscorlib.ni.dll
6EB4EB4C 004FEFE4 0001:0000DB4C C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\clr.dll
6AEE72D5 004FF1C8 0003:0002D2D5 C:\Windows\assembly\NativeImages_v4.0.30319_32\System.Windows.Forms\f91e04eaede69f1b6c40df3ec5a3eb8a\System.Windows.Forms.ni.dll
6EB51E09 004FF208 LogHelp_TerminateOnAssert+749
6ECDFF7B 004FF248 GetMetaDataInternalInterfaceFromPublic+34D1B
6ECE0055 004FF560 GetMetaDataInternalInterfaceFromPublic+34DF5
6DA912D1 004FF64C 0003:000782D1 C:\Windows\assembly\NativeImages_v4.0.30319_32\mscorlib\a5a47e8e5e2880adecca43eb928673f1\mscorlib.ni.dll
6EB4EB4C 004FFF10 0001:0000DB4C C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\clr.dll
765B0419 004FFF7C BaseThreadInitThunk+19
771165FD 004FFF84 RtlGetAppContainerNamedObjectPath+BD
771351BC 004FFF88 RtlCaptureContext+DC


** ABL Stack Trace **

--> PreviewDoc alg.prg.vpeusrcontrol at line 2159 (.\alg\prg\vpeusrcontrol.r)
VpePreviewDocSP alg/prg/vpenet.p at line 1421 (.\alg\prg\vpenet.r)

event-viewer:

Application: prowin32.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: exception code c0000005, exception address 68DC57D6
Stack:
at IDEALSoftware.VpeProfessional.VPEDLL.VpePreviewDocSP(IntPtr, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32)
at IDEALSoftware.VpeProfessional.VpeControl.PreviewDoc(Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, IDEALSoftware.VpeProfessional.PreviewState)

Please help,
Regards.

[IDEAL Software Support]

We have no idea what is going wrong. No other customer reports such a problem.

[IDEAL Software Support]

Does this only happen, when using a terminalserver? Did you recently make updates to your terminalserver software? What else did change, before the problem occurred?

[ZensoftBelgiumHZ]

Does this only happen, when using a terminalserver? Did you recently make updates to your terminalserver software? What else did change, before the problem occurred?

it's always on the preview, and always clr.dll crashes.

we suspect an update of .NET FRamework v4.7.
I've recompiled the OpenEdge-utility that uses the VPE .Net component for printing on a server with .NET v4.7.
Hope this helps. There are known issues with OpenEdge and .NET Framework v4.7. But openedge version 11.7.4 should be ok.

And yes, for the moment it happens only on a terminalserver, and only for one user of our software.

[IDEAL Software Support]

If this only happens on a single machine and all others do work, it can't be a fault of VPE.

[starzen]

just had a similar issue. every preview crashed

but i noticed i had one copy of the application that didnt crash on the same machine

after investigating i noticed the one that didnt crash had the VPE DLL's in the same folder as the exe and the other ones didnt

in my case it turned out to be a bad vpe dll in the windows SysWOW64 folder

[IDEAL Software Support]

What is a "bad VPE DLL"? Was it an older version?

[ZensoftBelgiumHZ]

just had a similar issue. every preview crashed

but i noticed i had one copy of the application that didnt crash on the same machine

after investigating i noticed the one that didnt crash had the VPE DLL's in the same folder as the exe and the other ones didnt

in my case it turned out to be a bad vpe dll in the windows SysWOW64 folder

Thx for the tip. The VPE.DLL is now installed in SYSWOW64.
I'll move the dll in a submap of our software.

There are known issues with .NET Framework 4.7 + Openedge v11.7 and we think that might be the problem.

[ZensoftBelgiumHZ]

After investigating the errors and implementing some workarounds. We still have random VPE-crashes with VPEpreview .
Software is installed on a windows 2019 server. They worked for more then 2 months without problems.

Since an upgrade of our soft the problems started. The upgrade includes an upgrade of VPE7.1 -> VPE7.2 .NET control.

Does VPE7.2 uses another .NET-framework, compared with 7.1? Or any idea what's the big difference between those 2 versions (beside extra functionality and bugfixes)?

We still are searching for a solution of this problem. Only the preview crashes, and not every preview. A downgrade to VPE7.1 is our last not preferable option.

[IDEAL Software Support]

The .NET control has not been changed between v7.10 and v7.20. As you know, it is only a layer between your application and the VPE DLL. We are also not aware of any changes to the VPE DLL, which might cause this problem. The only thing which comes to my mind is that you might be loading a version prior to v7.10, which does cause crashes on Win 10 and newer Win Server versions.

If you can provide a runnable version of your software, which makes the problem reproducible, we can try to find the cause of the problem using a debugger. In case there is a bug in VPE, this will be free of charge. Otherwise this will be paid support (around 4 - 8 hours, including forward and backward correspondence with you). But we have no terminal server, so if this only occurs on terminal server, we can not reproduce the problem.

[ZensoftBelgiumHZ]

The .NET control has not been changed between v7.10 and v7.20. As you know, it is only a layer between your application and the VPE DLL. We are also not aware of any changes to the VPE DLL, which might cause this problem. The only thing which comes to my mind is that you might be loading a version prior to v7.10, which does cause crashes on Win 10 and newer Win Server versions.

If you can provide a runnable version of your software, which makes the problem reproducible, we can try to find the cause of the problem using a debugger. In case there is a bug in VPE, this will be free of charge. Otherwise this will be paid support (around 4 - 8 hours, including forward and backward correspondence with you). But we have no terminal server, so if this only occurs on terminal server, we can not reproduce the problem.

Ok, thx. We think that current version of Progress/Openedge is not fully compatible with NET-framework 4.7 when we use VPE7.2.
We will try a temporary downgrade for VPE -> v7.1.

[ZensoftBelgiumHZ]

The .NET control has not been changed between v7.10 and v7.20. As you know, it is only a layer between your application and the VPE DLL. We are also not aware of any changes to the VPE DLL, which might cause this problem. The only thing which comes to my mind is that you might be loading a version prior to v7.10, which does cause crashes on Win 10 and newer Win Server versions.

If you can provide a runnable version of your software, which makes the problem reproducible, we can try to find the cause of the problem using a debugger. In case there is a bug in VPE, this will be free of charge. Otherwise this will be paid support (around 4 - 8 hours, including forward and backward correspondence with you). But we have no terminal server, so if this only occurs on terminal server, we can not reproduce the problem.

Ok, thx. We think that current version of Progress/Openedge is not fully compatible with NET-framework 4.7 when we use VPE7.2.
We will try a temporary downgrade for VPE -> v7.1.

Downgrading VPE to v7.1 resolved the problems. Probably the current version of Progress/Openedge v11.7 isn't full compatible with .NET.

[Shaun_H]

Hi,
I had a similar issue, intermittently when viewing a vpe our program (SEICRP.exe) will crash and close, no local error logs by our program, there is an entry in Windows Event Viewer:
Faulting application name: SEICRP.EXE, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5fdcd8e9
Faulting module name: vpep3272.dll, version: 7.2.0.9471, time stamp: 0x5cb58eef
Exception code: 0xc000041d
Fault offset: 0x001857d6
Faulting process id: 0x1f68
Faulting application start time: 0x01d70a1c0c379681
Faulting application path: C:\Court32\SEICRP.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Court32\vpep3272.dll

I saved a vpe, then attempted to view it several times in our program, two out of ten times I received the appcrash. This is not repeatable on other computers, only occurred on less than ten of thousands of computers we've tested.

I checked for any other versions of the dll and I did find C:\Windows\SysWOW64\vpe\vpep3270.dll an older version from years ago. I removed this, checked the md5sum of the C:\Court32\vpep3272.dll versus a known good which matched, rebooted the computer and continued testing. I re-checked that there was only the one dll file existing in any directory on the computer.
I still randomly would encounter the appcrash but not on any specific vpe that I attempt to view. I agree it may not be an issue with vpe as only a handful of computers appear to be effected and it is not reproducible or consistent when the issue happens.

Does anyone have suggestions to troubleshoot?
Sincerely,
Shaun

[IDEAL Software Support]

The only way is to provide an executable which makes the problem reproducible. In this case we can attach with our debugger to the process and see the exact line of code which causes the problem.

This is the first time in nearly 30 years of VPE development, that we hear such a problem. We rather think this is caused by a combination of the used programming environment (Progress 4 GL) and the Windows version.

What programming language are you using? At what specific function call does the GPF occur?