UVK 7.2.3.0 Smart Uninstaller crashing UVK

[steve2189]

I've been using Smart Uninstaller, with the "scan and remove remnants" option, to uninstall some programs.
UVK crashes after the program has been removed.
This happened on a Win 7 system when I was removing CCleaner and Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable.

[Fred]

Hi Steve. Thanks for reporting.

If I understood correctly, the crash took place after uninstalling the programs, but before the remnants scan.

Am I correct?

[wmmiller]

I used version 7.2.3.0 last night to uninstall some old Java versions without issue.

Bill

[Fred]

A crash is not necessarily related to a bug. It may be caused by an Antivirus program interference, or a physical memory problem.

I have a client I usually assist remotely whose desktop always crashed UVK in the Process memory, when I double-click a process to open it's properties. It was quite embarrassing. I found out later that VLC also crashed when setting up the associated file types, so I figured it should be a memory issue, because I was never able to reproduce the same behavior in any other machines.

Anyway, I will test out uninstalling cCleaner and VC++ 2005 and see what happens.

Thanks again, guys.

[steve2189]

Hi Steve. Thanks for reporting.

If I understood correctly, the crash took place after uninstalling the programs, but before the remnants scan.

Am I correct?

Yes, it seems to crash after uninstalling the program, and before or during the remnants scan.

I tested in by installing and uninstalling Ccleaner many times.
Smart Uninstaller without 'scan and remove remnants' - worked OK.
Smart Uninstaller with 'scan and remove remnants' - removes ccleaner, pops up the message 'searching for uninstall remnants' then crashes. It pops up a window saying:
"Ultra Virus Killer has stopped working"
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: UVK_en.exe
Application Version: 7.2.3.0
Application Timestamp: 553f7298
Fault Module Name: UVK.dll
Fault Module Version: 3.5.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 553f59b7
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000000000003a30
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 3081
Additional Information 1: 6924
Additional Information 2: 69240d3fbe6b142b580e9c8266b03282
Additional Information 3: d334
Additional Information 4: d3345b380b3dfe3a899219b42f175748

The next 3 times it uninstalls OK.
I logout and login and try again. It now crashes with a different message:
"The instruction at 0xeff93a30 referenced memory at 0x03bd9000. The memory could not be written.
Click OK to terminate the program."

And the next time it crashes with the message:
"The instruction at 0xf3ce3a30 referenced memory at 0x03aa4000. The memory could not be written.
Click OK to terminate the program."

I've seen it crash on clients machines a few times too. But when I'm onsite I don't have time to investigate why it is not working.

[steve2189]

I tested the RAM on the system with the problem. RAM tests OK.

I tested UVK on an Windows 8 machine and it worked OK.
It seems to be an intermittent problem that happens only occasionally and only on some machines.

I did a quick search on 'Exception Code: c0000005' and stackoverflow.com says this:

Exception code c0000005 is the code for an access violation. That means that your program is accessing (either reading or writing) a memory address to which it does not have rights. Most commonly this is caused by:

Accessing a stale pointer. That is accessing memory that has already been deallocated. Note that such stale pointer accesses do not always result in access violations. Only if the memory manager has returned the memory to the system do you get an access violation.
Reading off the end of an array. This is when you have an array of length N and you access elements with index >=N.

[Fred]

Thank you Steve for your help debugging this issue. I wonder if you can keep this computer for a while in your workshop while we debug this situation a bit deeper, and if you are willing to do it, of course.

What I had in mind is: I will provide you a custom version of UVK.dll which will show a few message boxes after the remnants scan is started. Each message box will display a short message such as "Before the remnants scan", or "Before scanning CLSIDS". You just need to memorize the text of the last message.

Here's the custom DLL (inside the zip):

UVK.zip

Zip containing UVK.dll

(384.95 KiB) Downloaded 876 times

You just need to extract the DLL to the UVK's install folder, overwriting the existing one.

Thanks.

[steve2189]

The computer with the problem is my main PC gaming computer. So I can use it for testing as long as necessary. I've been playing The Witcher 2 on it over the weekend and it has been running fine, so I'm pretty sure it does not have a hardware memory problem.

I used the custom UVK.dll, but it is difficult to test because it does not crash every time.
UVK ran OK the first 4 times, then it crashed with the last message "Before the software subkeys scan".
It then ran OK 3 times, and crashed with last message "Before the software subkeys scan".

[Fred]

Hi Steve. Got a new DLL for testing, if you don't mind. I spent all day working on this. Hope it's working fine now. All message boxes were removed.

Thanks again for helping out to debug this issue.

UVK.zip

Zip file containing UVK.dll

(384.74 KiB) Downloaded 766 times

[steve2189]

Hi Fred. Thanks for the work you have done investigating the problem.

I tested with the new DLL. I installed and uninstalled Ccleaner 4 times. Unfortunately, it crashed every time.

[Fred]

Hey, Steve. I have a new DLL for testing.

UVK.zip

(387.64 KiB) Downloaded 973 times

Thanks again. If you get tired of testing, let me know. If this test does not fix the issue, you will only have a couple of them more. I'm getting close to find the culprit here.

[steve2189]

Hey, Steve. I have a new DLL for testing.

Thanks again. If you get tired of testing, let me know. If this test does not fix the issue, you will only have a couple of them more. I'm getting close to find the culprit here.

Hi Fred,
I'm OK to continue testing.
How do you know you are getting close to finding the culprit?

I tested the latest DLL:
UVK ran OK 2 times, then crashed the next time.
Then ran OK 1 time, and crashed the next time.

[Fred]

How do you know you are getting close to finding the culprit?

Hi Steve.

I know because there's not much left to test. We know from the first test that the crash occurs while searching for Software sub keys. That section only calls two functions that could cause the crash. I eliminated one of them in the last test. Now I will eliminate the remaining one.

[steve2189]

Hi Fred,

Are you still working on this? It's been a while since the last DLL update.

[Fred]

Hi Steve. I'm currently working in another feature, but I will come back to this one as soon as I'm finished with my current work.

[steve2189]

I used Smart Uninstaller on a customer's Win XP machine today to force remove an anti-virus program - it crashed.

[wmmiller]

What version are you using? Try the beta on a few and see if that works as expected.