Variorum

WOOKIEE! IT'S TIME!

I don't hate you for that... I hate you because you shed all over the carpet!

No, display drivers wouldn't affect it. I've managed to duplicate the problem in my test harness by not initializing Gdiplus. Normally, the host program calls a pair of functions to start and stop Gdiplus. When I test the plugins, my test program calls these. If I comment out the gdiplus init, I get the same error I see in the dumps. I know SONAR 8.5.3 is calling these correctly because the plugins work here, but for some reason, there's a disconnect on your machine. I made another test plugin to check that theory (maybe). Same drill... unzip, register, and crank up SONAR. Grab it here.

Nah, I've been going over the (non-debug) crash dumps and I know exactly where and why the crashes occur in the code... Gdiplus calls are failing. Now I'm trying to figure why the calls work on my machines but fail on yours. I'm hoping it's just a version mismatch of some kind. Need to do more research and experiments. When you get a chance, send me the version of your GdiPlus.dll: This is mine... GdiPlus.dll (32 Bit) Location: C:\Windows\SysWOW64 Version: 10.0.19041.4597 EDIT: I'm figuring some of this dump file stuff out (slowly)... It appears from the dump files and the loaded GdiPlus.dll that your Windows version is 10.0.10586, that would be from 2015. I'm leaning toward some compatibility issues, but I'm not positive yet. EDIT AGAIN: You can't install the10586 libs anymore but luckily I still have them on my machine (one of the advantages of using the same box for years 😋) so I built a version of CSHumanize using them. I really don't know if it'll make a difference, but give it a try... Download it here.

You should only need to install Desktop development with C++, but beware it's a very large installation... 10's of GB. Didi installing the redistributables fix the crashing of the original (non-debug) plugins by any chance?

I'm kinda stumped so far. I extracted the DLLs you sent back and they Registered/Unregistered with no problems. The first thing you could try is installing the C++ x86 redistributables (https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x86.exe) just to make sure you have the latest on your machine for projects built using VS2022. If it isn't that, I'll see if I can make up a dummy DLL that contains just the DllRegisterServer and DllUnregisterServer functions and make sure that works, then add the functions that actually write the new entries to the registry and see if that works, etc. until it breaks. It doesn't seem like it should be a problem with the redistributables because previous plugins were registering properly on your machine. I did have a problem a long time ago with permissions on registry keys (you can set the permissions and ownership on registry keys just like you can with files). The key's owner was listed as "Unknown Account" or something like that and I couldn't change owners, edit it, or even delete it. Had to use a Linux boot disk and a Windows Registry utility to fix it. BTW - I added you as a member on the Viramor Forum... UserName: AmberWolf, PW: <your dog's name, one word, all lowercase. We may have to move the convo there so as not to monopolize this forum. 😜 UPDATE - Nevermind about the redistributables, I'm pretty sure the problem is that the debug version needs the debug libraries to run. The C++ redistributable won't contain those, and having you install Visual Studio (mucho gigs) just to test the DLLs might be overkill 😬 It won't hurt to install the latest redistributables if you want to. At least it would rule out incompatibilities with the non-debug versions. You can just delete the debug versions...

Remember to extract the plugin DLLs from the zip before registering them. I've gotten distracted before, just double clicked on one of the zips and tried to register it... won't work! This is what I've used for a long time: ContextReg.zip Extract the contents and right click DLL_REG.reg and click Merge. It adds 2 entries to your explorer context menu (when you right-click on a file) to register and unregister a DLL. It also automatically elevates regsvr32 to run with administrator rights. Makes it really easy to quickly register/unregister the plugins as Administrator... I have to do it a lot DLL_REG_REMOVE.reg just removes those entries if you don't want to use it anymore. You'll probably have to close and re-open your explorer window to make the new context menu items show up after you merge the DLL_REG file. I double checked both of them here and they register fine. The only times I've had a problem registering is when I've tried it without admin rights or when I tried to register without actually extracting them (see above 🤪) Try the DLL_REG solution and let me know how it goes. If it still doesn't work we'll move to the CMD window (or Power Shell) started as admin and run regsvr32 from there.

At this point it's just a matter of professional pride! I'll get these things to work on a VIC-20 if I have to! 😁

Argh! The first thing I'll do is apply the 3 patches to get to 8.5.3 (I'm just running 8.5.0) to make sure we're using exactly the same executable. Second, I'll send you a debug version of CSHumanize and CSWaver since the errors in the dump files are slightly different between CSWaver and the others. The dumps will be much more useful when created from the debug versions. I may also send you a small dummy plugin that will contain certain graphics function types if I need to isolate those. The problem appears to be related to painting the graphics... for some of the plugins, anyway. One important question I forgot to ask... are you running Windows 10 32-Bit or 64-Bit? If you don't know/forgot, go to: Settings > System > About Near the top, under Device Specifications, check System Type. It'll say 64-bit operating system or 32-bit operating system. Pretty sure you're running 64 bit since you said you tried installing CbB which I believe has always been 64 Bit only. I've updated to 8.5.3 and everything still works so, Plan B. Ok... edit number 47. Here are a couple of debug versions. I don't need to tell you the procedure since you already seem to be a pro 🙂 Send me the inevitable crash dumps for these two: Debug.zip

Cool! I slapped it on the project page. I don't have that many keyboards, but I'm pretty close on the monitors 😁

Ok, I got these plugins for you to try out... They all seem to work fine now in 32Bit Sonar8.5. Not difficult to get them to work, just tedious... I put them all in one zipped up file here. Extract the folder anywhere on your computer and use the Install_ALL.bat to register all of them, or if you're chicken, you can just register and test them individually 🤪 It's not absolutely necessary, but it might be a good idea to make sure any previous Viramor plugins are unregistered before trying the new ones. These will be the only ones I do for a while... they're the recently re-written group that use a common codebase so they were relatively easy to modify. The others are still a mish-mash of code. When I finally rewrite those, I'll make sure I have 32Bit versions available. Good Luck! Keep a fire extinguisher handy!

Important bit of advice for Arduino coding... use Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/) instead of the Arduino IDE. It's much better and easier to use (and free!). If you search on Google, you'll find some good tutorials on how to configure everything for Arduino. Good luck with the cloning software. There used to be a few good free applications to do it, but they've pretty much disappeared. BTW - Dev environment is still installing on the laptop...

Trumpets (and brass) are mainly GPO5 with VSL Big Bang Orchestra and SINE Player - Rotary for support. The idea was to use all freely available VSTs in addition to GPO5. Pretty soon I'll spend a bit of money and remake it using 8Dio instruments. They've been having some ridiculous sales lately and I'm hoping for a big one this Black Friday 😁 Of course that means I'll have to buy another SSD to hold them 🙄

I'd like to find out what part of the code is failing in 32Bit. I have some suspicions. Once I get everything installed on the laptop (very slow... it has a mechanical hard drive! May as well be a floppy disk) it shouldn't take long to sort out. Arduino is fun! Nothing like making little gadgets move with code 😋

I was afraid there might be a few issues just changing the configuration to 32Bit and recompiling. I resurrected an old I5 laptop and I'm installing the 32Bit version of SONAR 8.5 now. It'll take a while to install the updates and get a dev environment set up on it, but I should be able to test and debug the 32Bit version then... The crash dump will be helpful. At least I know the specific function that crashed... One of many, I suspect.