Version 1.6.0.4 is a debugging release for people who have been experiencing mysterious crashes in Explorer when the File Meta property handler is configured for one or more extensions, especially .pdf

The only difference to Version 1.6 is the inclusion of an instrumented property handler. This logs all activity, including crashes, to log files. Install it by uninstalling version 1.6, and then installing the attached version 1.6.0.4 package. To remove it, uninstall it, and then install version 1.6. All configuration will be preserved throughout.

Version 1.6.0.4 makes only a three line change to the property handler in 1.6.0.3. This change is the result of testing with TestPropCollide, a new stress test designed to explore possible conflicts between the use of the property handler by Explorer and its use by the Indexing Server. This tool is now available in both the main branch and the instrumented branch. The change reduces the number of property collisions by more than half.

The sources for version 1.6.0.4 are available in the Instrumented branch.

The log files will be created in the directory C:\FilemetaLogs. A new log file is started for each day, with a name of the form log_2020-05-03.log

All activities from all programs are logged into the same file. This will often include entries generated by the Indexing Server.

You can open the log file using notepad. The only precaution you need to take is to make sure that File Meta does not supply a property handler for the .log extension!

If a crash is caught an exception entry is written to the log. At this stage, unfortunately, the nature of the exception will not be known: it is an unfortunate characteristic of the C++ runtime that the more general the catch is, the less information you get about what you have caught. But at least we will get an indication of what activity was going on at the time, which will be a big step forward.

Please report anything interesting by copying sections of the log into the relevant Issue.

Dijji