The app crashes when i try to open the folder of an app (SimpleWall 3.6.2)

[nvn0]

The app crashes when i try to open the folder(CTRL+ E) of an app in the apps menu

Then I get this message about the memory reference
If i close this window or click close simplewall shuts down.

Sry for send this prints in portuguese.

[henrypp]

crashdump?

[nvn0]

this message appears saying that localization is not available (sry the portuguese)
but the same thing happens, the app closes

[henrypp]

Try to open manually

[nvn0]

I can't find it anywhere

[gettysburg]

Look for files with the file extension .dmp, if necessary search your entire hard drive.

Opening Event Viewer (open Start menu, then enter eventvwr.msc), then navigating to Windows Logs -> Application, and finding the crash entry for simplewall.exe might also provide valuable information (such as the fault address and module).

It is advised that you sort all Event Viewer entries by date and time, and then by severity.

[nvn0]

I couldn't find any .dmp file related to simplewall in my pc, the Henry++ folder doesn't even exist.
Event viewer does not show anything about simplewall. I even recreated the bug again and nothing was registered

[gettysburg]

I even recreated the bug again and nothing was registered.

That is likely because he registers his own exception handler, but please be advised that without a .dmp file we will not be able to figure out why simplewall crashes.

If you have any experience with debugging Windows applications, you could try to attach a free debugger like x64dbg to simplewall, then trigger the crash and see where the exception is thrown - a screenshot (including the call-stack) would already help us.

[nvn0]

I do not have much experience... but is this?

[gettysburg]

Thanks.

I took a short look using IDA, and it seems like ultimately a function responsible for freeing heap allocated memory crashes while dereferencing a pointer / argument passed through parameters, the function that ended up calling this function opens Windows Explorer and selects file (caller of crashing function is screenshot #1, crashing function is #2):

Highlighted parts of IDA pseudo-code are execution-flow / location of crash in second screenshot.

This makes sense, because you mentioned in your first post that simplewall crashes while you try to open the folder containing the binary of a user rule, and this feature would highlight the binary, which you can do if you pass /select argument to Explorer:

/select <object> Open a window view with the specified folder, file or application selected.

@henrypp

By the way, I just tried to use this option, and it causes the same crash on my system (Windows Server 2019 LTSC), crash dump also does not get created properly (because you try to write file to non-existent folder hierarchy, you have to create Henry++ folder in "AppData\Roaming" first, then "crashdumps" folder, and then you can write your crash dump file).

I hope my analysis helps to fix the problem, I could not find the two functions above in your public code-base but it is only 06:00 AM where I live and I did not have a coffee yet :-)

[Pandaa-P]

@gettysburg what steps did you took to crash the app? opening the folder of an app from app menu does not crash the app for me.

Also I do have AppData\Roaming\Henry++\simplewall in AppData\Roaming when I installed simplewall. Closing simplewall, deleting the folder "Henry++" and restarting simplewall and from the menu choosing "open containing folder" does not crash the app either.

And we both run windows 10 enterprise ltsc with the same Kernel version.

Edit: clarifying my comment a bit

[gettysburg]

@Pandaa-P

I didn't crash it, the screenshot number 2 from nuno-source provided enough information for me to reverse-engineer it.

Closing the app, deleting it and restarting the app and from the menu choosing "open containing folder" does not crash the app either.

Weird, I'm guessing that it's some isolated bug here as well.

Also I do have AppData\Roaming\Henry++\simplewall in AppData\Roaming.

I don't have an AppData\Roaming\Henry++\simplewall , yet it works fine.

Seems like the folder hierarchy / crash dumps don't get created sometimes, this is also the reason I asked about the folder hierarchy because the Windows API will not create it for you if it doesn't exists, look at the winbase.h header and source files yourself.

[Pandaa-P]

I don't have an AppData\Roaming\Henry++\simplewall , yet it works fine.

Maybe because it save profile.xml and simplewall.ini (which is what AppData\Roaming\Henry++\simplewall contain) to its installation folder as well.
in my system I have these two files on "AppData\Roaming\Henry++\simplewall" and on "C:\Program Files\simplewall"

[gettysburg]

Confirmed fixed in Version 3.6.3, no crash.. but I initially did bamboozle myself:

I thought it was still broken when explorer.exe didn't launch, but that was due to me taking some unneeded permission away from simplewall:

So, all good, thanks for the fast fix.