Explorer.exe restart after PTS quit

davidtk

Hi, i want to ask if anyone encountered strange behavior after closing PTS? Everytime when I close PTS (alt+F4 or quit) explorer.exe (or if you want "desktop" echm ) crash and restart itself.
I have AMD Ryzen 5 CPU and AMD GPU, it can be due to some implement AMD FidelityFX (i don't using it because I have only 1080p screen) or it restarting even on nVidia GPUs?
If I close live version of game, this restart will not happen. Only after I close PTS.
I don't know if more ppl have same "issues" but if yes, it can be interesting to take a look from devs...
@ZOS_GinaBruno

Xinihp

Similar issue here: My video card software (that controls fans and thus temps) is crashing every time I launch the PTS.

EDIT: I am not using the new AMD FidelityFX on PTS either, if it is relevant.

Also, NVIDIA 10 series GPU.

It is also crashing my NVIDIA control panel system tray icon.

I am using the absolute latest NVIDIA drivers as of yesterday. Was having the same problem using drivers from last August.

davidtk

Interesting, for me crashing whole exlorer.exe heh

Maitsukas

Having the same issue with the PTS client. Didn't occur with the 7.3.4 version (final Ascending Tide PTS patch).

davidtk

Maitsukas wrote: »

Having the same issue with the PTS client. Didn't occur with the 7.3.4 version (final Ascending Tide PTS patch).

Agree, "live" version works without any issues after closing or launching.

K9002

That might be the "fix" for various issues ESO had been causing since U33 on Windows 7 and Windows 10 if it was upgraded from Win 7. It was narrowed down to being caused by explorer.exe and ESO isn't alone in this because other Zenimax family titles like Quake Champions and Fallout 76 are recently like this too. It could be something related to a new cheat detection system. Whatever it is, it lingers after closing the game and crashes Chromium-based browsers, game launchers and even Steam until rebooting the system.

davidtk

But I using clear clean install of Windows 10 Pro every time when I reinstalling or changing PC.
With U33 there was only one problem with Wife's pc and it was fixed by installing newest nvidia drivers.
- (It was really pain to discover what causing freezing loading screen after launch. I had some older nVidia GPU with ooold drivers and no problem. She had two months old drivers and can't launch ESO.)

But this problem is pretty noticeable. So why it went to PTS when i should be noticed by their test team...

ADarklore

Well personally, more than once on LIVE... I've received a BLACK SCREEN when quitting the client and have to force quit. Although, this could be my impatience. I know sometimes I get the black screen and if I wait, sometimes 3+ minutes, it will finally quit. Other times, it quits without a problem... so I don't know what is up with that.

ghost_bg_ESO

i run pts deliberately on "meh" pc, on its toes and thought its because of it. win10 install,1080p, intel/nvidia. 12-16gb ram. explorer.exe restarts.

on live works fine-ish, nvidia drivers are somewhere from 2017-18 (and still work hahahahaha).


Edit:
Even worse on my better pc (intel/nvidia) multitread on - managed to crash on teleport to house and windows wanted to report error to microsoft, all client side setting were reset -> again "i agree", "acknowledge", etc.

multitread off, visuals on low, explorer.exe restart on exit, no report to microsoft.

crash of explorer.exe even only on closing game without loading character.

even on low setting invisible enemies/flys...

GeneralEU

same explorer.exe and nvidia crash on U34 PTS

ghost_bg_ESO

thinking about it - they have fixed eso staying in task bar/manager.
/s

it will be hell of a launch if it goes life like this...

Olauron

Same here.

davidtk

Look like everyone encountering this problem. Can please @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_Adrikoth tell about it something?

Baertram

I noticed the same on 3 days now.
Everytime the PTS game client closes (due to crash what happens a lot too, or manually via /quit or manually via ALT+F4 or by the menu) it will crash my explorer.exe!
This happens 90% of the time.

I have not foud out yet what the 10% was done differently as it was not happening.

"live" version works without any issues after closing or launching!

Windows 10 64bit
Nvidia GPU
Intel CPU
Nvidia DLSS and DLAA is DISABLED ingame as it looks ugla, everyhting is blurred at the names! Using Ultra high graphic settings but it seems to happen with lower settings too.
-> Just in case you other games got similar hardware and Windows versions but I also heared it happens with Windows 7

code65536

There's definitely something going on with U34 and the Windows shell.

This crash can be hard to notice, since the Windows shell restarts itself after a crash and doesn't provide the user with any error messages.

I initially just noticed it as the entire task bar redrawing itself. It wasn't until I checked the start times on the Explorer process that I realized that what had happened was that it had restarted itself.

code65536

Xinihp wrote: »

It is also crashing my NVIDIA control panel system tray icon.

This is just a side effect of the shell crashing. Some icons can disappear from the system notification area as a result of the Explorer process onto which those icons were attached crashes.

code65536

Okay, I'm starting to think that this isn't a crash.

I couldn't find information about the crash in the system event logs.

So I monitored the events surrounding the Explorer restart using procmon, and the old Explorer process didn't actually crash. It exited gracefully and, in fact the old process was still cleaning up after itself when the new process had started.


You can see in this image that the old process (15844) is performing what appears to be a normal shutdown, and right in the middle of all that, the new process (7420) is being spun up.

So, ESO is doing something to cause Windows to restart the shell. Unfortunately, procmon can only see a rather limited set of things--file and registry accesses and thread and process activity--and I couldn't see anything in there that would hint at what ESO was doing to trigger a shell restart.

code65536

A timeline of events, if it helps ZOS narrow down where the problem is...

• 55s 5567ms: ESO: starts shutting down, closing the datafiles, writing UserSettings.txt, etc.
• 56s 8649ms: ESO: most of its threads have exited by this point
• 56s 8881ms: ESO: closes the interface.log file
• 56s 8973ms: Explorer (old): updates the UserAssist key (this is a key that keeps track of things like most-recently-use programs, for things like autocomplete, suggesting that Windows has detected that the ESO is closing and was updating the MRU list
• 56s 9022ms: Explorer (old): starts shutting down dozens of threads
• 56s 9154ms: Explorer (new): startup
• 56s 9351ms: Explorer (old): ExitProcess
• 57s 1886ms: ESO: ExitProcess

davidtk

Wow thats nice research. Now there is only hope if someone from ZOS here will look at this topic and will tell aboutit to devs heh.

JanTanhide

I was on the PTS yesterday. I didn't notice the issue you had. I'm running AMD 5800X and AMD 6900XT on a G49 at 5120X1440. Windows 11.
Oh, and yes, AMD Fidelity is on as is multi cpu.

Will log in now and do some testing.

K9002

This thread should explain it:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/599995/cant-open-chrome-after-starting-eso

Some players figured out that a way of fixing their systems without rebooting the PC was to manually shut down and restart explorer.exe. So it looks like the fix mentioned in the PTS patch notes was to automate that process on exiting the game. Since U33 ESO was already using explorer.exe for some purpose that was not disclosed and it looks like it will be relying on that process going forward.

code65536

K9002 wrote: »

This thread should explain it:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/599995/cant-open-chrome-after-starting-eso

Some players figured out that a way of fixing their systems without rebooting the PC was to manually shut down and restart explorer.exe. So it looks like the fix mentioned in the PTS patch notes was to automate that process on exiting the game. Since U33 ESO was already using explorer.exe for some purpose that was not disclosed and it looks like it will be relying on that process going forward.

Oof. If such an intentional, hacky workaround is indeed the cause of this restart, then that is an absolutely horrible--and most importantly, WRONG--way to address that problem. It's a "fix" that produces a lot of issues of its own. It causes rearrangement of taskbar icons. Some icons in the system notification area will be lost. Etc.

Edit: At the very least, such a hacky "fix" should be as limited in scope as possible. Skimming through that thread, it seems like everyone reporting is using Windows 7, which has been unsupported for some time now and is used by an increasingly small number of people. So why not limit this "fix" to only Windows 7 systems and leave the unaffected Windows 10/11 system out of it? Yes, ideally, you'd find the root cause of that problem and address it, but I do understand the need for a quick-and-dirty bandaid job. However, "solutions" that have such negative side effects should be as limited in scope as possible, to limit the impact of those side effects.

Baertram

Indeed, if THIS is the fix they had added then please let my ESO launcher just crash and let me FIX IT MYSELF but stop fixing things that make Windows instable and close my open task bar icons, folders, and even mess around with something there...

I hope this is unrelated, if not @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_KaiSchober : Please forward this to the appropriate ppl to "unfix" it again and stop closing the windows explorer.exe from PTS client by such a hacky and insecure way.

Thank you

JanTanhide

Ok, just logged in and played a while. Couple of world bosses. No issues exiting the game. One thing I do notice is the game FPS never exceeds 100. Is that a new ZOS limit?

davidtk

I agree, they should find fix not some workaround... And for several reasons i need to reboot PC because it is quicker than reinitialize some programs to have again icons in notifications...

code65536

Well, there's an incremental for Live on Monday. And "ESO preventing the browser with the most market share from starting" seems like the kind of problem whose solution ZOS would want to quickly push to Live instead of waiting for the full PTS cycle to complete.

So there's a fair chance that the Chrome thing will be in tomorrow's incremental, and then we could see if the Live game does the Explorer restart thing too. If it does, then that's pretty strong evidence that the problem in this thread is the result of a poorly-conceived solution to the Chrome problem. And if it doesn't, then that theory is wrong and there's something else going on here.

Baertram

My Windows event log tells me, as the PTS client ends and my explorer.exe is restarting:
Shell has been ended unexpected and explorer.exe was restarted
As information, with "Winlogon" as the source.

If this helps -> ZOs

Tandor

code65536 wrote: »

K9002 wrote: »

This thread should explain it:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/599995/cant-open-chrome-after-starting-eso

Some players figured out that a way of fixing their systems without rebooting the PC was to manually shut down and restart explorer.exe. So it looks like the fix mentioned in the PTS patch notes was to automate that process on exiting the game. Since U33 ESO was already using explorer.exe for some purpose that was not disclosed and it looks like it will be relying on that process going forward.

Oof. If such an intentional, hacky workaround is indeed the cause of this restart, then that is an absolutely horrible--and most importantly, WRONG--way to address that problem. It's a "fix" that produces a lot of issues of its own. It causes rearrangement of taskbar icons. Some icons in the system notification area will be lost. Etc.

Edit: At the very least, such a hacky "fix" should be as limited in scope as possible. Skimming through that thread, it seems like everyone reporting is using Windows 7, which has been unsupported for some time now and is used by an increasingly small number of people. So why not limit this "fix" to only Windows 7 systems and leave the unaffected Windows 10/11 system out of it? Yes, ideally, you'd find the root cause of that problem and address it, but I do understand the need for a quick-and-dirty bandaid job. However, "solutions" that have such negative side effects should be as limited in scope as possible, to limit the impact of those side effects.

The original problem also affects Windows 10 machines that were upgraded from Windows 7. In my case, my secondary machine running Windows 7 (which OS is, by the way, still supported either by subscription with MIcrosoft or 0patch and remains officially the recommended OS for ESO according to the website) couldn't run Chrome, Steam or Glyph, and my main machine which was upgraded to Windows 10 can run Chrome but not Steam or Glyph. The new PTS client "fix" cures the problem on the Windows 7 machine but I too experience a noticeable "hiccup" on exiting the PTS client and my internet connection status icon on the taskbar momentarily shows a disconnection but immediately resumes. There needs to be a proper fix for this issue, and the current one isn't acceptable.

Jaraal

K9002 wrote: »

Since U33 ESO was already using explorer.exe for some purpose that was not disclosed and it looks like it will be relying on that process going forward.

Why do they need to search our non-ESO related files?

J18696

same here i noticed it after i realised closing the pts is causing some of my hidden system tray icons vanish

davidtk

Will see what will bring today's maintenence.
Its really annoying.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_Adrikoth @ZOS_Kevin