Explorer.exe restart after PTS quit

davidtk

code65536 wrote: »

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.

I tried to logon and turn off live ESO and nothing happened. In patch notes nothing about chrome issue. So will see what will bring today's PTS patch 8.0.1.

K9002

Jaraal wrote: »

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?

I've been wondering the same. No game should touch upon system components like this. Speculation is a touchy subject on the forum so I can only share my more grounded ideas. Since Morrowind (as in TES 3) Todd Howard and Pete Hines had been saying that they worked pretty closely with Microsoft's engineers to push the Xbox to its very limits. This was confirmed again in Todd Howard's statement on joining the Xbox family. Since 2016 Xbox and desktop Windows is more or less the same thing, the "Windows ecosystem" as Phil Spencer calls it. I imagine that now all studios under Zenimax branch can more closely cooperate with developers of Windows.

For the online multiplayer titles it should have a bit more impact because it does matter if people cheat, hack and bot when interacting with other players and not just in their little offline sandbox. From time to time anti-cheat software in some MMO or other gets accused of working like rootkits. Well, anything developed in direct cooperation with Microsoft doesn't have to be a rootkit, such applications can simply get proper integration with the operating system components. Client-side cheat detection could reduce the pressure on game servers, and server performance is something that is being worked on right now. Originally the performance worsened and never recovered when a plague of cheating forced ZOS to move all combat calculations server-side. So it's reasonable that it would be one of the many places to revisit.

If ESO is indeed getting a new or improved anti-cheat system, then ZOS staff can't really come here and confirm or deny it for obvious reasons. No need to throw a new challenge to people who develop hacks for sport.

davidtk

K9002 wrote: »

If ESO is indeed getting a new or improved anti-cheat system, then ZOS staff can't really come here and confirm or deny it for obvious reasons. No need to throw a new challenge to people who develop hacks for sport.

But they could say something like "We are working on fix about blahblah issue and for now you will for while experience forces restart of explorer.exe until we fix original issue." Or some explanation. Mercy lie or somerhing.

ghost_bg_ESO

still the same for me (even got black screen for a second after exit)

Edit: just to add food for thought: 2 new thing we've got are accessibility mode and controller overlay for log in screen.

davidtk

OMG that black screen is more than annoying!
Its really worse than before...

Tandor

@ZOS_Kevin Could we please get an official response on this problem?

Thanks.

RaddlemanNumber7

Once the Windows Task Bar has reconstructed itself after quitting ESO I notice that Windows Focus Assist is always showing as turned on. I always have it turned off.

That is in addition to losing icons from the system tray.

Baertram

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

Once the Windows Task Bar has reconstructed itself after quitting ESO I notice that Windows Focus Assist is always showing as turned on. I always have it turned off.

That is in addition to losing icons from the system tray.

I do not see this behavior with my ESO PTS client. explorer.exe still is restarted but Windows Focus Assist is not automatically changed.

davidtk

Tandor wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin Could we please get an official response on this problem?

Thanks.

I am afraid that nobody from ZOS will answer on this.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_Kevin

Zymcio

well i give that info in this topic

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7574060#Comment_7574060

but no info from devs

6. Do you have any other general feedback?

With this update i have one issue when i quite game no idea why desktop and taskbar is reloading

ADarklore

ghost_bg_ESO wrote: »

still the same for me (even got black screen for a second after exit)

Edit: just to add food for thought: 2 new thing we've got are accessibility mode and controller overlay for log in screen.

Lucky you only have the black screen for a 'second'... the black screen I get persists for several MINUTES after I back out of the game and I'm talking the LIVE version, not PTS. I usually have to CTRL-ALT-DELETE and it says "ESO" 'not responding'... so I have to 'end task' to close it. Otherwise, I can let it sit there at a black screen for several minutes and then it will eventually close on it's own. I even tried disabling multi-threading but it still occurs.

code65536

ADarklore wrote: »

ghost_bg_ESO wrote: »

still the same for me (even got black screen for a second after exit)

Edit: just to add food for thought: 2 new thing we've got are accessibility mode and controller overlay for log in screen.

Lucky you only have the black screen for a 'second'... the black screen I get persists for several MINUTES after I back out of the game and I'm talking the LIVE version, not PTS. I usually have to CTRL-ALT-DELETE and it says "ESO" 'not responding'... so I have to 'end task' to close it. Otherwise, I can let it sit there at a black screen for several minutes and then it will eventually close on it's own. I even tried disabling multi-threading but it still occurs.

You're seeing ESO hanging on exit. The black screen in this thread is the result of the Windows shell undergoing a restart. These are two completely different and unrelated issues, linked only through a superficial resemblance.

RaddlemanNumber7

Baertram wrote: »

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

Once the Windows Task Bar has reconstructed itself after quitting ESO I notice that Windows Focus Assist is always showing as turned on. I always have it turned off.

That is in addition to losing icons from the system tray.

I do not see this behavior with my ESO PTS client. explorer.exe still is restarted but Windows Focus Assist is not automatically changed.

I repeated the exercise today - same result...

remosito

so restarting explorer.exe is what closes all my open folder windows all the time...

@ZOS_Kevin

It's totally unacceptable to mess with your players system like that!

Seriously! I use those folder windows constantly for coding!

Total! No! Go!

davidtk

Absolutely agree! But do they care?

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_Adrikoth @ZOS_Kevin
Realy PLEASE answere there.

davidtk

Ok guys,
8.0.2 patch behind the doors so I am curious what it will bring to us...

Scarr

Today, I patched PTS. Loaded up the PTS client and arrived at the login screen. I exited the login screen and was welcomed to NO DESKTOP. No windows functionality at all. Luckily I am smart enough to know Control-Shift-ESC and then to manually RUN explorer.exe

You have a massive problem ZOS, and it needs acknowledged.

Live server does not do this, and I am tired of your PTS crashing my explorer.exe along with all my open folders and some of my other apps in the taskbar.

davidtk

OMG, I didn't tried it yet.
But nobody from ZOS look at this topic...

Can PLEASE @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_Adrikoth @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_ConnorG @ZOS_Kevin answer here?

ghost_bg_ESO

well, i'm stacking on popcorn for launch and will be goofing on stadia.


P.S. don't repair wristwatch with sledgehammer.

Mr_Stach

davidtk wrote: »

But nobody from ZOS look at this topic...

This Topic? Try every topic lol

Dovahkiin02191973

This whatever it is is really getting on my nerves. Every time I exit the PTS my explorer.exe messes up. I lose stuff such as system tray icons. The list goes on and on. I have to reboot the PC to get it back to normal. To me it seems like a coding error whether intentional or not that is causing the exit process to grab the explorer.exe disabling various parts of it. The game doesn't need to mess with the explorer when we exit. It never have in the past so what is the deal now? I sure hope this problem doesn't go live. Every time you start up your PC or reboot it like this it puts wear and tear on it which shortens the PC's lifespan.

Chimeraling

Have been having the same issue. AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU here. Probably wouldn't notice if not for the entire task bar vanishing and reappearing and my blue light filter turning off for a second...

J18696

this seriously needs tobe fixed already its such a major pain to have files and taskbar icons yeet of my system everytime i exit the pts

code65536

Dovahkiin02191973 wrote: »

This whatever it is is really getting on my nerves. Every time I exit the PTS my explorer.exe messes up. I lose stuff such as system tray icons. The list goes on and on. I have to reboot the PC to get it back to normal. To me it seems like a coding error whether intent0ional or not that is causing the exit process to grab the explorer.exe disabling various parts of it. The game doesn't need to mess with the explorer when we exit. It never have in the past so what is the deal now? I sure hope this problem doesn't go live. Every time you start up your PC or reboot it like this it puts wear and tear on it which shortens the PC's lifespan.

For what it's worth, rebooting is not necessary. Logging out of your Windows session and logging back in will suffice.

You can also just kill the ESO process instead of exiting normally. These days, when I'm done with PTS, instead of exiting the game, I just kill it in Process Explorer. It's a hassle to "exit" the game this way, but it's less disruptive than having the Windows shell restart.

Olauron

code65536 wrote: »

Dovahkiin02191973 wrote: »

This whatever it is is really getting on my nerves. Every time I exit the PTS my explorer.exe messes up. I lose stuff such as system tray icons. The list goes on and on. I have to reboot the PC to get it back to normal. To me it seems like a coding error whether intent0ional or not that is causing the exit process to grab the explorer.exe disabling various parts of it. The game doesn't need to mess with the explorer when we exit. It never have in the past so what is the deal now? I sure hope this problem doesn't go live. Every time you start up your PC or reboot it like this it puts wear and tear on it which shortens the PC's lifespan.

You can also just kill the ESO process instead of exiting normally. These days, when I'm done with PTS, instead of exiting the game, I just kill it in Process Explorer. It's a hassle to "exit" the game this way, but it's less disruptive than having the Windows shell restart.

Good idea. I guess this would be the normal way to close the game if this bug is not fixed.

Tommy_The_Gun

Same thing happens on my rig. On PTS, when I exit the game normally it crashes Windows Explorer. Then explorer restarts, but a lot of things that are explorer dependent are also gone - for example tray icons.

The walk around I have found is to not turn of the game by pressing "Quit" button, but instead alt-tab and kill ESO process. That way game is turned off, but it does not crash the explorer.exe.

^ I am pretty sure it is a bug as I can not imagine it is the intended way to turn the game off....

Scarr

This fix does not work because the game client will screw up your windows "explorer.exe" as soon as it loads. Get to character select, then hit windows key and you won't have a desktop.

Tandor

@ZOS_Kevin (plus @ZOS_GinaBruno for good measure): Again, could we have an official response on this issue please? You really don't want it as seen on PTS to hit the Live servers, believe me!

Seravi

This is a "fix" for ESO killing services for any Chrome browser, Steam and other programs. This is NOT a fix ZOS! You CANNOT reset explorer.exe without causing system issues. Are you Really going to be responsible for systems going paws up?

Someone in the thread for bug report in March out found if they reset explorer.exe it allowed them to use their browser until they started ESO again. You will seriously hose systems doing this! Find what you broke with the update and don't cop out with some idea a user came up with.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/599995/cant-open-chrome-after-starting-eso/p1

BenevolentBowd

I've noticed my explorer.exe restarting after closing ESO. It may have been PTS. I'm on Windows 11.