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Topic: Why foobar is loading GROOVEEX.DLL? It crashes foo... (Read 2119 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why foobar is loading GROOVEEX.DLL? It crashes foo...

Hi,
I got back to report some bug. I have dual boot config - Win 7 x64 and Win 10 x64. On both I use foobar 1.3.14. I share config files between them - whenever I boot to other OS I copy config from previously used OS (to keep statistics and library changes). And generally it woks great. However something has changed. This time I fired Win 10. I wanted to convert some track from FLAC to one of my MP3 profiles. Converter remembered last time used path, which is not available on Win 10. This caused a crash, with GROOVEEX.DLL being blamed and crash report has been sent to foobar devs. I tried to recreate that structure (file path) but whatever I did it always crashed. So I just searched for that file and it turned out that it is a part of Office 2016. So I went to my Office 2016 installation and renamed that file (changing extension to DLLhhhhhh) and problem has gone. Location of file:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\VFS\ProgramFilesX86\Microsoft Office\Office16\GROOVEEX.dll

I think this file simply shouldn't be prevented from being loaded by foobar at any moment - this will simply solve the issue.
Text file from crashdump attached.

Re: Why foobar is loading GROOVEEX.DLL? It crashes foo...

Reply #1 –
foobar2000 does not load the dll. It's a shell extension running in Explorer.exe and at least over here is only active in foobar's process space when I open a browse dialog. I'm pretty sure foobar can't prevent loading it without separating itself from the OS.

I too have Office 2016 installed and could not reproduce the crash following your description. I converted files to a dir, removed the dir, hit browse button for output directory selection and saw the familiar directory selection dialog with some default location.

My Office installation is quite recently updated. Grooveex.dll seems to be from 2017-01-29.

Re: Why foobar is loading GROOVEEX.DLL? It crashes foo...

Reply #2 –
What I can say is that it happened again. And this time directory was even present. It still crashed. It turned out that this fcuk1ng office 2016 has updated itself and recretaed grooveex.dll which I renamed previously. So grooveex crashes my foobar as long as it exists in not renamed form. It happens when foobar opens Explorer window. But funny thing is that I can rename the dll even without killing Explorer, so it looks like it was loaded only when foobar opens Explorer window... If it was loaded all the time, then I would be unable to rename the dll file. Strange, strange things are happening under Win 10. And everything just because of Forza Motorsport 6 Apex. Only reason why I need Windows 10.

OK, so how I can permanently prevent this grooveex.dll from being loaded to Explorer, without renaming file? Any registry hack?

Re: Why foobar is loading GROOVEEX.DLL? It crashes foo...

Reply #3 –
You can rename and move opened files. You just can't delete them.

Re: Why foobar is loading GROOVEEX.DLL? It crashes foo...

Reply #4 –
What you say is strange... Whenever I tried to do such thing with any file in the past I always got error message... Is it Windows 10 related change?
But that doesn't matter that much. I would like to be "foobar + grooveex.dll crash free" and this is why I am posting here :)

Re: Why foobar is loading GROOVEEX.DLL? It crashes foo...

Reply #5 –
Quote from: EpicForever on
OK, so how I can permanently prevent this grooveex.dll from being loaded to Explorer, without renaming file? Any registry hack?
Either you can try to uninstall the Office component "Microsoft SharePoint Workspace" (in case you don't need it; the grooveex.dll is part of it), or you can use e.g. freeware MS Sysinternals Autoruns* to deactivate or to delete the registry entries in question (just run Autoruns as admin, and perform a search for grooveex on the tab 'Everything').

* https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Re: Why foobar is loading GROOVEEX.DLL? It crashes foo...

Reply #6 –
You have an awful lot of components and DLLs loaded in your crash dump.
I would start to suspect that you're encountering the problem of exhausting TLS slots and that some DLLs fail to load due to this, causing all sorts of havoc in modules that don't expect it.

Please try culling away a bunch of unused components and see if this and the foo_wave_seekbar situation improves.
Stay sane, exile.