Nitro Pro Crashes Explorer.exe every 30secs-1min

[Ken Phillips]

 Hello I'm Ken and work for an MSP that supports a client who uses this product, unfortunately after their free trial ran out, they bought the upgrade and have a valid serial no. and license, however after every install, the explorer.exe process begins to crash every 30secs-1min and makes the OS too unstable to work in. After you uninstall the product, the OS functions normally and fully stable no process crashes of any kind.

I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling the application a number of ways with the issue always returning, is there a known fix for this issue?

I have attempted to run the cleanup utility as well on the system but maybe there is something I am missing, any help would be appreciated!

[Leslie V]

Hello @Ken Phillips

Thanks for your message - I'm happy to assist you.
 
What exact version of Nitro Pro are you using? You can find this information by opening Nitro. Go to the Help tab, then click About Nitro Pro. Have you tried the latest update? https://www.gonitro.com/product-details/downloads

I look forward to your response.

[Ken Phillips]

Hello @Leslie Villarin I appreciate you reaching out!

I have uninstalled the product fully currently, so that my user can work, but we were downloading and installing the Nitro Pro 13.58.0.1180.

Also when I click the link you provided and download the Nitro Pro 13 latest update, it downloads the same installer I had already indicated by a (1) on the end of it.

[Alex Bailey]

I have the exact same issue.  Latest version of Nitro PDF.  It causes explorer.exe to crash every 1-2 minutes consistently.  Uninstallation corrects the issue.  Removing and purging out installation directories and reinstalling does NOT fix the issue.  Issue only affects single user profile on the PC, does not happen on Administrator account.  Worst of all, even after rebuilding Windows, the user continues to experience this problem once Nitro is installed.

 

[Leslie V]

Hello @Ken Phillips @Alex Bailey

Can you please test something out for us to determine the cause of the issue? On the computers causing the issue please perform the following tasks: 

Open a CMD window as an Administrator. 
Navigate to the Nitro folder by entering the following command cd "c:\Program Files\Nitro\Pro\13" and pressing enter

Disable the Thumbnail provider by running regsvr32 /u NitroPDFThumbnailProvider.dll and pressing enter

A prompt saying “DllUnregisterServer in NitroPDFThumbnailProvider.dll succeeded” should appear, just click ok.
At this point, please observe if explorer.exe is still crashing for you or not. 

[Alexandre Ventura]

Hi.

Some input from my side regarding this. I experienced it myself in the past and it took me a long time to track it down to Nitro because it was not apparent.
The computer suffered from random SILENT "...has stopped working" errors, affecting mainly explorer.exe 
After such occurrence, the computer would behave oddly with different issues (slow to react to a right click+copy command for example). With time the instability would accumulate from day to day until the PC had to be reinstalled after a few months.
I tested the hardware several times, hoping to find a bad ram stick or something similar, but no errors were found. Eventually I tracked it down to Nitro by chance during one of the reinstalls. It seems Nitro keeps crashing some processes and if it happens during something important like a video driver update, or antivirus update, that software being updated then behaves erratically and leads to further corruption.
I ended up stopping using Nitro on the PC and since then everything works fine.

One strange thing I found in the process is that on second PC, a laptop, Nitro is installed and works flawlessly, causing no errors at all.

To illustrate it, here are 2 screenshots. One taken at the time when I was testing if it was Nitro that was causing the issue - https://e1.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZV3fpZqiJCFCTdjUSgkepHoqfU9h1kgL8X
You can see the systematic daily errors in Reliability Monitor.

Another one, the same system after reinstalling without Nitro, working for many months without issue - https://e1.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZ4GfpZmiq70CoPEPzofybv3j7JrftILpWV

I hope this information is useful for you.

Regards,
Alexandre Ventura

[Alex Bailey]

@Leslie Villarin I have uninstalled Nitro off my PC but when I try to reinstall it's saying my key has exceeded the allowed amount of installs.  Since I have reinstalled Nitro multiple times, it's essentially burned through three of my keys now.  How do I get my license count on these keys reset back to what it was and how come uninstalling through the proper means doesn't release the license?

 

Once my license issue is resolved I will try the steps you have suggested.  

[Leslie V]

Hello Alex,

Please send me the serial number so I can check.

[Alexandre Ventura]

Hi.

One question regarding the test to disable the thumbnail provider by running regsvr32 /u NitroPDFThumbnailProvider.dll
I tried using Nitro again and after disabling the thumbnail provider, the issue seems to have stopped and no further errors are generated.
I tried installing the latest version from Product Updates (gonitro.com) but unless I perform the troubleshooting step above, the issue keeps happening.

Can I just keep using Nitro normally with the disabled component or it's just for troubleshooting purposes and will impact Nitro ability to perform normally?

Thank you,
Alexandre