Nitro PDF crashing file explorer and preview pane

[Dustin Shepard]

Is anyone else experiencing this and has anyone found a fix? I have NitroPDF on 2 computers where Nitro is the default PDF application and both computers are experiencing the preview pane to stop working and shortly thereafter file explorer will crash and require a restart before it will start working again. Please help

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Dustin Shepard,

Thank you for reaching out to us through our Community Forums and sincere apologies for this inconvenience.

For the sake of initial troubleshooting of this issue, we recommend that you repair your Nitro Pro. Please reboot your computer before and after running this repair to ensure that there are no ties to Nitro still active in the background. You may refer to this article: https://kb.gonitro.com/knowledgebase#/search/repair/000004603 

If Modify button is greyed-out, please refer to this screencast that will teach you how to go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Programs and Features and repair your Nitro Pro program or any application installed on your system: https://www.screencast.com/t/rvpUkq40c

If repairing didn't help, could you please provide the following?:

-Is this a new issue or has it occurred since after installing Nitro Pro? Any changes you are aware of before this happened (e.g. Windows Updates)?

-What OS is installed on both computer (Windows 8.0, 8.1, 10, or 11 and whether it is 32-bit or 64 bit)?

-Build of Nitro Pro are you working with. You can find this out by clicking on 'About Nitro Pro' under the Help tab (format is 13.XX.X.XXXX, e.g. 13.58.0.1180) or you can go to Control Panel > Programs and Features.

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

[Dustin Shepard]

Hi @Allain Umailinthank you for your response. This is a fresh install on 2 new computers running windows 10 both are 64 bit. Nitro Pro 13.58.0.1180. The one thing that I have noticed that is consistent is that the preview pane will stop working and then if you try to use quick access or run a search for files after that the file explorer will stop responding which causes the need for a computer restart.

I will also try to repair Nitro on both computers.

I hope this information helps.

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Dustin Shepard,

Could you please also perform these steps to see if they will help?:

1. Open a CMD window as an Administrator. 

2. Navigate to the Nitro folder by entering the following command cd "c:\Program Files\Nitro\Pro\13" and pressing enter

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

4. A prompt saying “DllUnregisterServer in NitroPDFThumbnailProvider.dll succeeded” should appear, just click ok.

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

[Dustin Shepard]

HI @Allain UmailinI was able to complete this with the instructions you provided and unfortunately within 10minutes the problem happened again. Please let me know if you have any more recommendations?

Thank you!

[Allain Umailin]

Hello @Dustin Shepard,

Thank you for this information and for your patience.

1. Download and run our Clean Up utility to uninstall your current Nitro Pro and reboot your machine:

http://install.nitropdf.com/professional_13.58.0.1180/install-cleanup/install-cleanup.zip 

NOTE: This clean-up tool will erase any existing signature files within Nitro so please save them to another location before using the clean-up tool in order to keep them. Please see this link for backing up custom stamps/signatures: https://kb.gonitro.com/knowledgebase#/search/stamps/000004509 

 

2. After rebooting, download and install the latest version of Visual Studio (vc_redist.x64.exe & vc_redist.x86.exe) then reboot again your machine. Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022 all share the same redistributable files:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads

3. Clear all your Downloads folder or delete all downloaded Nitro installers. This step is important because we noticed that if you are saving all the installers and you download them in the same folder (like the downloads folder), the EXE can pick up any MSI installer in that folder and you may pick-up one of the older builds instead of the newly downloaded package.

4. Download and install Nitro PDF Pro 13.58 using these installers:

x32 https://downloads.gonitro.com/professional_13.58.0.1180/en/retail/nitro_pro13_ba_x86.msi
x64 https://downloads.gonitro.com/professional_13.58.0.1180/en/retail/nitro_pro13_ba_x64.msi

To know if you have 32-bit or 64-bit Windows system, please refer to this article:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/15056/windows-32-64-bit-faq

Important: If you are using Chrome or any of the Chromium-based browsers (e.g., Vivaldi, etc.) and you are unable to access the above installer links, you're more than likely experiencing the results of a new security feature that was silently pushed out to the browsers, which blocks .exe/.msi/etc downloads without any visible error or prompt on the browser's frontend user space. In order to bypass this, please try these steps:

a. Right-click the link you're trying to download, and select "Save link as..."
b. Choose your save location and select "Save"
c. On the bottom edge of your browser window, the Downloads bar should now appear and the file will show up with a red error icon, attempting to block the download. Press the caret button and select "Keep"

5. After installation, you can activate it by opening Nitro Pro, clicking on the Help tab > About Nitro Pro > Activate by entering your serial number.

6. Turning off User Account Control (UAC) for Nitro PDF Pro 13. Here are two methods that you can follow:

a. Right-click the Nitro shortcut > Properties > Compatibility > Turn off any settings there.

b. 
   i. Right-click > Troubleshoot Compatibility > Troubleshoot Program
   ii. Check "The program requires additional permissions" > Next > Test the program...
   iii. Wait for the program to launch > Next > Yes, save these settings for this program > Close

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

[Dustin Shepard]

On 5/10/2022 at 1:12 PM, Allain Umailin said:

Hello @Dustin Shepard,

Thank you for this information and for your patience.

1. Download and run our Clean Up utility to uninstall your current Nitro Pro and reboot your machine:

http://install.nitropdf.com/professional_13.58.0.1180/install-cleanup/install-cleanup.zip 

NOTE: This clean-up tool will erase any existing signature files within Nitro so please save them to another location before using the clean-up tool in order to keep them. Please see this link for backing up custom stamps/signatures: https://kb.gonitro.com/knowledgebase#/search/stamps/000004509 

 

2. After rebooting, download and install the latest version of Visual Studio (vc_redist.x64.exe & vc_redist.x86.exe) then reboot again your machine. Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022 all share the same redistributable files:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads

3. Clear all your Downloads folder or delete all downloaded Nitro installers. This step is important because we noticed that if you are saving all the installers and you download them in the same folder (like the downloads folder), the EXE can pick up any MSI installer in that folder and you may pick-up one of the older builds instead of the newly downloaded package.

4. Download and install Nitro PDF Pro 13.58 using these installers:

x32 https://downloads.gonitro.com/professional_13.58.0.1180/en/retail/nitro_pro13_ba_x86.msi
x64 https://downloads.gonitro.com/professional_13.58.0.1180/en/retail/nitro_pro13_ba_x64.msi

To know if you have 32-bit or 64-bit Windows system, please refer to this article:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/15056/windows-32-64-bit-faq

Important: If you are using Chrome or any of the Chromium-based browsers (e.g., Vivaldi, etc.) and you are unable to access the above installer links, you're more than likely experiencing the results of a new security feature that was silently pushed out to the browsers, which blocks .exe/.msi/etc downloads without any visible error or prompt on the browser's frontend user space. In order to bypass this, please try these steps:

a. Right-click the link you're trying to download, and select "Save link as..."
b. Choose your save location and select "Save"
c. On the bottom edge of your browser window, the Downloads bar should now appear and the file will show up with a red error icon, attempting to block the download. Press the caret button and select "Keep"

5. After installation, you can activate it by opening Nitro Pro, clicking on the Help tab > About Nitro Pro > Activate by entering your serial number.

6. Turning off User Account Control (UAC) for Nitro PDF Pro 13. Here are two methods that you can follow:

a. Right-click the Nitro shortcut > Properties > Compatibility > Turn off any settings there.

b. 
   i. Right-click > Troubleshoot Compatibility > Troubleshoot Program
   ii. Check "The program requires additional permissions" > Next > Test the program...
   iii. Wait for the program to launch > Next > Yes, save these settings for this program > Close

Thank you very much in advance and I am looking forward to hearing back from you.

Thank you @Allain Umailin I did all these steps however when doing the step below it requires us to enter admin password every time we open a pdf file. 

   i. Right-click > Troubleshoot Compatibility > Troubleshoot Program

   ii. Check "The program requires additional permissions" > Next > Test the program...

   iii. Wait for the program to launch > Next > Yes, save these settings for this program > Close

 

 

[Ralf Römling]

A similar problem here:

- Clean Win10 21h2 with latest updates

- Installed Nitro 13.58.0.1180 from Download-page

- Explorer is restarted every minute.

- Uninstalled Nitro and prob went away

Event is showing:

Name der fehlerhaften Anwendung: explorer.exe, Version: 10.0.19041.1706, Zeitstempel: 0x5dbc9541
Name des fehlerhaften Moduls: ntdll.dll, Version: 10.0.19041.1682, Zeitstempel: 0x7b5414ec
Ausnahmecode: 0xc0000005
Fehleroffset: 0x0000000000063416
ID des fehlerhaften Prozesses: 0x3744
Startzeit der fehlerhaften Anwendung: 0x01d86877d51ed55b
Pfad der fehlerhaften Anwendung: C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
Pfad des fehlerhaften Moduls: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Berichtskennung: cbc5db52-fd03-4675-bde0-85945092f3ef
Vollständiger Name des fehlerhaften Pakets:
Anwendungs-ID, die relativ zum fehlerhaften Paket ist:

[Ralf Römling]

UPDATE and hint / workaround: Downgrading to Nitro 12 Pro solved the prob for me.

I think it may have got sth todo with some MS updates e.g. .net?

[Dustin Shepard]

I uninstalled Nitro PDF Pro 13 and installed Nitro PDF Pro 12 hoping to see if that fixes our issues but unfortunately my serial number says it is not valid for Nitro PDF Pro 12. Any advice? Any other work arounds for Nitro PDF Pro 13? Any updates coming to fix these issues?