Commented by: @reevespaul

Are you logged on with admin rights?
Are there any relevant messages in the event log?

Commented by: Mario Konang (kext)

yes, the user has admin rights.
after explorer freeze, we kill his process with the task manager and restart it. there are only messages from the explorer restart in the evebt log. nothing from firebird...

Commented by: @reevespaul

In the absence of more evidence I think this should be closed as 'Cannot Reproduce' or perhaps 'Incomplete'. At the very least I'd like evidence that the problem still exists in 1.5.4.

Firebird windows builds are built and tested on VMware sessions that run on an AMD64 dual-core box. I haven't specifically tried running 1.5.3 on the exact config in the bug report, but I have run 1.5.4 under W2K3 / amd64 dual core recently (no vmware layer). And I've never experienced any problems with the cpl applet causing the explorer to freeze.

Commented by: Jonathan Wright (jonathanwri)

Hi, I am fairly new to Firebird and am running Firebird 1.5.4 on Windows XP Media Centre Edition Version 2002 with Service Pack 2 applied and also am frequently getting the Control Panel dialog hanging which is not really ideal or good.

What I have observed so far is that it is attempting to draw/refresh the icons it always stops/hangs when refreshing drawing the Firebird 1.5 Server Manager icon. If you use the XP Catagory view, the hang does not occur.

A couple of workarounds I have discovered are:

1. Move Firebird2Control.cpl out of system32 directory - not really clean or ideal in my view

2. Modify the icon settings using the following steps:

a) Start up Windows Explorer (any directory/default will be fine)

b) Select View menu and select a different view setting (I chose List instead of the default Icon)

c) Select Tools menu and select Folder Options

d) Click the View tab

e) Click the Apply to All Folders button

f) Close Windows Explorer

g) Open Control Panel - it worked!!

Other information of significance that maybe of some help:
- In my Folder settings -> View tab I have deliberately unchecked "Automatically search for Network folders and printers"
- In my Folder settings -> View tab I have deliberately checked the option "Do not cache thumbnails"

Hopefully this may help either to re-open/diagnose the root cause.

Commented by: @reevespaul

Thanks for the report.

I'm going to look into this in more detail, as it appears to be a problem with Fb 1.5.n and both Vista and XP SP2. We've had no reports of problems with Fb 2.0 and no reports of problems with W2K or W2K3.

Commented by: @reevespaul

Changing Status

Commented by: @reevespaul

This problem does not exist with the Firebird 2.n applet, but my attempts to backport the changes from 2.n to 1.5 did not produce any results. Anyway, Fb 1.5.5 now detects if Vista is the host and installation of the applet is completely disabled.

We don't yet have a means to detect if the host is XP w/SP2 so the only solution for that O/S is to either upgrade to 2.0 or not install the applet.

This solution falls in between fixed and won't fix, but in reality the fix is just to detect the host O/S and not install the applet, so nothing is fixed as such, but at least the problem will no longer occur, at least for Vista users.

It is also worth noting that the Fb 1.5 applet is not the only one that is reported to crash the Vista Explorer. Lots of other users are having this much fun, too.