PIC Video MJPEG codec crashes Windows Explorer with DEP exception
Dave Martindale
on a new computer system running Windows XP Pro. I had an odd problem:
whenever I opened a folder containing the captured AVI files, and
clicked on one file to select it, Windows Explorer would get a Data
Execution Prevention exception within a few seconds and pop up a window
wanting to send a report to Microsoft. This was perfectly repeatable.
Windows XP kills and then restarts Explorer, so this doesn't take the
whole machine down, but it makes it really difficult to move any AVI
files around.
You can disable Data Execution Prevention for Explorer only, and then it
doesn't crash, but that just hides the problem instead of fixing it.
But a bit of Googling found the real problem: the PIC Video MJPEG codec.
I present the information here for the benefit of anyone else who might
have tripped over the same problem.
It seems that if you have the Windows Explorer "common tasks" sidebar on
the left of your window, and you click on a media file, Explorer opens
the media file to obtain a preview image for it to display in the
"Details" section of the sidebar - even if you currently have Details
collapsed. It tries to use the PIC Video MJPEG codec for this, even
though the files are DV-encoded, not MJPEG. And the PIC Video codec
apparently builds X86 machine code on the fly and tries to execute that
machine code out of its data space, which triggers the Data Execution
Prevention exception.
Essentially, the PIC Video MJPEG 2 codec should not be installed on a
Windows XP (and probably Vista too) system, since it performs an
operation that is now illegal. In my case, it was Pinnacle Studio 9
that installed the rogue codec. Later versions of Pinnacle Studio
might have a fixed version of the codec, or might have omitted it
entirely; I don't know. (I don't particularly like Studio 9, so I'm
not interested in spending money to upgrade to a more recent version,
but it does provide some control of a Pinnacle Moviebox DV device that
Premiere does not).
I disabled the codec using Device Manager, re-enabled DEP for Explorer,
and now everything works fine. I even get previews of AVI files in
Explorer.
This was a particularly insidious problem, because it involved a feature
of Explorer I wasn't aware of (previews in the sidebar) invisibly
calling code that was untrustworthy (the codec) to display a preview
that was disabled (Details collapsed). Thanks to the various people who
diagnosed the parts of the puzzle and posted their knowledge in a place
Google could find.
Dave
Jim
"Dave Martindale" <da...@cs.ubc.ca> wrote in message
news:fk43jg$ceq$1...@swain.cs.ubc.ca...
That's interesting. Thanks for the info.
I've used pic video for over 5 years now with no problems. (But never the
sidebar)
It's such a great codec I would simply disable that bloated sidebar before I
got rid of my pv.....