Win 10 Pro 64-bit with Creators Update and Pro Motion works fine for me.
Haven’t had an issues with Creators Update except all the Windows Store and Apps nonsense is broken, which is mostly a good thing.
Renaming wintab32.dll didn’t make PM start.
@surt: Thanks for letting me know, so now I know that a fresh Win 10 install might solve these issues. I was hoping to avoid reinstalling the whole OS — I’ll loose some licenses that were bound to the machine lifetime only (antivirus, ecc.), and of course all the custom settings are going to be a nightmare. I also have an Ubuntu partition, and this won’t make things any easier.
Probably I’ll get a new hardrive and install all the OSs’ there, so I can also temporarly keep the current Win 10 as a boot option — it will help to peek around previous settings and avoid loosing stuff. And most of all it will not force me to do everything in a rush.
I’ll take this as a chance to finally get a solid state hard drive for the OSs’ and gain some speed and full sepration between OSs’ boot drive and actual data (instead of just partitions). I might keep the current partition for installing outdated software and testing new apps while keeping the new Win 10 clean with strictly required working tools.
Right now I’ve managed to install PM in a virtual machine with XP running. It works (slower, but it works).
This is far from an ideal solution (XP being obsolete, I block any internet traffic on the VM), but at least I can open PM and recover all my work and export it to standard images and from there take on with some other Pixel-Art software.
Getting a new SSD hard drive and a fresh Win 10 installation is definitely on my list, but it won’t happen anywhere before Christmas 2017 or the beginning of 2018 — too much time and money involved, and right now I’m stuck with some work I need to finish on the current machine. Also, I don’t see so many applications affected by the update. So I’m afraid I won’t be enjoying Pro Motion until then, and have to fallback on some other tool to carry Pixel-Art work.
In the meantime, I cross fingers and hope that one of the next PM releases will work on my system as it is — with MS Windows you never really know how things can turn out: from “ground-breaking” updates like this Creator stuff (which broke so many PC and software rather than breaking any technological grounds) to mysterious bugs that come and go, chances are that further Win updates might fix the problem (whatever and wherever this might be).
I’ll keep an eye open for the culprit (check devices and their drivers, and for the presence of any broken software in the system), but I seriously doubt I’m gonna find a fix for this — and I can’t spend more than so much time on this right now.
Microsoft really made a huge mistake with this “Creators” update: Google is packed with complaints, including people who lost the whole OS. I was relatively lucky, after all, my OS still boots.
All this is really annoying … I was even working on a plugins project for Pro Motion NG, but I’ll have to freeze it for now.
Whenever new releases of PM-NG come out I’ll try to install them and post on this thread some feedback. Meanwhile, thank you for your support.
Well, PM does not do any mysterious thing on startup, but it e.g. checks for printer devices. At the moment I don’t have the Creators update and if I had it then it’s not probable that I have the same problems,
My advice still is:
Completely uninstall Printer/Scanner and Tablet drivers. Then try to start PM. Does it start? Does Photoshop or x32 run?
This would be the way to go because it does not harm. You can reinstall those drivers easily and maybe the problem is gone then.
Also I could provide a patched version that does not load the printer drivers to see if it’s gone then. Write by email if you want me to do so. It’s not a big deal.
I finallty managed to get the scanner back on the table and do some tests: Something is wrong with the scanner software.
My previous scanner was a Plustek OpticBook 3600 Corporate, then it broke and I bought a Plustek OpticBook 3800 — the 3800 model being the next generation of the same type.
For the old 3600 there were only some very old drivers (Win 98/XP SP1) so I had to force-install them on the system (Win 7 originally). Then I updated to Win 10. The drivers and software of the 3600 are still in the Programs x86 folder, and they can’t be uninstalled (it raises an “OS incompatiblity” error).
The new scanner, the 3800, is a recent aquisition, and it came with up-to-date drivers (Win10), so I just installed all the drivers and software ignoring the previous model. And it always worked good … until the Creators Update.
Now the main scanner utility doesn’t start (I can’t even see the process in the background).
I’ve uninstalled the driver (and tools) and reinstalled it. Nothing changes. I’ve got the most recent drivers available for it.
The thing is that Windows does see the scanner correctly (at least the model show up right) and it can’t find any driver updates from MS. The old 3600 doesn’t show up in the devices, I think it’s just a dead folder left behind (don’t think this is the reason for the failure).
The scanner came with a CD Rom that installed some other tools. The bad think is that it doesn’t allow re-installing the software, nor uninstalling it: it keeps saying that everything is already installed and offers no further options. So I guess I have to handle this manually.
Ok, I’ll need some time to test with this. I’ll try to uninstall everything that came with the scanner (drivers and tools) and see if PM and Photoshop work without them. And then I’ll try to see if I can get the scanner to work.
SOLVED!!!
It wasn’t the scanner … it was Omni Page, the OCR software — as I though from the start, due to that opware.exe process.
Don’t ask me why, but Omni Page was blocking anything relating to scanners. When I tried to uninstall it, the uninstaller told me that in order to proceed I’d have to close a long list of applications and process — including the antivirus, the virtual machine software, and a very long list of processes. This opware.exe process was basically hooking all around the system.
Now PM, Phtoshop 7 and the scanner work fine!
True, it was an old version of Omni Page (v 12), but up to now it served me nicely and I really liked it. Now I’ll have to change OCR software, and use the ones that came with the new scanner.
So, it ended up well, luckily! (but I’ll still go for a new SSD-HD and fresh OS at Christmas, I don’t like an OS like this, that has been dragged around too long with major updates).
Thank you 
for all the support abd time that you’ve dedicated me! You were both very kind.
… and now I can get back to work, with my images and the PM plugins as well! 
Congratulations. I’m happy that you solved the problem. 
I’m having the same trouble. If I do a fresh reboot, start Pro Motion NG, it will run. If I close program and reopen, I see in the task manager but it never loads. If I kill it and try again, it still won’t load. I’ve registered so it’s a bit distressing to not be able to use it.
From what you described, it seems that the problem is due to the application not closing correctly. This might be caused my many different problems, including drivers incompatibility, or even PM plugins. The fact that you can only launch PM on a fresh boot indicates that some process didn’t close properly, so that’s the direction you should be investigating.
If you have any PM plugins, you should try to disable them, just in case the problem is with a plugin not being released correctly.
Windows’ Task Manager might not be enough to track the problem, you should download some specific diagnostic tools from Microsoft’s Windows Sysinternals tools:
They are free and standalone tools, just unzip and launch them.
There are various process-related tools you can download:
I advise you to get Process Explorer and Process Monitor to start with. They are nice GUI tools to track which resources are launched by an application, and they will allow you to visually check if any resources (e.g. a PM plugin, or a driver) are not being closed when the process is killed.
Also, you can use these tools to kill the whole process tree, which would allow you to spot which asset is “hanging” after you close PM the first time, which is most likely the culprit which is preventing further PM launches.
By using the sysinternal process-tools, like ProcDump and ListDLLs, you should be able to create detailed reports of your Windows’ process states before, during and after PM execution, which you could then send to Jan to allow him track the problem.
Just a couple of points:
- Pro-motion did quit properly when run, when it fails to load there’s no previous pro-motion executable running
- I have no PM plugins (unless there’s default ones)?
- I have a .dmp file that I created from VS, I attached debugger, paused and saved the dump. If there’s a private email (or something), I will send a onedrive link to the dump file [don’t want to post that public]
- See below for DLLs loaded (taken from VS)
- Windows Version 10.0.19042 Build 19042
.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\cosmigo\Pro Motion NG\pmotion.exe'. Module was built without symbols.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\KernelBase.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\comdlg32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcrt.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\combase.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\mpr.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winspool.drv'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wininet.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ucrtbase.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\rpcrt4.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\SHCore.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\user32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\win32u.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\gdi32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\gdi32full.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcp_win.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shlwapi.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shell32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.19041.488_none_11b1e5df2ffd8627\comctl32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\oleaut32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\advapi32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\version.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sechost.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\oledlg.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ole32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\netapi32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\cosmigo\Pro Motion NG\libeay32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\cosmigo\Pro Motion NG\math.dll'. Module was built without symbols.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\avifil32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ws2_32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shfolder.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wsock32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winmm.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvfw32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msacm32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winmmbase.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\cosmigo\Pro Motion NG\complib.dll'. Module was built without symbols.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\netutils.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\imm32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Faultrep.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dbghelp.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dbgcore.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntmarta.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\uxtheme.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msctf.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel.appcore.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\bcryptprimitives.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wtsapi32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winsta.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\security.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\secur32.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sspicli.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\hhctrl.ocx'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\riched20.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\usp10.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msls31.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\windows.storage.dll'.
'pmotion.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wldp.dll'.
The thread 0x5ec8 has exited with code 0 (0x0).As you can read from my old posts in this thread, for some reason PMNG was being blocked on my machine by an OCR software, just because of the commonly shared scanner drivers. So there must be some assets which are left hanging after shutting down PMNG, and which prevent its initialization on further launches. Identifying which assets it is might be tricky and require some trial and errors with process monitoring tools.
No, PM doesn’t ship with any plugins natively.
Good idea not to publicly post dumps, it would be unsafe. You should arrange with Jan what type of dump info he might need to look into it — let’s buzz him by mentioning his username: @jan.cosmigo — this should call his attention to this thread.
Hi @raymond,
so, the core problem is:
- After a fresh reboot you start PM and it runs normally.
- You close PM, pmotion.exe quits completely.
- You start PM, pmotion.exe is running but you don’t see anything.
Goto 1
Is that it?
If you are at point “3”, do you see the application entry in your taskbar, so that it also looks like running at the taskbar and you can switch from and to it, but only the windows don’t show?
What do you see if you hit Alt + Tab. Does it show anything from Pro Motion there?
-Jan
Hi Jan,
Correct on points 1, 2 + 3. And yes, it’s in the task manager running, and there’s no window that displays, ever, not even the splash screen loader. I actually have a .dmp file from attaching to the debugger, pausing, and saving the process if you want it. I just don’t want to post that publicly (since it might contain a loaded license file in memory or other private information).
Thanks,
Robin
Hi @raymond,
okay, please send a dropbox link or the file itself to jan@cosmigo.com
Just to be sure: when using Alt + Tab you don’t see any PM window anywhere?
-Jan
Sent. Hopefully something useful is in that dmp file.
Just to clarify the scenario, the promotion process would never load, it wouldn’t bring up a splash window, as if the program was paused in the background without ever bringing up a screen and it wasn’t because there was a previous promotion process running that had not quit.
Something interesting happened. I had a separate programmed called VS Code running which promoted to update itself. I accepted the update from VS Code, and the moment VS Code respawned, a previously stalled promotion process started to display its splash screen and continued loading as normal. Ever since the VS code upgrade occurred, promotion has been running fine. I have no explanation and I can no longer reproduce the original issue.
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That’s interesting, and it resembles my original problem with the OCR application that was blocking PMNG.
Did you use VSCode to edit some PM configuration files? That might have created an handle on the config file that was preventing PM from accessing it in write mode — this was a typical issue on Windows XP, when some apps would create persistent handles on files, which wouldn’t allow deleting them or renaming them, and required closing File Explorer in order to delete them. Although this is not so much of an issue on modern Windows (7, 8, 10) it can still happen, especially with apps that store settings inside the installation folder (as PMNG does) instead of the user folders.
Next time that PMNG hangs, you should try to close File Explorer via the task manager, and see if it can successfully launch — if it does, then it’s a file handle that’s causing the problem. Of course, you’ll need an alternative file explorer to carry out file operations once File Explore is closed. You can download this (excellent) free tool:
(I’ve used Altap Salamander as an alternative to Explorer for years, since before it became a free tool)
The only other thing that comes to my mind, regarding VSCode blocking PMNG, can be the printer drivers, which they probably share. Scanner and printers drivers are often the cause of similar conflicts, and the vanilla Windows installation contains tons of preinstalled drivers, even if you don’t use them. Disabling or uninstalling them might be a step worth looking into — in any case, they will be automatically re-installed if a device needs them, and might even be replaced by a better/newer version, so it’s a safe operation to do (unless you’ve installed the custom drivers that ship with the hardware; but even then, it might solve some underlying problems).
No, they were just running independently and I had not edited any PMNG configuration file.
I can’t reproduce anymore but it if it happens again I’ll check the steps recommend. As for printer drivers, it’s a fresh machine installation and I only added my main printer (which was a default win 10 driver only). So maybe, but doubtful.
I just has this issue on Windows 11 22H2 (see this forum post). Seems if VSCode is open and wants to do an update when it closes, it blocks PM-NG from starting. I can run VSCode without it wanting to do an update and PM-NG opens fine, it’s just when VSCode wants to update that it blocks PM-NG.
Could now make it happen with a running VSCode where there was a pending update for.
PM checks if there is already another instance of PM running and this check interfered with the update application of VSCode because it uses that same name for its application window. That’s why some check message was sent to that window but weirdly this message was not processed and not ignored either, it was not answered and so the process waited forever.
Fixed with V8 beta 10