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[Vista] Programs crash from DEP protection

B

BehindEnemyLines

Senior member
I have been getting these DEP protection crashes on various programs. It doesn't happen often, but it does occur on programs I used often. These are the programs that have crashed due to DEP protection (i.e. Vista gracefully notifies the crash from the Notification Tray). Listed in order of occurrance for January - February.

ObjectDock --> first program to crash from DEP (twice)
Spyware Terminator (twice)
Windows Sidebar (once)
Explorer shell (twice)
Internet Explorer 7 (twice)
Firefox 2.0.0.11 (once)

My reliability is currently at 3.43 due to Visio 2003 crashing from DEP protection at every closings of the program. I solved this by googling and disabled COM add-ins for Visio.

Not sure what is causing these DEP protection crashes. Programs running at startup that has NOT crashed: NOD32 2.70.39, Comodo Firewall (latest), and Bluetooth software.
 
Maybe it's coincident, but Firefox just hit the bucket with DEP protection error.

Faulting application firefox.exe, version 1.8.20071.12718, time stamp 0x474cd9ce, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 6.0.6000.16386, time stamp 0x4549bdc9, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0003b15f, process id 0x1174, application start time 0x01c866389e097200.
 
congrats, you have installed that crap firewall eventhough Vista has built-in two way firewall that does the job even better.
 
Originally posted by: Aberforth
congrats, you have installed that crap firewall eventhough Vista has built-in two way firewall that does the job even better.
Click to expand...
What qualifies it as craptastic? Comodo was installed on January 26, 2008. These DEP errors existed even before that date.
 
Originally posted by: BehindEnemyLines
Originally posted by: Aberforth
congrats, you have installed that crap firewall eventhough Vista has built-in two way firewall that does the job even better.
Click to expand...
What qualifies it as craptastic? Comodo was installed on January 26, 2008. These DEP errors existed even before that date.
Click to expand...

I've seen tons of problems with that firewall, I used to answer user problems in comodo forums when I finally cracked one day and gave up. Anyway as far as your problem is concerned, try disabling DEP, it might be because of a shell extension that is trying to access protected area.
 
Some programs won't work with DEP on so you can add them to the exception list it has. I seen this with several programs firefox being one of them.
 
Originally posted by: pcslookout
Some programs won't work with DEP on so you can add them to the exception list it has. I seen this with several programs firefox being one of them.
Click to expand...
But IE isn't. Something is wrong. And although DEP-induced crashes are consistent with DEP blocking attempts at buffer overflow executions, I doubt this is what's happening to him.
 
Originally posted by: Aberforth
congrats, you have installed that crap firewall eventhough Vista has built-in two way firewall that does the job even better.
Click to expand...

Too bad Vista's firewall doesn't have a better way of allowing what you want to allow out without having to resort to manually entering rules.
 
Originally posted by: Scooby Doo
Originally posted by: Aberforth
congrats, you have installed that crap firewall eventhough Vista has built-in two way firewall that does the job even better.
Click to expand...

Too bad Vista's firewall doesn't have a better way of allowing what you want to allow out without having to resort to manually entering rules.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much the only reason why I don't use it. Still investigating the cause(s). I am waiting for Online Armor Personal Firewall to release a Vista version and give that a try.
 
Originally posted by: pcslookout
Some programs won't work with DEP on so you can add them to the exception list it has. I seen this with several programs firefox being one of them.
Click to expand...

FF works perfectly for me on x64 without a DEP exclusion.
 
Originally posted by: MmmSkyscraper
Originally posted by: pcslookout
Some programs won't work with DEP on so you can add them to the exception list it has. I seen this with several programs firefox being one of them.
Click to expand...

FF works perfectly for me on x64 without a DEP exclusion.
Click to expand...

Prove it. If it does thats because of the updated version of firefox. I dare you to try Spybot Search and Destory.
 
I have DEP enabled for all programs and services with no exceptions. I can't recall when I've last seen a DEP error. I also use firefox
 
Originally posted by: pallejr
I have DEP enabled for all programs and services with no exceptions. I can't recall when I've last seen a DEP error. I also use firefox
Click to expand...

Do you use any firefox extensions though? Which ones?
 
Originally posted by: pcslookout
Prove it. If it does thats because of the updated version of firefox. I dare you to try Spybot Search and Destory.
Click to expand...

There's nothing to 'prove'. My installation works, get over it.
 
It's been a few days, and I have had Firefox crashing on DEP protection at least five times. Interestingly enough, it's the same module that's faulting.

Faulting application firefox.exe, version 1.8.20071.12718, time stamp 0x474cd9ce, faulting module NPSWF32.dll_unloaded, version 0.0.0.0, time stamp 0x4743814d, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x16774a4f, process id 0x404, application start time 0x01c86bc772e037a0.

I have already ran flash uninstaller from adobe and reinstalled with the latest flash version. But the crashes continue. I am not sure if it's flash itself or some third-party extensions. My deskop computer runs Vista with the exact extensions, but it doesn't have any of these DEP errors (they are both set to "all programs"). Firefox thankfully has session recovery.

I have the following:

DownloadHelper
NoScript
All-in-One Gestures
Free Download Manager Plugin
Adblock Plus
 
I've had flash crashing being one of the worst incompatibilities with past FireFox installations under LINUX. It does not surprise me that it's seemingly the "weak link" here.

IMHO it is very likely (wrt. the case of FireFox/FLash) :
a) just horrible software engineering of flash, and flash gave a DEP error because it was crashing / breaking with memory violations / runaway code execution *anyway*, and DEP just *detected* it first without DEP being causal of a problem in any way.

b) Malware (other than FLash itself) that caused flash to crash / buffer overflow and lead to DEP triggering.

IMHO DEP may be saving you from worse system instabilities / compromised by terminating the offending application(s).

I've run XP32 with DEP 100% on, NO exceptions for years.
I've run Vista 64 with DEP 100% on, NO exceptions for several months.

The only DEP error I repeatedly get to my recollection is when installing Cygwin and the 'mhash' program's installer which probably does use self-modifying code or something like that for optimization / tuning.

Then again I typically do not permit Flash on my machines because I don't trust it to be secure, stable, and feee of (intrinsic or 3rd party added) malware.

As for the other programs, if they work for a good while and *then* crash "randomly" with DEP errors, my bet is that they're just crashing / doing buffer overflows *anyway* due to bugs and DEP is just doing its job in detecting that.

 
Originally posted by: Aberforth
congrats, you have installed that crap firewall eventhough Vista has built-in two way firewall that does the job even better.
Click to expand...

I've noticed that the Vista 64 Comodo is vastly different than / improved from the versions that I had used a year previously for XP 32. I am sure they've made major design / usability improvements.

I have experienced a few bugs / crashes even with the newer program, though they do not yet rise to the level that I'd consider they inexcusable, they're just occasional crashes perhaps a couple of times a week. Mostly when I'm doing pretty heavy sysadmin involving installing LOTS of new software that I'm sure taxes Defender pretty heavily.

I've never seen any indication that Vista Firewall is even remotely close to being as user configurable in terms of incoming and outgoing rule sets as Comodo.

I've never seen any indication of willingness or ability for Vista's Firewall (or Defender) to be able to block questionable / unnecessary outgoing traffic even of "safe" applications like Microsoft's own various pieces of spyware (excuse me, when I run PAINT, I do not EXPECT nor WANT it to connect to some random WEB SITES!), or various common programs like Adobe's Reader.

I've never seen a similar level of configurability and moniting capacity in Windows Defender as Comodo's built in Defense either.

Although I think all of the pure firewall / malware defense solutions are in several ways vastly inferior in capacity and configurability to just having something like "iptables" and "selinux" under LINUX, they're about the best I've seen for a Windows platform.

If Comodo is such junk in your eyes, can you suggest a way to manage the built in Windows Firewall / Defender to get a similar level of administrative configurability and monitoring?

If not, can you suggest that any other freeware or not-so-expensive-ware commercial firewall / malware defense software is superior in reliability, performance, and administration flexibility?


 
Firefox continues to crash with the same module. Internet Explorer 7 is also crashing with DEP error.

Faulting application iexplore.exe, version 7.0.6000.16609, time stamp 0x47575b9a, faulting module Flash9e.ocx, version 9.0.115.0, time stamp 0x474375f3, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x001b427a, process id 0x1318, application start time 0x01c871ca52caad70.

Commonality: FLASH

The problem is that flash is necessary for me. These are the latest versions, and I have already tried uninstalling and reinstalling it from Adobe.

EDIT: Just installed SP1. Let's see if this helps.
 
Flash == Malware and so insecure that you get MORE malware to boot.

Remove it and don't look back and your system will be more secure, and as an added bonus you won't be seeing lots of worthless animated chase the monkey flash ads on websites.

 
The only DEP errors I've seen relate to XviD. I get the COM+ Surrogate has stopped working error with the newest version of XviD installed while browsing a folder full of thumbnails and it causes WMP to crash. Adding XviD as an exception doesn't work. Downgrading to the previous version of XviD did work. So I resolved it that way. Installing FFDshow or something to avoid the error is not a solution; I encode a lot of xvid and need more than just a filter/decoder.

 
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