STL thumbnail viewer crashes windows explorer

[Anonymous]

When browsing though or clicking on folders that contain STL files, hovering over, right clicking for context menus, or opening STL files, and basically interacting with STL files in any other manner will regularly crash Windows Explorer. This happens perhaps as low as 20% of the time, but occasionally happens several times in a row when attempting to access STL's

Troubleshooting on my own and searching outside forums (no forum thread yet found here for the issue), I tracked the problem to synshell.dll, named as SynShellEx class, and the product being a part of Autodesk Simulation Moldflow CAE Software. The resource creates thumbnails for .adv, .amm, .ctm, .mfr, .mpa, .mpi, .sdy, .stl, and .udm extensions, and is located at: Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Moldflow\bin\synshell.dll.

On disabling synshell.dll, I was no longer able to see thumbnails or previews of STL files within explorer, but explorer no longer crashed either. This is a poor solution, as I need to browse through many different stl files with similar naming schemes.

Using Inventor pro 2014 (x64) on a windows 7 (x64) machine.

[KevinLi-Autodesk]

Hi havendreamer,

Thanks for your reporting!

It is a known issue to us which had been tracked in our system via ID32480, now is under investigating in development team.

Regards,

[KevinLi-Autodesk]

Just update the latest information for this issue.

It is fixed and the fix will be available in Inventor 2016 official release.

Sorry for the inconvenience brought to you and thanks for your patience!

Regards,

[Anonymous]

Sure would have been nice if this could have gone out in a service pack or some other update.

Windows Explorer crashes are annoying as all heck.... 

(Yes, I know... disable synshell and my problems will go away)

[KevinLi-Autodesk]

Hi,

We have noticed your concern, thanks very much !

Regards,

[Anonymous]

OK....  I have now installed Inventor 2016 (part of my Product Design Suite Ultimate).  

STL previewing did not work, so I registered SYNSHELL.DLL from the 2016 Moldflow release package and re-enabled the shell extension.

Windows Explorer still crashes on a STL preview.

Have I perhaps done something wrong.. or..???

Please advise if you can!

[KevinLi-Autodesk]

Hi scott,

So if you just install Inventor 2016 and don't register SYNSHELL.DLL, Windows Explorer will not crash but does not have STL preview, if register SYNSHELL.DLL then Windows Explorer wil crash, right ?

Regards,

[Anonymous]

I just tried to register synshell on a win 10....got the stl thumbnails, but explorer started crashing every 2 minutes (maybe because I have an stl file on my desktop)... I have Inventor 2018

[JarFu]

Thanks your feedback, Toro.  I'm sorry to trouble you as we can't reproduce this issue locally now. Would you please let's know if this is a genenral issue on all STL file or the sepecified one? Would you mind attach one problem STL file for our further check? Many thanks!