Boxcryptor Shell Extensions

thalaria

Hello everyone,

first of all, i love Boxcryptor. It is a really really great product, but i have been struggling with crashes and slow downs in scrolling through my encrypted files with Boxcryptor now quite a time.

I can not clearly say after which version, but i am also experiencing more and more crashes of the Windows explorer. After some time i deactivated the startup with windows function in the Boxcryptor application, because of the annoying crashes that occurred mostly after the windows-login. After that, the windows explorer still crashed/restarted without any reason from time to time.

The repairing of the .NET framework did not helped. At least a clean installation of windows 10 hasn't worked. After the installation of Boxcryptor the occasionally crashes of the app and the Windows explorer returned.

Now, after the installation of version 2.15.578 and some research, I've deactivated the Boxcryptor shell extensions (specifically the 'BoxcryptorShellExt.ContextMenuInterceptor' and 'BoxcryptorShellExt.ContextMenuHandler' classes) with 'ShellExView'.

Since the deactivation of the shell extension classes I've not experiencing any new crashes. And the viewing of encrypted files feels also quicker and more responsive.

Has anyone else experiencing such matters?

Regards,
T.

Note for the devs: The Boxcryptor crash behavior can be immediately reproduced on my machine only by activating the two stated classes and a restart of windows!

Christian

Hello Sebastian,

we'd love to have a closer look at this: Could you write a message to support@boxcryptor.com? Just mention this thread and we'll try fixing this as soon as possible.

Best regards,
Christian

Toff

Hello,

I second the thoughts of Sebastian, BoxCryptor is a fantastic product... I moved over from CloudFogger when it closed. I've found BoxCryptor to be far more reliable and practical in every day use (and smartphone use).

I have been suffering with Explorer crashing over the last few months, it has become increasingly worse over the last few weeks, so I decided to troubleshoot a bit deeper.

I made use of NirSoft's "Shell Extension Viewer" to list all of my current shell extensions. (I haven't linked to the page in case it's against forum rules).

I hid all the Microsoft Shell Extensions then I tried disabling a bunch of the remaining 3rd parry shell extensions (one section at a time). Each time I'd reset Windows Explorer and then experiment to see if there was any improvement. I discovered that Windows Explorer functions perfectly when I have the following Shell Extensions disabled:

BoxcryptorShellExt.ContextMenuInterceptor
BoxcryptorShellExt.ContextMenuHandler
BoxcryptorShellExt.DragDropHandler
BoxcryptorShellExt.IconOverlayEnc
BoxcryptorShellExt.IconOverlayEncFailSync
BoxcryptorShellExt.IconOverlayPlain
BoxcryptorShellExt.IconOverlayPlainFailSync

I haven't tried narrowing down which ones I can leave running (I'm just delighted to having a smooth running Windows Explorer again!)

Please can anybody advise - will having these shell extensions disabled prohibit BoxCryptor from working properly?

I understand that context menu options won't be available & icons won't be dynamic but what is the impact of the DragDrop shell extension not working properly please?

Kind regards
Al

Christian

Hello Toff,

since disabling the shell extensions also disables the context menu, you're disabling a lot of Boxcryptor options - such as sharing, enabling/disabling filename encryption, etc.

It would be very valuable to us to know which of the extensions are actually causing this effect, though. Could you narrow the issue down to as few of them as possible? Please send your report to support@boxcryptor.com and we'll see what we can do (just mention this thread so we can make the connection).

Best regards,
Christian