Forums Bug Reports Crashing in 7.77/Windows 11

I'm not sure if this is my configuration or mIRC, but I'm not seeing this happen with any other application. Randomly, mIRC will crash in the background (desktop locked or otherwise).
My most recent crash is in the event viewer as such:
Faulting application name: mirc.exe, version: 7.77.0.0, time stamp: 0x66687f8b
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.26100.1150, time stamp: 0xfd47196f
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x000f7f8f
Faulting process id: 0x36F4
Faulting application start time: 0x1DAD530D523F746
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\mIRC\mirc.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 14963cef-337a-45c0-8c0a-be44242a5054
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

0xc0000374 translates to STATUS_HEAP_CORRUPTION

I have logs going back to July 2, but the earliest crashes start on July 9. I don't recall any crashes with 7.76 or earlier.

Thanks for your bug report. Please type the following command into mIRC and post your results:


In order to help track down this issue, please also try the following:

1) Install mIRC 7.77 into a clean, empty folder using the portable option in the installer, with no scripts or DLLs.
2) Run mIRC, connect to servers, join channels, and so on.

Do you see the same issue with the clean install of mIRC if you leave it running?

If you do not, is it possible that one of your scripts is causing the issue? You will need to try to narrow down the cause of the issue so that we can try to reproduce it.

Also, if you type "/debug on" command in the status window, this will output debugging information to a debug.log file. This may help narrow down the cause if the crash is due to a particular server event.

I can do it, but my install is essentially clean anyway. I don't have anything but an ignore list. I just turned debugging on, and I'll see where that goes first. I'm not sure how long it'll take for a crash, as they appear kind of random (and when I'm not looking).

Also,
11 7.77 46b7b0735e19aee75c02e8c875164ade ok 1 1 0 0

Just got a crash, and the debug log is nothing but ping events from the IRC server like
-> irc.mzima.net PING :TIMEOUTCHECK
<- :irc.mzima.net PONG irc.mzima.net :TIMEOUTCHECK
It's the same heap corruption exception. Here is the output of a !analyze -v on the most recent dump file.
*******************************************************************************
* *
* Exception Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************


KEY_VALUES_STRING: 1

Key : Analysis.CPU.mSec
Value: 781

Key : Analysis.Elapsed.mSec
Value: 6910

Key : Analysis.IO.Other.Mb
Value: 34

Key : Analysis.IO.Read.Mb
Value: 0

Key : Analysis.IO.Write.Mb
Value: 63

Key : Analysis.Init.CPU.mSec
Value: 374

Key : Analysis.Init.Elapsed.mSec
Value: 11898

Key : Analysis.Memory.CommitPeak.Mb
Value: 145

Key : Failure.Bucket
Value: HEAP_CORRUPTION_c0000374_heap_corruption!mirc.exe

Key : Failure.Hash
Value: {285ccbe2-15b7-d2e1-8f52-6cd93f97d554}

Key : Timeline.OS.Boot.DeltaSec
Value: 31580

Key : Timeline.Process.Start.DeltaSec
Value: 31537

Key : WER.OS.Branch
Value: ge_release

Key : WER.OS.Version
Value: 10.0.26100.1

Key : WER.Process.Version
Value: 7.77.0.0


FILE_IN_CAB: mirc.exe.6920.dmp

NTGLOBALFLAG: 0

APPLICATION_VERIFIER_FLAGS: 0

CONTEXT: (.ecxr)
eax=0f4df638 ebx=0ed29b68 ecx=0f4df668 edx=77ee1968 esi=00000002 edi=0ed20000
eip=77ea7f8f esp=0f4df610 ebp=0f4df648 iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na pe nc
cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00000246
ntdll!RtlReportFatalFailure+0x16:
77ea7f8f eb33 jmp ntdll!RtlReportFatalFailure+0x4b (77ea7fc4)
Resetting default scope

EXCEPTION_RECORD: (.exr -1)
ExceptionAddress: 77ea7f8f (ntdll!RtlReportFatalFailure+0x00000016)
ExceptionCode: c0000374
ExceptionFlags: 00000001
NumberParameters: 1
Parameter[0]: 77ee1968

PROCESS_NAME: mirc.exe

ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000374 - A heap has been corrupted.

EXCEPTION_CODE_STR: c0000374

EXCEPTION_PARAMETER1: 77ee1968

ADDITIONAL_DEBUG_TEXT: Enable Pageheap/AutoVerifer ; Followup set based on attribute [Is_ChosenCrashFollowupThread] from Frame:[0] on thread:[PSEUDO_THREAD]

FAULTING_THREAD: 00005608

STACK_TEXT:
00000000 00000000 heap_corruption!mirc.exe+0x0


STACK_COMMAND: ** Pseudo Context ** ManagedPseudo ** Value: ffffffff ** ; kb

SYMBOL_NAME: heap_corruption!mirc.exe

MODULE_NAME: heap_corruption

IMAGE_NAME: heap_corruption

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: HEAP_CORRUPTION_c0000374_heap_corruption!mirc.exe

OS_VERSION: 10.0.26100.1

BUILDLAB_STR: ge_release

OSPLATFORM_TYPE: x86

OSNAME: Windows 10

FAILURE_ID_HASH: {285ccbe2-15b7-d2e1-8f52-6cd93f97d554}

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

I'm attaching Windows Debugger directly to a running mIRC process. Let's see if I can get more information.

Thanks for the feedback.

I left clean install copies of mIRC 7.77 running on Windows 10 and 11, connected to ten servers via SSL and joined to around thirty channels, over night and, so far, they are still running without any issues.

To rule out something related to a recent Windows update or system change, if you run mIRC 7.76, does it show the issue?

If it doesn't, the next step would be to try out the betas between 7.76 and 7.77 to narrow the down where the issue started. I will send you a private message with a link to a beta for testing.

One other question: are you running anti-virus/security software? In the past, there have been reports where they have caused issues like this.

I'll do that with a second nick alongside my normal process, but the mIRC process I attached the debugger to is still trucking as of right now.
PS C:\Users\toiletduk> Get-ProcessLife mirc
1 day 1 hour 53 minutes 12 seconds

PS C:\Users\toiletduk> Get-ProcessLife mirc
mirc (42104): 2 hours 13 minutes 27 seconds
mirc (42272): 1 day 4 hours 11 minutes 6 seconds

PID 42104 is the 7.76 beta you gave me, and 42272 is my normally installed 7.77 (with WinDbg attached). The last crash of 7.77 was around 7 hours in (subtracted the current runtime from my system uptime, and I noticed it was dead within a minute or two), so I'll keep pushing.
As far as my antivirus stuff, I use the Windows Defender junk, but I haven't changed any settings. The only thing really changed recently was updating to 24H2 (it's final, just a limited rollout), but that was a whole week to the day before the first crash, so I ruled that out.

I was approaching 2 days uptime for mIRC before I rebooted for updates. I'm going to chalk this up to something ephemeral. If I see it happen again, I'll let you know.

Ok, thanks!

I was reviewing the code changes between 7.76 and 7.77 and decided to use different debug compiler settings to see if this could trigger an issue. Lo and behold, this resulted in a very intermittent stack/heap gpf caused by a bug in the server list parsing routine. It's difficult to know whether this is related to the issue you are seeing, as there were so many changes in 7.77, but it is very possible. This has been fixed for the next beta.

Would that trigger while the client is idle? It tends to happen behind my back.

Yes, that's quite possible. If there is an issue with memory corruption at some point, this can trigger a crash later on. Even when mIRC is idle, it processes a large number of events/features in the background that involve memory access/allocation/etc.

Just an update. It still hasn't resurfaced. It was just for an exact 7 day period. -_-
PS C:\Users\toiletduk> Get-ProcessLife mirc
mirc (23388): 3 days 22 hours 36 minutes 14 seconds