Zotero Continuously Crashing

simoneke
Good morning,

I have an issue with Zotero on my computer (Windows 10 64bit). It crashes every time I start it. Most of the time immediately, sometimes after 2-3 minutes. I already deinstalled it several times and also deleted all personal data (within the deinstallation process as well as manually). Even after a clean reinstall Zotero keeps on crashing after startup. Sometimes I am lucky and it works some minutes but then crashes again.

Is there any way to solve this issue? I do not want to use Mendeley.
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  • simoneke
    D2014924735
  • dstillman
    By crashing, do you mean that it's closing completely (with an error from the OS?) or that you're getting a restart error in the middle pane? What is the debug output meant to show? (If it's just for a normal Zotero startup before anything happens, that wouldn't show anything relevant.)

    Do you have auto-sync enabled in the Zotero preferences? If you disable that temporarily, does it still happen?
  • simoneke
    It is closing completely without any error from the OS. So no error - just completely closing.

    I deactivated auto-sync and I still go the same problem.

    It opens and as soon as I click anywhere it closes again. The code I posted is the "debug" code that I have retrieved once. But I need to be lucky that the program does not crash.
  • dstillman
    Does it happen in a new Zotero profile?
  • simoneke
    Yes - it crashes right away. I created a "new zotero profile" as stated there in the links but it also crashes immediately.
  • dstillman
    If Zotero crashes at startup in a new profile, I'm afraid there's something unique to your system configuration that's causing problems, and there's not really much else we can tell you.

    You can look for system logs that might give some indication of the problem. If you're running any security software, you can try temporarily disabling it or checking its logs. You should certainly check your system for malware. You can try reinstalling Windows. But this isn't something anyone else has reported, so beyond a complete uninstall/reinstall, which it sounds like you've done, there's not really much else we can suggest on our end.
  • qqbb
    This sounds a bit like the issue described here:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/71946/freeze-issue-in-windows-10-1803-when-use-utf-8-as-default-code-page

    There, it's reported that Zotero "freezes" after launch. Before giving up, you might try changing the UTF-8 Windows system settings.
  • Fil_
    Same problem here,
    I just updated W10 to version 1909, now Zotero crashes after a few seconds/minutes (it depends) without a crash report, I tried also to install Beta version but still crashes and I checked in my windows settings and I don't have checked the UTF-8 option so the problem does not seem connected to it.
  • dstillman
    @Fil_: Try with your internet connection disabled in case it's caused by auto-sync, try holding down Shift at startup to start Zotero in Safe Mode, try in a new new Zotero profile as I suggest above, and otherwise see what I say above.
  • Fil_
    Hi dstillman and thanks for the prompt reply,
    I'm not on auto-synch, I tried holding the shift key before launching the software and for now it is holding... thank you very much
  • dstillman
    That's not meant as a permanent solution, though. Does it start crashing again if you stop using Safe Mode?

    If so, how about if you go to the Config Editor in the Advanced pane of the preferences and set layers.acceleration.disabled to true?
  • Fil_
    Yeah actually the first time I tried to use Zotero in MS Word it said to me that the plugin was disabled, so I tried to restart to use the in-text citation feature and Zotero started to crash again. Now I edited the preferences and I opened it without pressing shift... I'll report if it crashes again or if it works...
  • Fil_
    Nope... still crashing even with the layers.acceleration.disabled to true...
  • dstillman
    What about both layers.acceleration.disabled and gfx.direct2d.disabled?
  • Fil_
    Both set on True but no results. It still crashes
  • dstillman
    Can you find a crash log from Windows that might contain more info?
  • Fil_
    yeah I found something on Event viewer do I post it here or should I send it through PM?
  • dstillman
    You can email it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread.
  • Fil_
    thanks!
  • dstillman
    Faulting module name: asepkcs.dll_unloaded, version: 6.5.0.5, time stamp: 0x56922b0d
    Do you happen to use a smart card for authentication on this system? Alternatively or in addition, do you use a program called File Protector? If so, are you able to update the drivers for the smart card and/or the version of File Protector?

    This crash has been reported in Firefox (on which Zotero is based) as well, though their fix — blacklisting this module — will be for a later version of Firefox that we may have trouble backporting.
  • Fil_
    Hi, well I do have a smart card authentification system to sign pdf, I run the program to update it, and then I also run Firefox that also was not updated and now is, still I get the same error:
    Faulting module path: asepkcs.dll
    no File Protector is installed.
  • dstillman
    If you unplug the smart card reader (if you're able to do so), does it still crash?
  • Fil_
    the smart reader is not plugged in, I have a software to manage it (the one I just updated)
  • qqbb
    Given that Zotero seems to run in safe mode, could this be due to some problem with a plugin, e.g., the MS Word integration? You could try to start Zotero normally and then disable all add-ons. If that is stable, add the add-ons one at a time and see if Zotero crashes.
  • dstillman
    No — we’ve already identified what the problem is, as discussed above. Plugins aren’t relevant here. It’s just a question of figuring out if we have a way of fixing it on our end or if there’s something @Fil_ can do with the smart card software to fix it.
  • qqbb
    Ah, ok. I guess the safe mode is doing more than disabling add-ons.
  • Fil_
    For my undesrtanding in"safe mode" zotero didn't crash, but then I needed to use it on word and so I tried to re-enable the plugins and then started again to crash.
    In the windows event viewer the problem seems to lie in: "Faulting module path: asepkcs.dll". Maybe I could also try (if it is possible) to remove the zotero plugin from word and then re-install it?
  • dstillman
    No, again, this is related to the smart card software. Don't worry about any plugins. Starting in Safe Mode presumably just disables the smart-card-based authentication support that's triggering this.

    What smart card software and version are you running on your system?

    FWIW, ID Protect Monitor is apparently another piece of software that can cause this.

    Basically, this will happen if you have asepkcs.dll version 6.5.0.5 and older installed, so you'll need to figure out how to update your software and/or drivers so that you have a newer version of that library.
  • Fil_
    ok I can try to uninstall the smart card autenthication software and see if it works
  • Fil_
    Nope. I also removed the software for smart card but no improvements. Zotero keeps crashing...
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