VistaStyleBuilder

The odd thing is it doesn't happen all the time, more like every second or third time I attempt to launch Photo Viewer by double-clicking on any image.  Similarly, I'm getting frequent DWM crashes when testing the problematic themes using WSB (for example, when making changes and then testing to see the changes) and occasionally when performing any GDI intensive tasks such as launching standard Windows UI applications like MS Office Outlook 2010, though such occurrences are far less frequent and less consistent.  Again, in this scenario the crash does not happen consistently but often enough to see a pattern.

At first I thought perhaps it was caused by the background color used in my theme as well as the other problematic theme for Photo Viewer (black and dark grey), however changing the appropriate values to their defaults did not resolve the issue with Photo Viewer (though it did cause images to load more quickly).

The third party theme in question is the one referenced here (I only applied the shell theme extracted manually from the installer, I did not use any pre-built themepacks or any third party executables): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2V-gir2p_w


My only conclusion now is that perhaps one of the modifications that theme (and thus my own theme which is based on it) makes to the system causes some type of GDI overload and/or corruption or race condition leading to these errors/crashes.

If you require a copy of my theme for analysis just let me know and I will provide it.

Thanks

This is a common problem in PhotoViewer. Google it and you'll see. I get it myself when opening several images in succession. It has nothing to do with msstyles

I did a ton of Googling and couldn't find anything that referenced GDIPlus.dll or Photo Viewer.  Also, I can still faithfully replicate it with my theme, yet if I switch to a different theme (also a very non-standard custom theme; not standard Aero), the issue does not occur no matter how I try to force it to happen.  My best guess is that maybe we're both right.  Perhaps the theme I happen to be using is putting undue strain on the GDI system which is used for rendering graphics in the shell as well as displaying images in Photo Viewer so when I do anything to stress it such as opening an image for viewing (or switching themes or launching certain GUI-heavy apps) it triggers a crash.  Perhaps I simply need to simplify my theme a bit.  I'm working on doing just that right now by merging elements of my now somewhat sketchy theme with those of the working theme (both are 'full glass' using BlackGlassEnhanced, though that app isn't the cause either as it occurs when I don't have it running as well).

Like I said I get this problem a lot with defauilt aero or otherwise. If I Google " Photo Viewer Com Surrogate" I get lots of results. If this really bothers you then open images in your image editor and forget Photo Viewer.

Yeah, it's not just that.  It happens during other situations as well.  I'm sure it's being caused in my case either by a recent Windows Update or one of the system files or registry modifications I've made for the sake of my custom theme.  I'll keep tooling around and see if I can figure it out.  I'm sure that if it comes down to it I can either reinstall Windows and make my changes one by one, testing for the issue as I go along until I discover the culprit or I can start rolling back as many changes as I can one at a time, testing as I go until I find stability and figure out the cause.  I'm sure that swapping out system files the way I do has a tendency of screwing things up from time to time, especially when some of the files must be outdated versions since they don't get patched by Windows Updates and all (a risk I would not take if I didn't have anti-exploit software installed which is designed precisely to guard against both known and unknown exploits in current and outdated software and system files).