What's up with this? (Tab images gone)

bowelripper

Image one: Files in the thumbnail folder after closing Vivaldi.
Image two: Files in the thumbnail folder after restarting Vivaldi.
Don't know if it helps, but Vivaldi itself deletes files when they're no longer needed (when you go to another web page in the tab and the image has to be replaced). Maybe there's a bug somewhere in this process? It never happened before the update (read OP).

DoctorG

@bowelripper said in What's up with this? (Tab images gone):

ProcMon doesn't seem to record when files get deleted

//EDIT:
Have you:

Path BeginsWith C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default\VivaldiThumbnails
Activated monitor of FileSystem only

Works now.

0 01-18-39-0406.png

Pathduck

@DoctorG That ProcMon article is old...

From what I can tell, a file delete is actually a CreateFile operation with Desired Access = Delete.

13:11:10,1941833	totalcmd64.exe	4028	CreateFile	D:\bin\Vivaldi-stable\User Data\Default\VivaldiThumbnails\JIEF5NBMTZYCQKAU6X3RTDSUJMETUI7V.jpg	SUCCESS	Desired Access: Read Attributes, Delete, Disposition: Open, Options: Non-Directory File, Open Reparse Point, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: Read, Write, Delete, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened

So to monitor deletions a filter like this should work:

My guess: Vivaldi is doing the delete, but someone will have to figure out the why and when

Using FileActivityWatch by Nirsoft is probably the easier and less complicated method, even if it's slower showing the events directly.

bowelripper

@Pathduck & @DoctorG I used Pathduck's filter and that worked. It seems like MsMpEng.exe might be the culprit?

bowelripper

Okay, something I didn't think about. I upgraded from Windows 10 to 11 on February 4 (I know because I talked about it with a friend in a private chat), and my opening post is from Feb 6. So maybe this problem came with Win 11 and not the Vivaldi update.

Pathduck

@bowelripper My filter wasn't the best, it also will catch other type of operations I found out.

This should better catch Delete operations:

Anyway, MsMpEng.exe is probably Defender. My guess it just creates file handles to open/inspect the files.

In your log it looks like vivaldi.exe is deleting the files.

My suggestion is create a clean profile, alternatively install a Standalone for testing, then recreate your setup and options as much as possible and try to reproduce the problem. I always recommend using a Standalone install for testing:
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/install-update/standalone-version-of-vivaldi/

bowelripper

@Pathduck I read that MsMpEng.exe stands for Microsoft Malware Protection Engine. You're probably right, why would it delete an image file, that should be no threat as far as I know.
Also, after applying your new filter MsMpEng.exe disappeared from the list.

I guess I gotta do it the hard way with the standalone solution.

DoctorG

I never hat trouble with Windows 11 Defender deleting thumbs. That would have been detected by me very quick and questioned to dev team.

But @bowelripper should monitor to see which process causes the deletion.

Pathduck

Important to note as well: Vivaldi seems to do regular "cleanup" operations on that folder, so seeing Delete operations would not be out of the ordinary.

To make sure you only catch delete operations on the actual tab thumbnails you have open - you can find out what image is used by a tab by opening it. For instance if I have Accuweather open in a test profile, and the file CN7OBFAWD3PBEST53FDRMTIHHIV6BY3U.jpg looks like this:

So that file is the thumb for Accuweather.
You can monitor for that specific file by setting Path = <full path to file> in ProcMon instead of the folder. You can add several of these filters.

I tried reproducing your issue, with ProcMon running.

Open clean profile
Enable side tabs like you have
Enable tab thumbnails
Open a bunch of tabs from the Start Page
Look in VivaldiThumbnails that thumbs are created
Restarting the browser several times and seeing if any files are deleted
No files were deleted

However:

Changing Startup With to Start Page, files were deleted - as expected as no tabs were open and so thumbs are no longer referenced and needed.

DoctorG

@Pathduck Oh, yes, Startup With setting let Vivaldi clear thumbs at start.

Never saw this as my Vivaldi browsers allways start with Last Session.

bowelripper

@DoctorG & @Pathduck Startup With is set to Last Session and has always been (I've never changed it).

@Pathduck As I described in this post, I observed that all the files were deleted when closing Vivaldi. It does so at random times, is what it looks like. Edit: So when the tab images were gone today, they probably got deleted when I closed Vivaldi yesterday before shutting down the computer.

DoctorG

@bowelripper

Can you open internal Vivaldi page chrome://settings/system , switch off "Continue Running Background Apps" , restart Vivaldi and check if error goes away?
Do you use Windows Quickstart?
Do you have made optimisation settings in Windows Registry to shutdown faster, forcing closing of apps?

bowelripper

Okay, I've turned off "Continue running background apps"
No, I don't use Win quickstart
Nope, never been in the registry to optimise that

Anyway, when I observed it happening (like I said in an earlier post), it was not before shut-down. I just closed/opened Vivaldi many times to try to recreate the problem.

bowelripper

So, it happened again when I closed Vivaldi just now - all image files deleted. And Process Monitor caught it. As we can see, Vivaldi.exe is behind it. Now what remains is to find out why.

bowelripper

It has happened again

smrt28

Hi, there is a garbage collector that deletes all the thumbnails without a reference. So, it correctly deletes the files, the problem is it deletes more files than it should. If something is broken, it is probably this garbage-collector.

When you run vivaldi --v=1, you should see the messages like "VivaldiImageStore GC started" and "10 unreferenced image files were removed".

As this hasn't been broken quite a while, I have to remember how it all actually works .

bowelripper

@smrt28 Hello, thanks for the reply. I can't see any of those messages when using --v=1.

No one else here is using tabs with images, or? Since no one else has reported here with the same problem.

smrt28

@bowelripper hmm, those log messages are probably not in the release builds.

In the default settings you should see the thumbnails when you hover the mouse over the tabs. If the thumbnail is missing, you would see just the title. So yah, nobody may have noticed.

Anyway, good news, it seems I can reproduce it

DoctorG

@smrt28 said in What's up with this? (Tab images gone):

Anyway, good news, it seems I can reproduce it

Good! The bug was so weird for some users.

bowelripper

Hope there's gonna be a solution, it's kind of annoying