FF 61.0 64-bit causes Nuance Paperport 14 to crash starting

[DSperber]

Hard to believe, but today I happened to try and use Paperport 14 (from Nuance) to scan a page to a PDF, something I'd done countless times in the past. And for some reason, it crashed with an error message box like the following:



I retried the program launch several times, and it failed to start identically every time. I had just yesterday updated my Asmedia USB drivers for my ASUS Z170-Deluxe motherboard and since my Epson 4990 Photo scanner is connected by USB, I was suspicious that maybe the new Asmedia driver was responsible. But before pursuing that I decided that maybe the Paperport program install itself had somehow gotten corrupted since the last time I had used it. So perhaps a reinstall (i.e. "repair") might get it back to working again.

So, I did reinstall Paperport 14, and the process was successful. I then tried re-launching the program and it still crashed on startup. I then decided to use the ScanDirect (shortcut) provided with the product, which bypasses the full program launch and simply facilitates the basic functionality. In this case I simply wanted to scan-to-PDF (which is one of these basic functions supported by ScanDirect, so I tried to do it that way. No luck... it seemed to start and scan, and created a temp PDF member, but then once again crashed as above.

Ok. I looked up the Nuance Tech Support phone number and made notes of my serial number, etc., planning on calling Nuance on Monday morning.

I then decided on a flyer to do a Google search just to see if I was alone, or if this symptom might also be encountered by others. Well, imagine my astonishment to see that not only was I not alone, but that there was an article in the www.experts-exchange.com forum posted just a few weeks back (dated June 29, 2018) addressing my exact issue: "What to do when PaperPort crashes, hangs, or fails to start".

Reading this article, it contains the unbelievable FIX, which is to use REGEDIT to update a Registry setting for PaperPort which defines "BrowserSelected" in the user preferences when that value is currently "Mozilla Firefox". Multiple people have reported that this PaperPort startup crash problem only recently started (seemingly corresponding to an upgrade to FireFox v61.0 64-bit, which of course is my very situation), and appears to be 100% tied to a value of "Mozilla Firefox" as the BrowserSelected value. Using REGEDIT to change this value TO ANYTHING ELSE (e.g. to "Internet Explorer", or in fact to anything, including random characters like "xxx") apparently makes the PaperPort startup crash go away!!!

I know, hard to believe. According to the article there's no documented purpose to this BrowserSelected value in the PaperPort user preferences, but add me to the list of people who have now applied the exact same fix (I, too, have changed the value to "Internet Explorer") and sure enough the Paperport 14 program now launches successfully and once again works perfectly!!!

I can only suspect that there must be some undocucumented interaction at PaperPort 14 startup which somehow invokes whatever is named as the BrowserSelected Registry value provides, and maybe it's not expecting Firefox to be 64-bit? Or something else new with v61.0? Don't know, and nobody else seems to know either. It's only true that changing this PaperPort Registru user preference to ANYTHING OTHER THAN "Mozilla Firefox" eliminates the program startup crash.

Read that article. Everybody has had the same success when following this simple fix.

I'm just passing this information along. I have no idea what it is that PaperPort is doing at startup relating to any browser, and which now negatively interacts with FF v61.0 64-bit, or what the consequence is of changing it to any other value (including garbage "xxx"), but it's simply true that changing it to anything else but "Mozilla Firefox" IS the fix!!!

[therube]

So as I'm reading down your post, my first thought goes towards... well, then it is not FF related.
Guess that was wrong .

What I didn't see (on a quick look through the link) was just what the purpose of BrowserSelected is & why & where is Nuance picking up "Mozilla Firefox"?

Has anyone brought that up with Nuance (& for that matter, Mozilla)?

[Brummelchen]

Ask Nuance support. Firefox cant make other programs crash if there no direct interaction eg with plugin. But plugins are very limited usable. At least pp14 is not compatible to firefox and that s nuance problem, not mozilla.

Cross-posting...
https://www.camp-firefox.de/forum/viewt ... 1&t=125692

[DSperber]

My guess is that it needs to use a browser in order to perform its "check for updates" function (under HELP, typical for software products). And it perhaps does some initialization at program launch that prepares it for this possibility, maybe for an automatic/always check for update or simply when you manually push the "check for updates" item.

And there must be something about internally invoking FF 61.0 which is now different, and somehow responsible for the Paperport crash. Also, to be technically accurate I'm using the latest version which is actually Paperport 14.5 but I don't think that is relevant.

Interestingly, when I now push the "check for updates" button in Paperport nothing happens. Might be because there is no newer version, but it's still strange not to at least see a popup stating "you have the latest version, no updates are available". I would think pushing any button should produce some program response, but I can't remember whether this has ever worked or not.

Also interestingly, each of the other three web-related buttons launches FF successfully, but likely because FF is my default browser per Windows and not because of any Paperport Registry item. Although two of these links produces a 404 error on the Paperport site, which certainly is unexpected but might not really mean anything special relating to the Registry item value.

I will phone Paperport now, and see what they have to say about all of this.

I suppose if I were able to install a back-level version of FF in order to prove that indeed it was something about 61.0 which was responsible for the recent Paperport abnormal startup behavior, that would really be a very interesting datapoint. I believe FF has been 64-bit for quite a while now, so I don't think it's that.

[DSperber]

Worthless call to Nuance tech support.

They said they ARE aware of the problem, and have elevated it to their engineers for research and resolution. Otherwise, they knew nothing. In fact the support guy for Paperport didn't even a machine in front of him on which Paperport was installed, so that he could walk through anything else with me if I actually had a genuine technical question about the product.

Brilliant.

Oh well.