Skip App v0.9.4 Beta

[AeroCluster]

7 hours ago, jason said:

No it's a service that uploads a crash report with no user identifying information. And allows us to see and analyze issues. It's a paid service. You don't install anything.

Is anyone using Kaspersky, or another virus tool?

Anyone with the problem, can you open the registry, browse to:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class

Can you show us what's in there?

 

 

[dnalloheoj]

Nevermind :|

Edited January 22, 2023 by dnalloheoj

[bantar]

I'm using Bitdefender Total Security. 

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class contents:

 

[bantar]

 

 

Part 2 of 3

[bantar]

Part 3 of 3

[jason]

3 hours ago, bantar said:

Part 3 of 3

Thank you!. Do you have any here:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses

Can you also try the following: 

Was that enabled, and if so, did disabling have any effect on remote detection in the skipapp?

[jason]

One more request:

Run this command:

pnputil /enum-devices

Find a line that looks like Instance ID:    <INSTANCE_ID> that matches Flirc's VID/PID (20A0/0008). Copy <INSTANCE_ID>

Afterwards run

pnputil /enum-devices /stack /instanceid "<INSTANCE_ID>" /relations /resources /drivers /interfaces /properties

which will dump a ton of remote device info including the driver stack.

Let me know how that goes.

[theboomr]

@jason: I do have a long list of devices in both of the registry locations you've listed; I can screen record scrolling through those if you want, just let me know.

I checked my Steam controller settings and the extended driver support was NOT enabled/checked.

I also ran those commands on my PC and saved output to 2 text files, one for the USB Input Device instance ID and one for the HID-compliant vendor defined device instance ID (since both of those showed the 20A0/0008). I've attached the 2 text files here.

Skip_Remote_HID_vendor_device_pnputil_output.txt Skip_Remote_USB_Input_Device_pnputil_output.txt

[bantar]

8 hours ago, jason said:

Was that enabled, and if so, did disabling have any effect on remote detection in the skipapp?

There might be a disconnect, with respect to the issues that I'm reporting.  I'm only seeing the app crash in the background.  The detection of the remote is working with build 5276, but not with 5293.  When I rolled back to 5276 remote detection returned.

With remote detection, I've seen these behaviors:   1) Start the app, connect the remote, detected.  2) Remote connected for some time, start the app, not detected.  Disconnect and reconnect the app, remote is detected.  I'm assuming that this is expected behavior, and if not, presented here.  3) When app crashes, for about 5 minutes (or less), the remote attempts to reconnect (hear the dings from windows as it connects/disconnects). 

Do you need more from me given this clarification?

[dnalloheoj]

@bantar Do you possibly have OneDrive disabled on your computer in any fashion? Or have you done anything in particular to disable certain built-in Windows features that you recall?

I think your issues are more related to a corrupt profile/install or the Windows Store specifically, personally. Basing that off what I was seeing when I was having the same issue, and yep, I had done plenty of fucky "hacks" in the past to do things like disable OneDrive for Business, etc. 

Could try a wsreset, reinstalling the Store app, re-registering the Store App, clearing Store cache, etc. But why bother when a new profile would do all of that at once. 

A windows reinstall would likely clear it up, but ideally there's a fix that doesn't require that. Might be worth trying to create a new user account (local admin rights), log out, log in as that user, download the Skip App again, install, see what happens. That said, it very possibly could be BitDefender + ASUS related (I feel like you chimed in that you had that installed? Maybe I'm wrong), and that a simple new profile wouldn't work, as those would likely follow you around since they get installed with SYSTEM permissions. 

1 hour ago, bantar said:

 the remote attempts to reconnect (hear the dings from windows as it connects/disconnects).

I've had this happen on some fresh installs/profiles/newly created VMs where I've installed 5293, seen that issue, and then downloaded & installed the version from the website. Even though it says 'Do you want to update' when installing the Website version, it stays at 5293, but works just fine afterwards. Though this wasn't necessarily while mine was doing the weird crashing (Or maybe it was doing it then also, that was about a week ago, don't recall exactly). 

Maybe another thing worth trying. Task manager -> Details tab. Locate asuscertservice.exe -> Right Click -> Open File Location. Right click asuscerservice.exe in the folder that opened up, rename to asuscertservice.exe.old. Reboot. Test Skip App. If it still doesn't work (Or introduces new issues), rename the file back to asuscertservice.exe, reboot again.

Edited January 22, 2023 by dnalloheoj

[bantar]

11 minutes ago, dnalloheoj said:

@bantar Do you possibly have OneDrive disabled on your computer in any fashion? Or have you done anything in particular to disable certain built-in Windows features that you recall?

I think your issues are more related to a corrupt profile/install or the Windows Store specifically, personally. Basing that off what I was seeing when I was having the same issue, and yep, I had done plenty of fucky "hacks" in the past to do things like disable OneDrive for Business, etc. 

Could try a wsreset, reinstalling the Store app, re-registering the Store App, clearing Store cache, etc. But why bother when a new profile would do all of that at once. 

A windows reinstall would likely clear it up, but ideally there's a fix that doesn't require that. Might be worth trying to create a new user account (local admin rights), log out, log in as that user, download the Skip App again, install, see what happens. That said, it very possibly could be BitDefender + ASUS related (I feel like you chimed in that you had that installed? Maybe I'm wrong), and that a simple new profile wouldn't work, as those would likely follow you around since they get installed with SYSTEM permissions. 

Worth noting that on some fresh installs/profiles/newly created VMs I've had to install 5293, and then download & install the version from the website. Even though it says 'Do you want to update' when installing the Website version, it stays at 5293, but works just fine afterwards. 

Seeing your profile issue noted prior to me installing, I chose to create a brand new profile.   I installed on that profile, so I don't expect a corrupted profile.   It exists for the sole purpose of testing Skip.   I do have BitDefender installed, but nothing ASUS related.  I'm on a Dell Laptop.   It's easy enough to disable BitDefender to see if anything changes.

I've never downloaded the software from the website, because I didn't know where to look.  Was looking on the forums page.    I can try it when I get home.

I loaded 5276, and when poking around, it wanted to update to 5293.  When that happened, no connections to the remote were possible.  Downgraded to 5276 and it worked fine.  I wonder what version is on the website?  I'm guessing 5293.   Secondly, I've not tried a clean install of 5293 either.

[jason]

19 minutes ago, bantar said:

Seeing your profile issue noted prior to me installing, I chose to create a brand new profile.   I installed on that profile, so I don't expect a corrupted profile.   It exists for the sole purpose of testing Skip.   I do have BitDefender installed, but nothing ASUS related.  I'm on a Dell Laptop.   It's easy enough to disable BitDefender to see if anything changes.

I've never downloaded the software from the website, because I didn't know where to look.  Was looking on the forums page.    I can try it when I get home.

I loaded 5276, and when poking around, it wanted to update to 5293.  When that happened, no connections to the remote were possible.  Downgraded to 5276 and it worked fine.  I wonder what version is on the website?  I'm guessing 5293.   Secondly, I've not tried a clean install of 5293 either.

We have read bit defender can be the cause, and other protection programs. More troubling, they add to the registry, even after uninstalling, these entries need to be manually removed. Trying to determine if that's the cause, although you can connect, so that's not this for you. @bantar

[theboomr]

1 hour ago, bantar said:

Seeing your profile issue noted prior to me installing, I chose to create a brand new profile.   I installed on that profile, so I don't expect a corrupted profile.   It exists for the sole purpose of testing Skip.   I do have BitDefender installed, but nothing ASUS related.  I'm on a Dell Laptop.   It's easy enough to disable BitDefender to see if anything changes.

I've never downloaded the software from the website, because I didn't know where to look.  Was looking on the forums page.    I can try it when I get home.

I loaded 5276, and when poking around, it wanted to update to 5293.  When that happened, no connections to the remote were possible.  Downgraded to 5276 and it worked fine.  I wonder what version is on the website?  I'm guessing 5293.   Secondly, I've not tried a clean install of 5293 either.

Just to answer your question about version numbers, the version from the flirc website is 0.9.4, which is totally separate from these "disconnect test" versions that Jason has posted in this thread. version 5276 and 5293 are both part of the "disconnect test" versions, and I believe Jason said that 5293 specifically should not connect at all because they broke stuff in it on purpose for troubleshooting reasons. So yeah avoid 5293 if you're actually trying to use the app.

I'd be curious if the regular 0.9.4 version from the website works for you, as opposed to 5276.

[dnalloheoj]

4 hours ago, theboomr said:

So yeah avoid 5293 if you're actually trying to use the app.

Works fine. And here's every single file I've downloaded on this computer since reinstalling: https://i.imgur.com/5RAiGLM.png - Note: Just 5293 and 0.9.4

(Files from a long time ago = moved from another drive into this folder).

Edited January 23, 2023 by dnalloheoj

[theboomr]

17 minutes ago, dnalloheoj said:

Works fine. And here's every single file I've downloaded on this computer since reinstalling: https://i.imgur.com/5RAiGLM.png - Note: Just 5293 and 0.9.4

(Files from a long time ago = moved from another drive into this folder).

Hm, interesting. Guess I misspoke or misunderstood then!

[dnalloheoj]

So was having issues with my old "broken" VM that I was testing with, so I spun up another brand new one.

Fresh W10 Pro 22H2 install. Virtual host is also fairly newly installed (As pictured above).

Fresh installs, both work fine. 



Install ASUS Crate, and ... well actually it still worked just fine. BUT, since my Virtual Machine doesn't actually have any ASUS parts in it (Because duh, virtual), it didn't give me the option to install any of the components that actually fuck around at a system-level.

To be clear, my actual computer (the Virtual Host in this scenario) does have ASUS components, and when I previously had done a reinstall, and intentionally broke my computer, that was by installing ASUS Crate along with a butt load of the components that it lets you choose at install (Because I had the parts in my PC). After I installed it, and the components, the remote was no longer working. And then I too tried the ASUS Crate Uninstaller but that didn't solve the issue with the remote. 

But I think this is key here though. I think when you uninstall ASUS Crate, it's only uninstalling the customer-facing software. It's not getting rid of any of those actual components that allow control over your computer, at a system level. Since I couldn't install those on the VM, I couldn't test that theory. But when I used that uninstaller tool back 4-5 pages ago, and mentioned "do a Ctrl+F in regedit, hit F3 over and over" that's what I was talking about. It left stuff behind that a true "uninstaller" shouldn't. It didn't do crap. 

Not trying to badmouth anyone's build, the vendor (well okay maybe a little bit, but not the quality of their hardware) or anything like that. Just that, that software injects itself into the system in a way that it's the admin, not you. Rootkit behavior, but not necessarily malicious. It's a hodge-podge of different applications mashed into one that probably requires ridiculous permissions in order to get those things to actually talk to each other somewhat nicely. Go through control panel and uninstall the various parts of it, you see like 6 different looking "uninstallers" - that's not normal behavior. 

Now, since that wasn't able to work, I reverted my VM to a snapshot I took before I installed ASUS Crate just to get that out of the picture. Installed the second "rootkit" that I believed to be a culprit. FortiClient (Personally invested in this one for work related reasons). Rebooted.

Upon reboot, yep. Issues are back. Remote still connects to my PC just fine (vHost), but in the VM it'll either just not really connect, or get the ~1s connected->disconnected behavior.

Uninstalled FortiClient, same behavior, still broke.

As you can see, fairly clean install, the Skip is 'Attached' to the VM, but FortiClient is there. Otherwise, exact same setup.




Onto Bitdefender. Revert snapshot again. 

Same behavior as FortiClient:

 

I guess the next thing I'd try would be having someone with a broken setup, download VirtualBox, download a Win 10 Pro ISO using the tool here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Spin up a VM. Pass-thru the Skip to a fresh install. See what happens. If I'm recalling correctly from my tests back when I had the intentionally broken setup, it should work just fine. 

 

 

 

Edited January 23, 2023 by dnalloheoj

[bantar]

OK, finally installed 0.94 Build 5265.  App is working ok, but after a while it crashes.  I'm seeing the same 3 crashes when it happens.  Happened twice now.    This time, it has crashed while in the foreground, but not while actively making changes.    See the crash logs screenshots and logfile.flirc20230124.log

flirc20230124.txt

[MichaelSage]

Just wanted to add some positive feedback I just updated to the latest version on Win 11 (Build 22623), I run as a non-admin user and it's working great. I have a couple of activities setup and the sync to the remote every time. I have a device issue, but have started a new thread! Great work so far :)

[PaleBlueDot]

The interkey / inter-action delay doesn't appear to do anything.

Specifically, I have the power on and off sequences set to turn on/off my TV, Satellite Receiver, and Sound System (i.e. three button presses). However, the remote outputs the key-presses one after another with zero noticeable delay in between.

This is evidenced by the fact that if you look at the front of the remote with your phone camera, you can see the IR light flashing. It sends out a bunch of pulses, that last maybe half a second in total, right at the start, then nothing, even after several seconds. It's pretty random which of the three devices turns on and off.

If I set the Delay slider to  4s, 6s, 8s, etc it makes no difference. Nothing is output after that first burst in the first second.

I would have expected that if the Delay was set to X Seconds on the first and second action, it would send the TV Power On command, wait X seconds, send the Sat Receiver Power On command, wait X seconds, then send the Sound System Power on. But this definitely isn't happening.

Settings Export attached.

Front Room.skip

[jason]

1 hour ago, PaleBlueDot said:

The interkey / inter-action delay doesn't appear to do anything.

Specifically, I have the power on and off sequences set to turn on/off my TV, Satellite Receiver, and Sound System (i.e. three button presses). However, the remote outputs the key-presses one after another with zero noticeable delay in between.

This is evidenced by the fact that if you look at the front of the remote with your phone camera, you can see the IR light flashing. It sends out a bunch of pulses, that last maybe half a second in total, right at the start, then nothing, even after several seconds. It's pretty random which of the three devices turns on and off.

If I set the Delay slider to  4s, 6s, 8s, etc it makes no difference. Nothing is output after that first burst in the first second.

I would have expected that if the Delay was set to X Seconds on the first and second action, it would send the TV Power On command, wait X seconds, send the Sat Receiver Power On command, wait X seconds, then send the Sound System Power on. But this definitely isn't happening.

Settings Export attached.

Front Room.skip 131 kB · 0 downloads

I’ll take a look. I’ll be out most of today but should have something to say about it tomorrow. 

[Tony]

I was wondering if it would be possible to put together some sort of guide of what to do if you want to help out with debugging? This thread is getting quite long and if you haven't been involved from the start it can be a bit hard to follow what needs to be done if you want to test things. I'm scheduled to receive my remote this week and I have had problems with the app on Win10 so if you need more people reproduce errors I am willing to help and if there was a simple enough step-by-step guide of things to try, where to find logs etc I'm sure more people would be willing to help when they get their remotes.

Just a thought :)

[jason]

14 hours ago, Tony said:

I was wondering if it would be possible to put together some sort of guide of what to do if you want to help out with debugging? This thread is getting quite long and if you haven't been involved from the start it can be a bit hard to follow what needs to be done if you want to test things. I'm scheduled to receive my remote this week and I have had problems with the app on Win10 so if you need more people reproduce errors I am willing to help and if there was a simple enough step-by-step guide of things to try, where to find logs etc I'm sure more people would be willing to help when they get their remotes.

Just a thought :)

Sorry for being quiet. We've made progress, can reproduce the issue, and are working on trying some solutions.

Big shout out to Michael (Misha) who was two steps ahead of us and did incredible finding nuggets of information scattered on the internet.

Seems like a number of applications, virus programs, system apps, Steam (yes, fucking steam), changes a field in the system registry for every USB HID Device's "restricted" boolean from "false" to "true". Why? No idea. Uninstalling the application does not revert the registry change, which validates what some of you experienced. Steam can install advanced drivers to help support controllers like XBOX-360, and this is what changes the field for that specific app.

We are trying to create a version of the app that detects this, and updates the field. But this is not so simple. UWP apps don't have permission, and we have to do a run-around. But this seems possible, and the path of least resistance. We have some other ideas, but this seems like the best approach.

Un. Fucking. Believable.

[theboomr]

God damn that is bizarre!! Congrats on finally finding the root issue and being able to reproduce it now, that's a big step :) Things in Windows really do some wacky shit under the hood huh...

[Tony]

2 hours ago, jason said:

Sorry for being quiet. We've made progress, can reproduce the issue, and are working on trying some solutions.

Big shout out to Michael (Misha) who was two steps ahead of us and did incredible finding nuggets of information scattered on the internet.

Seems like a number of applications, virus programs, system apps, Steam (yes, fucking steam), changes a field in the system registry for every USB HID Device's "restricted" boolean from "false" to "true". Why? No idea. Uninstalling the application does not revert the registry change, which validates what some of you experienced. Steam can install advanced drivers to help support controllers like XBOX-360, and this is what changes the field for that specific app.

We are trying to create a version of the app that detects this, and updates the field. But this is not so simple. UWP apps don't have permission, and we have to do a run-around. But this seems possible, and the path of least resistance. We have some other ideas, but this seems like the best approach.

Un. Fucking. Believable.

No worries, it's so nice to hear that you might have found the issue. Great work from everyone involved!

[jason]

@Tony @theboomr @dnalloheoj@AeroClusteret all

Thanks to Misha for saving the day, we have something to test.

Try the latest windows release.

You will see a pop-up as the win32 process comes up, finds the field, and reverts it back. We will look into closing this, however, this pop-up only happens if the issue is detected. Once fixed, you wont see it again.

Please let me know how it goes.