Cannot load 32bit plugin even when 64bit versions of all are installed

Daryl Titcomb

Hi there,

we are just now looking at deploying v.8.4.7 company-wide and are struggling with plugin deployment. our current deployment script is bellow

@echo off

taskkill /F /IM notepad++.exe

rm "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\*.VERSION"

::start the main notepad++ installer
START /Wait "" "%CD%\npp.8.4.7.Installer.x64.exe" /S

::echo the version file to the np++ default install location
ECHO.> "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\8.4.7.VERSION"

::Check for existing install of compareplus and remove if already installed
if exist "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\ComparePlus\" rmdir "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\ComparePlus" /s /q
::install latest version of compareplus
mkdir "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\ComparePlus"
robocopy "ComparePlus_cp_1.1.0_x64" "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\ComparePlus" /COPYALL /E

::Check for existing install of XMLtools and remove if already installed
if exist "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\XMLTools\" rmdir "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\XMLTools" /s /q
::install latest version of XMLtools
mkdir "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\XMLTools"
robocopy "XMLTools-3.1.1.13-x64" "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\XMLTools" /COPYALL /E

this installs perfectly well however when the user next launches notepad++ they receive an error that the installed plugins cannot be loaded as they are 32 bit.

Screenshot Notepad .png

does anyone have any suggestions as to where to begin troubleshooting this?

Regards
Daryl

EDIT: issue was resolved by modifying the robocopy calls in the above script to remove the /COPYALL switch which was incorrectly added and caused issues when deploying via intune. amended script bellow

@echo off

taskkill /F /IM notepad++.exe

::start the main notepad++ installer
START /Wait "" "%CD%\npp.8.4.7.Installer.x64.exe" /S

::echo the version file to the np++ default install location
ECHO.> "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\8.4.7.VERSION"

::Check for existing install of compareplus and remove if already installed
if exist "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\ComparePlus\" rmdir "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\ComparePlus" /s /q
::install latest version of compareplus
mkdir "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\ComparePlus"
robocopy "ComparePlus_cp_1.1.0_x64" "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\ComparePlus" /E

::Check for existing install of XMLtools and remove if already installed
if exist "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\XMLTools\" rmdir "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\XMLTools" /s /q
::install latest version of XMLtools
mkdir "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\XMLTools"
robocopy "XMLTools-3.1.1.13-x64" "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\XMLTools" /E

Alan Kilborn

@Daryl-Titcomb

Get the 64-bit version of the plugin.
Period.

Daryl Titcomb

@Alan-Kilborn thank you for your assistance, these are the 64 bit versions of the plugins, that is why I created the post. they run fine on test instances when copied in manually, you can even see the paths they are copied from include x64 in the path.

Alan Kilborn

@Daryl-Titcomb

Ah.

Ok, so I tried creating a zero-length (intentionally “corrupt” dll) file:

...\plugins\ComparePlus\ComparePlus.dll

And I got the same error message you received:

This is somewhat surprising (the error message being “… 32-bit …”), leading one down the wrong path…

So, my new advice might be to look at possible corruption in the copied files.

Daryl Titcomb

@Alan-Kilborn the SHA-256 hashes of the files match which to me would indicate the issue isn’t with corrupt DLLs however it is good to know that corrupt DLLs could cause the issue.

Alan Kilborn

@Daryl-Titcomb

I think quite possibly the “…32-bit…” error message might occur for ANY failure in loading the plugin DLL. So, even if the files are not corrupt, I suppose there could be permissions issues or other problems relating to the file system…?

EDIT: Ok, I’d be wrong in that. :-) HERE’s the code that loads a plugin. And HERE’s where it sets your error message.

Daryl Titcomb

@Alan-Kilborn thank you, you seem to have hit the nail on the head, the subfolders created by the script are not correctly inheriting permissions from “C:\Program Files” and therefore <devicename>\Users didn’t have permission to execute the DLL, just modifying the script now to force inheritance on those folders and will update shortly once I have pushed a test deploy

Daryl Titcomb

@Alan-Kilborn

I can confirm that the issue was indeed with the permissions on the plugin folders, this was traced back to the robocopy command we were using being incorrect, thank you very much for all your help in this

Daryl

Alan Kilborn

@Daryl-Titcomb

Well, if you’re still around, if you had any more detail about exactly what was wrong, it might help drive a change to Notepad++ code to provide a more helpful error message if others encounter the same problem in the future.

Daryl Titcomb

@Alan-Kilborn certainly, always happy to contribute where I can

the issue was caused by my malformed robocopy command which stripped execute permissions from the DLL, as you said above, notepad++ throws a “cannot use 32bit plugin” error any time it can’t access the DLL, so even though it was receiving a permissions failure, it was taking this as a malformed DLL and spitting out the erroneous error. when the error in the robocopy was rectified the issue disappeared. my solution would be to look at building a better error catch system that catches specific file errors and parses them into more appropriate error messages, perhaps:

Missing DLL
Permissions
Corrupt DLL
Wrong architecture DLL

although the technical implementation side of this is not something I would be able to help with much as c++ is not a language I have much experience with

Alan Kilborn

@Daryl-Titcomb said:

Missing DLL
Permissions
Corrupt DLL
Wrong architecture DLL

Yes, that’s where I was going as well…

@Daryl-Titcomb said:

although the technical implementation side of this is not something I would be able to help with

That’s fine, I was really just looking for the root of your problem, which you provided, so thank you.

From here, we can turn it over to the dev team for consideration.

Alan Kilborn

I created an official N++ issue, HERE.

Alan Kilborn

@Daryl-Titcomb

The misleading error message was resolved, see HERE; however the improvement request for more specific error messages remains incomplete as of now.