v0.72 -- Fails at Startup

[valsamis-d]

Hello,

Installed v0.72, starting it as administrator, but it fails immediately.

Contents of AltAppSwitcherLog.txt:

Sat Feb 28 21:37:10 2026:                                               
File: D:/Dev/AltAppSwitcher/Sources/AltAppSwitcher/AppMode.c, line: 939:
Assert: module                                                          
Last winapi error: The parameter is incorrect.                          

Deleted AltAppSwitcherConfig.txt and AltAppSwitcherLog.txt, restarted as administrator, but nothing changed.

Edition Windows 11 Enterprise
Version 24H2
Installed on ‎Tue-‎17/Dec/‎2024
OS build 26100.7922
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.300.0

EDIT:

It looks like this is something related to my laptop? For some unknown reason all versions 0.70, 0.71 stopped working. After starting up, AAS fails with the same error in AltAppSwitcherLog.txt.

[its-bubble-gum]

this is related to app icons loading. if you cold try closing some windows and startinig the AltAppSwitcher again afterwards, this may help identify the app it fails to process.

[hdlx]

Please give v0.73 a try. It won't fix the issue but, the log should be more descriptive, it will help identify the problematic app. The issue is indeed in icon retrieval logic which have been reworked in recent versions. It's likely that there are still unhandled corner cases, and I like to fix those before promoting latest pre release to release. 🙂

[its-bubble-gum]

maybe ASSERT could be changed to VERIFY instead, to not crash but display a default icon

[valsamis-d]

Please give v0.73 a try. It won't fix the issue but, the log should be more descriptive, it will help identify the problematic app. The issue is indeed in icon retrieval logic which have been reworked in recent versions. It's likely that there are still unhandled corner cases, and I like to fix those before promoting latest pre release to release. 🙂

v0.73 is way better. As a matter of fact, it doesn't crash at all even after pressing Alt-Tab immediately after starting AAS. Note: Same set of windows are opened as with previous tests. Thanks!

[valsamis-d]

After a few hours of use, AAS crashed. Now an error message box was displayed:

In AltAppSwitcherLog.txt the following lines are listed:

Sun Mar  1 13:03:07 2026:                                               
File: D:/Dev/AltAppSwitcher/Sources/AltAppSwitcher/AppMode.c, line: 944:
Error: LoadLibrary failed with path:                                    
Last winapi error: The parameter is incorrect.                          

EDIT

This occurs when the iCloud window is open:

[hdlx]

Thanks for the infos. The latest v0.74 should avoid the crash. Not sure it will get the proper window for icloud, I'll investigate this when I have some time .

[valsamis-d]

Thanks for the infos. The latest v0.74 should avoid the crash. Not sure it will get the proper window for icloud, I'll investigate this when I have some time .

Fixed :) Thank you! The iCloud icon is kinda of default, but no worries ;) If you need more info, let me know.

[its-bubble-gum]

@hdlx So, essentially what happens is that iCloud points to a wrong location for the icon. Microsoft's calculator, for instance, says the icon is in Assets/StoreIcon..whatever..png and that's right. ICloud says the icon is in iCloud/StoreIcon...png, but the Actual location is Assets/iCloud/en_US/StoreIcon...png

I tried to implement a dumb recursive search for all icons in the package directory and it worked, kind of. The issue with that is that iCloud comes with 5 different apps and 5 different icons for them, it finds the last one an shoes the Photos app icon.

I see the manifest parser doesn't really handle such case with multiple apps also, so it'll need a more complex rewrite

[its-bubble-gum]

@hdlx made this PR #107, which now loads correct icons for each iCloud app from the suite