Strange stickies

Hello,

over the past few weeks I have often found a new sticky with random symbols on startup.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I am using a Windows 10 system and I have Stickies 9.0e installed.

Thanks
Andrea

If the characters are always the same , you could look in the Manage dialog window to see if under recurrent stickies there is some " rogue " one .

Do you have networking enabled?  Is it possible that this is something connecting to the Stickies network port and sending something which the app doesn't recognise?

Try setting the logging level to Debug, wait until it next happens, and then check the activity.log file for where that note has come from.

Tom

Hello Tom,

this is the today log:

31/01/2023 08:10:07 [NETWORK ] Received old format sticky from Andrea F.; ñNï£ÃHîÜ£ï^M¡âèR31/01/2023 08:10:07 [CREATED ] Created (network): <X>0844<Y>0338<WIDTH>100<HEIGHT>-1<CREATED>1675149007<MODIFIED>1675149007<COLR>0<COLG>0<COLB>0<ID>45<ONTOP>1<SOURCE>192.168.10.179<TRANSPARENCY>0<RTF>
31/01/2023 08:10:07 [SOUND   ] Playing sound: 
31/01/2023 08:11:01 [NETWORK ] Sent to 192.168.10.1:52673 - #send 3friends:52673
31/01/2023 08:11:01 [NETWORK ] Received friend list from 192.168.10.1

Andrea F. and the IP address 192.168.10.179 is the same PC and It is the receiver of the stickies.

The same problem occours on different machines, maybe something connected to the antivirus (AVG)?

Thanks
Andrea

Someone else with AVG has mentioned this problem.

Try this build: https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/stickiesPlus.zip

It no longer handles/accepts "old format" notes.  I suspect it will sort out the problem?

Tom

I have exactly the same issue on a Win7 laptop, but NOT with AVG, but rather with AVAST
Nevertheless, AVG and AVAST are quite the same now...
Up to now, I'm "receiving" 1 to 3 "strange" sitckies a day.

I have also 3 or 4 times a day errors in the activity log :
[ERR_NET ] Error during network receive.^MDebug information is: ^M^MAttempted to access an unnamed file past its end.^MdwValue: 'Uninit'^MSender: '192.168.1.66'^M

In this case also, the "sender" is the laptop itself.

So I just installed your build, and I'll check what will happen with it, and keep you informed.

Result of my tests :

Since I replaced stickies.exe with the special build provided by Tom, I do not have any more these "strange" stickies created.
And I do not have any more as well any track in activity log "[NETWORK ] Received old format sticky from..."

BUT, I still have, once a day (except one day), not at the same time each day, sometimes less than 2 minutes after stickies starting, but not always, and sometimes several hours after this start, a message in activity log :
[ERR_NET ] Error during network receive.^MDebug information is: ^M^MAttempted to access an unnamed file past its end.^MdwValue: 'Uninit'^MSender: '192.168.1.66'^M

FYI 192.168.1.66 is the local IP address of the laptop itself on which stickies is running

This is on a laptop under W7 with Avast antivirus running. Are these network accesses generated by Avast ? No idea about that, and moreover, no idea on how to check where it comes from.

On the other hand, on another laptop (W10, and no other antivirus than Windows Defender), I never had neither "strange" sticky received from network, nor "[ERR_NET ] Error during network receive message" logged in activity.log


Any idea to help to determine where these "network accesses" come from is welcome ! (provided it remains easy to implement....)

PS : Last (but not least), the special build of Stickies do not prevent volunteer and manual  sending (and receiving...) of stickies from one of my laptop to the other and vice versa.

If you want to know what's making those connections, it does get a little technical.

The simpler way is to use something like CurrPorts, and watch for a connection.  That will show the process which is making it.  However, it would need you to be watching CurrPorts while it happens and then be rather quick to see what it was.

The more reliable but more complex way is to use Wireshark which can, I think track both network traffic and also the process which generates it?

Probably the best way would be to try disabling/changing things one at a time and then watching to see whether the problem stops.  Simple, but (hopefully) effective.

Tom

I tried to use WireShark... but was not really able to do so.
In particular, I tried to force some network activity for stickies (sending a sticky from another laptop thru the LAN)... but even when I was 100% sure that something occured... I was not able to see/capture anything with wireshark. Too complex for me, I'm afraid  

And your idea to try to disable one thing at a time (and see if there is impact), I agree with the idea, but what to disable, since I have absolutely no idea of problem's source....