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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Wireshark bug on startup

From: Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss.ws@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:50:18 -0500
Julian Fielding wrote:

Jeff Morriss wrote on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:55:02 -0500

 >Paul Bjork wrote:
>> When I try to run Wireshark 1.2.5 with WinCap 4.1.1 (?, the latest as >> of today) I get just to the startup initializing screen. It says
 >>
 >> "Initializing dissectors"
 >>
>> then it hangs and is not salvageable even using end task in the task >> manager.
 >>
>> I'm running Windows 2000 SP4 on an instance of a virtual machine using >> the latest copy of VirtualBox (3.1.2) from Sun, on a Mac mini with an >> intel core 2 duo processor.
 >>
 >> Any ideas?
 >
 >Sounds a lot like:
 >
 >https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3270

I have Wireshark 1.2.5 and WinPcap 4.1.1 working with no problem on a real Win2k system:

Microsoft Windows 2000, 5.00.2195, Service Pack 4
x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 3, AT/AT COMPATIBLE, 130,544 KB RAM

As it happens I never tried Wireshark 1.0.x on that old machine, and having read bug 3270 I'd rather not try it. I've used various 1.2.x and 1.3.x versions with no problem. (Using the work-around from bug 4176 after 1.3.1-SVN-30666.) Based on libgcrypt versions I should have seen bug 3270 for all before 1.3.3-SVN-xxxxx. So do 1.2.x and 1.3.x do something different with libgcrypt to avoid the bug?

The *impression* I have from that bug is that it only affects certain Win2k systems. Comment 16 indicates that "1.21" (does that mean 1.2.1?) also caused the problem for one user. I am not aware of any differences in 1.2.x and later which would prevent the problem from happening. Maybe asking such questions on the bug would yield answers from the various people who reported it.