Wallpaper Engine Crash and Desktop Interaction Issues

[Levyne]

(Originally written in Russian, translated using machine translation)

I've encountered a problem while using Wallpaper Engine that is hindering the program's functionality and my interaction with the desktop.

When attempting to change the wallpaper (from previously downloaded ones), the application crashed with the following error: 'Wallpaper Engine was likely crashed by another application (steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\bin\mediaextensions32.dll).' Error code: 0xC0000005. Access violation: trying to read from address 0x80CA79F0.' It is also mentioned that crash information was written to a file at: 'steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\wallpaper32_2_6_21V_2025-03-16T09_54_57Z.mdmp'. Repeated attempts with different wallpapers led to the same result.


As a troubleshooting step, I completely reinstalled the program, but this did not resolve the issue.

The next step I took was to change the application's launch option from "Wallpaper Engine" to "Wallpaper Engine 64 bit". As a result, the wallpaper functionality was restored, but a new, more serious problem arose: all interaction with the operating system desktop ceased. All icons and labels became invisible, and selecting interface elements no longer worked.

Switching back to the original launch settings ("Wallpaper Engine") did not fix the desktop issue.

Currently, the only way to temporarily restore the desktop's functionality is to forcibly terminate the "Wallpaper Engine" process via Task Manager and then restart the "Explorer" process (explorer.exe). It should be noted that attempting to restart "Explorer" without first closing "Wallpaper Engine" does not resolve the problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this?