Sublime Forum

Issues with plugin host

#1

I have been having issues with Sublime Text 3’s plugin host since around February.

Almost every time I open Sublime Text 3, as soon as it finishes loading, I get an error dialog with the message:
“plugin_host has exited unexpectedly, plugin functionality won’t be available until Sublime Text has been restarted”.

I have tried troubleshooting this issue in the past 3 months. I have removed all plugins I use, I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Sublime Text 3, with no improvements on the situation.

A detail I have noticed is that when the error is going to happen, all plugins are disabled even before the error dialog opens, so my guess is that it’s crashing as soon as Sublime Text 3 opens, but the error message seems to be deferred.

I would like to know if I’ve been missing any troubleshooting or debugging steps that could help me solve this issue. For know, it’s being difficult to use Sublime Text 3 without plugins, because I’m even unable to comment or uncomment blocks of text with Ctrl+; nor can I create files or folders from within Sublime Text 3

My current Sublime Text 3 version is 3.2.1, build 3207
I’m running 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, version 1803 build 17134.765

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#2

Usually plugin_host crashes occurs when a plugin behave unexpectedly, but if you already had tried to remove all plugins and did a clean install (removing also sublime’s folder inside %APPDATA%, just move it somewhere else, do not delete it :wink: ), then I really dunno what is causing the crash…
I can suggest you to also try disabling all syntaxes (putting them in the ignore list in config) you are not using, and then also the one you are using, just for debugging purposes, probably won’t change anything, but you never know… :slight_smile:

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#3

If you’re running antivirus software that may be imposing some shenanigans on the plugin_host that are undesirable; temporarily suspending it might be an idea to see if that fixes the problem, or adding the plugin host to an exclusion list.

The fastest way to trouble-shoot if there is some package in Sublime that is causing the problem is to download and run the portable version; that version is entirely self contained in its own directory. That way you could easily verify if perhaps one of your packages is doing something silly.

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#4

Hello, thank you for the suggestion.

I have added an exception to my antivirus software by adding the executable for Sublime Text 3, plugin host as well as the entire folder containing.
At first, it seemed to have solved the issue. I was able to use Sublime Text 3 without issues for a couple hours on Friday, and the entire day on Monday.

However, today the same issue appeared again, even though the antivirus exception is still set.

For now, I have added %APPDATA%/Sublime Text 3 to my antivirus exceptions and I’ll keep testing for the next few days.

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#5

Hello,

After the last few days, I came to the conclusion that adding and exception on my antivirus software didn’t help solving the issue.
I’ve been trying to pay more attention to the circumstances when plugin host crashes. For now, the only thing that I think might be a factor leading to the crash is the number of open tabs when Sublime Text 3 opens. Today plugin host crashed and I had 11 tabs open.

I guess that I’ll try @Orlmente’s suggestion now, which is to disable all syntaxes. It will be tough working with plain text, but it’s the only thing I can do to narrow the possibilities at the moment.

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#6

After another week of tests, I came to no conclusion.
I’ve tried disabling all syntaxes (except Plain Text) as suggested by @Orlmente. Plugin host still crashed on startup.
As I stated previously, adding an exception on my antivirus software had no effect.

I’m unable to state anything about the opened tabs, because plugin host crashed on startup with 3 tabs.

There are times when I open Sublime Text 3, plugin host crashes. I close Sublime Text 3, wait a few minutes and reopen it, and then plugin host doesn’t crash. But even this scenario isn’t consistent.

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#7

Did you tried the portable version aswell?
or another version (3208 if you are registered user)?

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#8

I have exactly the same problem. It started at the same time (after update) with all the “symptomps” as tady159 wrote.

There are times when I open Sublime Text 3, plugin host crashes. I close Sublime Text 3, wait a few minutes and reopen it, and then plugin host doesn’t crash. But even this scenario isn’t consistent.

It happens to me too, but its very rare.

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#9

I spent the last few days using Sublime Text 3 Portable, with Dev build 3208. At first, everything was running fine, and I was already believing that plugin host wouldn’t crash anymore. I was even planning on getting the installable version of Dev build 3208 to check if the issue would be related to installing Sublime Text 3, or if it was the build version.
But today it happened once again, unfortunately.

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