Crashed in IConnectionPoint::Advise

The crash you experienced while using IConnectionPoint::Advise could be due to several factors, including memory management issues or improper handling of COM interfaces. Here are some potential causes and solutions:

1. Memory Management: Ensure that the sink object you are passing to Advise is valid and has not been released or corrupted before the call. If the sink object is deleted or goes out of scope, it can lead to crashes when the connection point tries to call back.
2. Thread Safety: Since you mentioned that the crash occurred on the main thread, ensure that the Advise call is not being made from multiple threads simultaneously without proper synchronization. COM objects are not inherently thread-safe unless explicitly designed to be.
3. Exception Handling: Implement robust exception handling around your Advise call. If an exception is thrown and not caught, it can lead to application instability.
4. Debugging Tools: Utilize debugging tools like DebugDiag or WinDbg to analyze the crash dump. This can provide insights into the state of the application at the time of the crash and help identify the root cause.
5. Check for Valid Pointers: Ensure that all pointers passed to Advise are valid and that the interface you are advising is correctly implemented and registered.
6. Review Stack Trace: Analyze the stack trace you provided for any specific patterns or recurring issues that might indicate a problem with the way Advise is being called or how the sink is being managed.

If the issue persists, consider logging additional information before and after the Advise call to capture the state of your application, which may help in diagnosing the problem further.

Thank you for reaching out. Based on the crash information you shared, the issue occurred inside the COM API IConnectionPoint::Advise, specifically triggered through:

netprofm!PublicNetworkListManager::NetworkConnectionEventsAdvise
combase!CGIPTable::RegisterInterfaceInGlobal

This indicates that the failure happened during a COM event subscription-most likely due to a race condition, premature COM object release or an unexpected thread apartment mismatch.

Why the crash occurred

Although the crash only happened once and is not reproducible, the stack trace suggests one of the following causes:

1. COM object lifetime issue (most common) If the COM interface pointer being passed into advise() is
   1. Already released
   2. Not AddRef’ed properly
   3. Or destroyed during event registration it may intermittently cause a crash inside COMBASE.DLL.
2. Threading apartment mismatch IConnectionPoint::Advise requires that:
   1. The caller is running in a STA (Single-Threaded Apartment) when subscribing to events.
   2. The COM server may be MTA or STA, depending on implementation.
   Calling Advise() from the wrong apartment can occasionally trigger a crash
3. COM event sink not implementing the interface correctly If your event sink does not fully implement the required COM interface and vtable layout, COM may access invalid memory.
4. A transient internal failure inside Netprofm (NetworkListManager) Since the crash originates in :

      netprofm.dll -> PublicNetworkListManager::NetworkConnectionEventsAdvise
   

   This indicates the Windows Network List Manager COM component was involved. Rare timing issues may occur during system network state changes (adapter update, network reset, VPN connect/disconnect)

Recommended Fixes:

1. Ensure COM is initialized correctly Before calling advise:

      CoIntializeEx(NULL, COINT_APARTMENTTHREADED); //STA required
   

   If your main thread is MTA, more advise to an STA thread.
2. Validate COM object lifetime Ensure:
   1. Your event sink object stays alive until you call Unadvise().
   2. You call AddRef() appropriately inside your sink’s QueryInterface implementation
   3. You do not release the connection point container prematurely.
3. Wrap advice with error checking

      CCOMPtr<IConnectionPoint> cp;
      HRESULT hr = connPtContainer -> FindConnectionPoint(__uuidof(INetworkConnectionEvents), &cp);
      if (SUCCEEDED(hr))
      {
      	hr = cp->Advise(pEventSink, &cookie);
      	if (FAILED(hr))
      	{
      		// Log or handle failure
      	}
   

4. Ensure Unadvise() is always called Missing or late unadvised calls can cause internal state corruption.
5. Add defensive try/catch around event handling Unexpected exception inside the event sink callback can propagate back into COM

Please let us know if you require any further assistance we’re happy to help. If you found this information useful, kindly mark this as "Accept Answer".