[Problem/Bug]: webview not initializing/rendering when UDF folder is not present

[mhdshameel]

What happened?

We are using webview2 extensively. We see a new issue in one machines alone. Either the webview doesn't initialize or host object doesn't work when the UDF folder is not present and created dynamically. When the UDF folder is made to persist then the both issues are gone, rendering and host objects everything works fine.

When the issue occurs we can see that the count of the msedgewebview processes is 5 rather than 6. I succeeded to reproduce the same issue with the webview sample by adding hostobject implementation.

I observe that a msedgewebview child process is getting created again and again and are short lived. From procmon I didnt see any failures when the processes end. Sometimes the type of the process is renderer, utility, gpu-process. Majority of the short lived child processes spawned are of type utility.

One absurd thing is when I set compatibility settings for the sample webview2gettingstarted executable, then it fixes these issues. The same thing doesn't work on our application.

This is kind of blocker for us. Would really appreciate if there are any inputs.

Importance

Blocking. My app's basic functions are not working due to this issue.

Runtime Channel

Stable release (WebView2 Runtime)

Runtime Version

131.0.2903.112

SDK Version

No response

Framework

Win32

Operating System

Windows 10, Windows 11

OS Version

19045.5247

Repro steps

Opening webview by dynamically creating the UDF folder

Repros in Edge Browser

No, issue does not reproduce in the corresponding Edge version

Regression

No, this never worked

Last working version (if regression)

No response

[mhdshameel]

When the hostobject issue occurs - I can see that the NavigationStarting, DOMContentLoaded events are fired. We add the hostobject in NavigationStarting callback and the api return is successful as well.
I tried to call the hostobject callback with the full form (chrome.webview.hostObjects.sync) from the devtools console and I get the following error:

When the rendering issue occurs only the NavigationStarting event is fired and then it goes into a kind of loading/hanged state and loads indefinitely.

The rendering issue occur more frequently than the host objects issue. When the UDF is made to persist then both issues dont occur.

[mhdshameel]

We tried the WebviewAPISample executable and got this error:

The sysfer.dll module is failing.

[Danielx64]

While it may not help, what I do in my app is that I check to see if the folder exists using native file system access outside of webview2, create the folder if needed and continue with loading webview2.

[mhdshameel]

While it may not help, what I do in my app is that I check to see if the folder exists using native file system access outside of webview2, create the folder if needed and continue with loading webview2.

I do the same. It is not about the parent folder. For some reason webview requires the previous cache/udf to work.

[vbryh-msft]

@mhdshameel You issue in Sample app is because of Symantec - please update it to the latest version - here are details of why it happens - https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/WebView2Feedback/blob/main/diagnostics/code_integrity.md