Latest update of CMF causes multitude of safe applications to hang

I have been using CMF for a long time without any problems, but after the latest update (it now shows as 2.0.4.20) a few days ago, i started having a lot of problems with different applications. It started when I could not use cygwin, because most of the executables that run when you start a cygwin terminal hang, using 100% CPU. I did not realize the problem was with CMF, and at the time thought it was a cygwin problem; but then I started seeing the same behaviour with other applications as well, most notably installers/uninstallers. I remember seeing a “net1.exe” and “cmd.exe” processes hung with 100% CPU usage. That’s when i started suspecting CFP/BOClean/CMF issue. So I exited all of them, but the problem was still there; so I started uninstalling them and voila! CMF is the culprit. Note, that the problem is fixed only after uninstalling CMF, not just shutting it down. I reconfirm the issue by adding all (about 10) of the cygwin executables that run in order to start a terminal session. Like I said before, this is new behaviour introduced with the latest update (although I remember the update being for CFP and not CMF).
IMHO, this is obviously a bug, since it would not be realistic to add all executables you need to use to the exclude list; especially when there is no error message.

I reported this and several related issues in late January, but there has never been any response. I repeat my previous post here since I haven’t figured out how to link it. Here is the earlier one:

I have been running CMF 2.0.4.20 for a few hours now [WinXPSP2 on x86; CFP 3.0.15.277; BOClean 4.25; AVG Free 7.5.5.16; WinPatrol Plus 12.1.2007.0]. The issue with the tray icon appears completely resolved.

Software conflicts still exist. I summarize here what I have found; some reported in other threads.

  1. DropMyRights.exe must be added to the exclusion list; the applications it starts are all protected.

  2. %windir%\system32\dumprep.exe must be added to the exclusion list.

  3. %CommonProgramFiles%\Acronis\CDRecord\cdrecord.exe must be added to the exclusion list; without it, Acronis TrueImage 7 will not work; this likely applies to later versions of ATI as well. This issue may be related to the next item, since the same folder contains a copy of cygwin1.dll.

  4. I have the Cygwin API installed to allow running Linux-like commands. Every executable (e.g., ls.exe, pwd.exe, grep.exe) must be added individually to the exclusion list; there are over 200 of these, so the task is unreal!

Without the additions to the exclusion list mentioned, any of these applications hangs, consuming essentially all of the available cpu time. Manual termination of the application is required, often through Task Manager. The Linux commands seem to produce their expected output to the command prompt before hanging.

The effects on the Linux-like applications could be mitigated with the possibility for CMF to use regular expressions (e.g., ?*.exe) or folder names in the exclusion list; the latter would exclude all procedures in the subject folder.

See also the thread near this one concerning an issue with OpenOffice.org 2.3 also.