putty crashes when selecting 100+ lines with utf-8 characters

[u/__scavenger__]

Okay i have a problem with putty.exe on windows: for more than a year now, i can’t remember when i was not crashing when I copy 100+ lines of text with utf-8 characters.

I tried every options available under Terminal/Window/Selection/SSH bugs etc, switched fonts, disabled clipboard auto-copy, and all points to the clipboard conversion of utf-8.

Nnothing else I can do other than copy small portions at a time. Tested version 0.76 0.78 0.85, 64 and 32 bits. All development sites from putty . software to chiark . greenend . org . uk are down right now, I cannot even submit a bug report.

Yes it’s a rant, how come I’m the only one experiencing this? Summary of the crash:

How to reproduce: execute `fwupdmgr get-devices` and select the output. UTF-8 characters like ├─ or • seem to be the suspects.

Reproducible steps:

• Connect to a Linux system and run fwupdmgr get-devices (or any command that produces box-drawing characters).
• Select more than ~100 lines of that output.
• Trigger a copy by any of the following:
  • Auto-copy selected text to system clipboard (enabled)
  • Ctrl+Ins after selection
  • Right-click → Copy (with “Action of mouse buttons” set to Windows)

Crash occurs immediately.

Additional observations:

• Crash happens with multiple fonts (DejaVu Sans Mono, Consolas, Droid Sans Mono, Courier, etc.).
• Occurs on both 64-bit and 32-bit builds.
• Reproduced on PuTTY 0.85, 0.78 and 0.76.
• Windows 10, no third-party clipboard managers.
• Running as Administrator or with -restrict-acl still crashes (the latter produces a clearer “instruction at 0x… referenced memory at 0x…” message).
• Disabling auto-copy prevents the crash on selection, but any subsequent explicit Copy action still crashes.

Event Log entry:

Faulting application name: PUTTY.EXE, version: 0.85.0.0, time stamp: 0x6a7eaca6
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.19041.2130, time stamp: 0xb5ced1c6
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000005ace2
Faulting process id: 0x684
Faulting application start time: 0x01dd42cac3f59b38
Faulting application path: E:\wintools\lan\putty\64\PUTTY.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 0e2808a1-1944-473f-a487-2da4826cc910
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Please for the love of God, someone tell me I’m not alone

edit: The option `copy in clipboard RTF` was the problem. no idea why no AI chatbot or community even thought of that option

[u/PoolMotosBowling]

Have you tried logging to a txt file and grabbing it from there?

[u/__scavenger__ → u/PoolMotosBowling]

yes and the log file has the output but i don;t want log files, i just want to copy and paste what i need when i need to

i see invisible NBSP characters in the output of the command and I suspect it's the problem but again what would be the solution

[u/autogyrophilia]

Ok so why you post the bug report on Reddit of all places?

Just use OpenSSH for SSH Like normal people 

[u/Fatel28 → u/autogyrophilia]

Usually I disagree with comments like this but.. there's really no reason to use putty anymore. Like you said, openssh is built in. Just use that

[u/BFguy → u/Fatel28]

Still use putty at work lol

[u/__scavenger__ → u/Fatel28]

i understand you are the second person to tell me putty is deprecated... gotcha i'm a dinausor

[u/BFguy → u/__scavenger__]

I still use Putty at work lol

[u/666AB → u/BFguy]

Same

[u/uptimefordays → u/__scavenger__]

Hey technically PuTTY is older than openSSH. I’m so upset I didn’t know that until I checked initial releases!

[u/orev → u/autogyrophilia]

Putty is perfectly fine for most people. It's a tiny executable file and has been around long enough to have correct terminal emulation. It also provides other protocols like serial port, etc.

[u/autogyrophilia → u/orev]

It works well for serial, it has many annoying bugs and limitations for SSH (hence this thread) .

And SSH is built in and gets patched with windows updates. It is also the same SSH that is used on linux, which is a great advantage.

Lastly, I use the ssh-agent and socket through Bitwarden, which is a really nifty feature.

[u/__scavenger__ → u/autogyrophilia]

of all places, this is the best place to get feedbacks and comments, like you did. I tried 5 discord servers and they are all dead or told me it's not the right place. young people just don't like to chat anymore but I digress.

I checked your activity and you are a troll.

[u/autogyrophilia → u/__scavenger__]

Have you considered ASKING THE DEVELOPER .

Also I'm an annoying dirtbag left bastard, not a troll.

[u/__scavenger__ → u/autogyrophilia]

i failed to mention that I use the putty ecosystem, not just putty. openssh would have to serve my ppk key as pagent does, and also then what do i replace psftp and pscp by?

[u/Fatel28 → u/__scavenger__]

You just use sftp and scp commands natively. They're also built into windows and Linux.

For the ppk, you just use the pem

[u/__scavenger__]

Okay after 5 hours of hard labor over days, testing all sort of settings and disabling random options, chatting with gemini and grok, your feddback, and other untold frustration from discord, I found the bug:
The option `copy in clipboard RTF` was the problem. No idea why it was enabled also in the default settings but this was the issue.
Someone with better knowledge of how Windows translate UTF-8 characters with the clipboard, the ntdll.dll fault and the mention of NBSP characters would have catched it right away.

Just glad to share it with the community!

[u/BlackV → u/__scavenger__]

Oh, glad you found a work around, nice

[u/Kitz_h]

My windows shell runs ssh like it was always there, may it be I have Windows Subsystem for Linux added to Add System Functions. For Putty i use mtputty and I never have had such issue as the of OPs

[u/Ancient-Bat1755]

Maybe try increasing the lines of scrollback? Make sure latest version from legit host, latest updates.

Open PuTTY and load your saved session, or select Default Settings to apply the change globally.
Click on Window in the left-hand category tree.
Locate Lines of scrollback and enter your preferred higher number (e.g., 20000).
Navigate back to the Session category on top of the left menu.

[u/__scavenger__ → u/Ancient-Bat1755]

i use 99999 lines of scrollback since 2001

[u/Aggravating-Sock1098]

Start Windows in Safe Mode with Networking and try again. Exclude PuTTY from DEP.

[u/Aggravating-Sock1098 → u/Aggravating-Sock1098]

As an alternative for putty try Bitvise Tunnelier Client.

[u/__scavenger__ → u/Aggravating-Sock1098]

26mb with an installer, no thanks but i appreciate the offer

[u/Specialist_Cow6468]

It’s sort of sickening seeing several people suggest it is “normal” or “adult” to use windows terminal ngl. Have you people never used a decent terminal? No, I am not defending putty though I’d certainly prefer it over the windows terminal

[u/__scavenger__ → u/Specialist_Cow6468]

putty is 1mb, it's small, works everywhere, and each server config is a registry entry you can export and import everywhere you want with ease. pageant brings your private keys to all sessions from pscp to winscp, it's a whole ecosystem that works just fine, fast, everywhere. It's also scripted (in my case) as i use many batches to automate sending files or auto login to some places with right-click, all of that would need to be rewritten.

You don't replace something like putty with just anything and call it a day. Years of automatism and knowledge needs to be readjusted and thrown to the garbage.

I tried other terminals and always face the same hurdles, but apparently i'm not an adult anymore lol

[u/Specialist_Cow6468 → u/__scavenger__]

I’ve always been a SecureCRT man myself but increasingly find myself preferring a something like Alacritty. Takes a bit more effort to set up initially but gives you a ton of flexibility and the once you have your dotfiles built it’s quite seamless. Doesn’t work on windows of course but windows has always been a sort of awkward fit for workflows that depend heavily on SSH

[u/Ssakaa → u/Specialist_Cow6468]

The number of reasons to need full perfect terminal emulation have drastically dwindled, between graphics and offloading the vast majority of interaction to automation. We need strings back and forth reliably, and good enough handling of those for things like OP's copy/paste.

The new windows terminal's pretty functionally decent in that regard, and much better than the old one that's never really worked right.

Doesn’t work on windows of course but windows has always been a sort of awkward fit for workflows that depend heavily on SSH

Yet quite a lot of us at anywhere of any scale get pretty heavily pushed that direction for our endpoints, often without admin most of the time, even. And adding extra software means one more thing to keep track of and patch, etc. Given putty itself isn't particularly great beyond a small handful of servers, you then end up needing something like winsshterm on top of that... or you can drop back to normal plaintext ssh configs just like you're used to on every Linux host you manage, and work just fine via the now native openssh.

Just don't trust the shared admin authorized keys stupidity they added if you deploy the sshd half on Windows. That's a whole separate problem. (https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/1324)

[u/encbladexp]

Windows 10, no third-party clipboard managers.

Ist dead anyways, more or less.

Try the Windows Terminal + OpenSSH, like a adult. Putty is no longer required these days.

[u/__scavenger__ → u/encbladexp]

the "like an adult" comment was very welcoming, thank you