Unexpected renderer error occurred after specifying pixel shader path.

[lgx98]

Environment

Windows build number: 10.0.19042.0
Windows Terminal version (if applicable): 1.6.10571.0

Any other software?
* Cascadia Code
* Cascadia Code PL
* Cascadia Mono
* Cascadia Mono PL

Steps to reproduce

I had a fresh new Windows Terminal install from Microsoft Store;

downloaded example shaders from here;

added the following line to "Windows PowerShell" profile in settings.json and saved changes to file;

"experimental.pixelShaderPath": "‪‪D:\\temp\\Invert.hlsl",

restarted Windows Terminal and a warning popped up:

which translates to:

Warning
Renderer encountered an unexpected error: -2147024773
[OK]

And I think this warning message comes from this line.

I also tried changing the path to ‪D:/temp/Invert.hlsl; changing the path to an empty folder; adding obvious syntax errors to the hlsl file.
But nothing changed, every time the exact same warning message popped up.

Expected behavior

Nothing pops up and the screen color is inverted.

Actual behavior

Described above.

[zadjii-msft]

Weird, that error is:

ERROR_INVALID_NAME	The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.	winerror.h

Which I don't think makes any sense. Does the retro terminal effect work for you? Use "experimental.retroTerminalEffect": true instead of experimental.pixelShaderPath

[lgx98]

"experimental.retroTerminalEffect": true works fine.

[lgx98]

After trying "‪‪D:\temp\Invert.hlsl", "‪‪D:\temp\\Invert.hlsl" , "‪‪D:\\temp\Invert.hlsl" and several other strings, I somehow managed to "glitch" it and made it work properly with shader files under ‪‪D:\temp\.

However, when I changed the path from D:\temp\ to C:\Users\{Username}\temp\, the same warning message popped up just like before. (these two folders contain the same files)

Then I restarted Windows Terminal; changed path to other shader files in the same folder; tried to "glitch" again. But nothing new happened.

[zadjii-msft]

Hey so, I know you've gone through the trouble of hiding your Windows username in your screenshots, but I'm worried now if that might be part of the problem. Does your username have any Chinese characters in it? I'm worried that the shader might fail to load if the path has non-ascii characters in it. If you don't want to share your username, could you try some other path with Chinese characters in it?

[lgx98]

Hey so, I know you've gone through the trouble of hiding your Windows username in your screenshots, but I'm worried now if that might be part of the problem. Does your username have any Chinese characters in it? I'm worried that the shader might fail to load if the path has non-ascii characters in it. If you don't want to share your username, could you try some other path with Chinese characters in it?

No, my username is made up of English letters and number digits. It's even a valid variable name in C/C++.

[zadjii-msft]

Huh. Well there goes that theory. Here's another totally wild theory - does the drive matter? Can the Terminal consistently load shaders from the D:\ drive, but not the C:\ drive?

[lgx98]

Everything is working perfectly today. I've tried both drives, path with Chinese characters, inside and outside $HOME.

But I have no idea on what caused this change. Basically I was browsing the Internet and making PowerPoints these days. There was neither system update, nor Windows Terminal Update.😂

[zadjii-msft]

Well. That's annoying that the repro is gone before we could figure it out. But I'm glad that it's fixed! I still have no idea what might have caused this. I suppose I'll keep my eyes open for future reports.

Thanks!