gtools error occurred while loading _gtools_internal.ado (could not load plugin)

[AnneShi]

I have installed gtool for a while and the commands had worked well until 2 days ago, when our IT updated windows. The commands from gtool package no longer work. While running gcollapse, the program was interrupted with error message as:

(error occurred while loading _gtools_internal.ado)
r(9998);

I am not able to find out what r(9998) means.
I appreciate your help.

[mcaceresb]

Please give the output of

gtools

[AnneShi]

.
. use S:\Forum\Ashi\Data\2017household\Stata\IPUMS\ps02_armenia, clear
(Armenia person-household file with religion recoded)

. gcollapse hhsize [pw = perwt]
(error occurred while loading _gtools_internal.ado)
r(9998);

end of do-file

r(9998);

[mcaceresb]

Sorry, I meant the output of running

which gtools
gtools

[AnneShi]

. which gtools
c:\ado\plus\g\gtools.ado
*! version 1.5.3 04Apr2019 Mauricio Caceres Bravo, mauricio.caceres.bravo@gmail.com
*! Program for managing the gtools package installation

. gtools
Nothing to do. See help gtools or gtools, examples for usage. Version info:
c:\ado\plus\g\gtools.ado
*! version 1.5.3 04Apr2019 Mauricio Caceres Bravo, mauricio.caceres.bravo@gmail.com
*! Program for managing the gtools package installation
(error occurred while loading _gtools_internal.ado)
(warning: gtools_plugin internal check failed)

[mcaceresb]

Can you tell me your OS and Stata versions?

[AnneShi]

Windows 8; Stata/MP 14.2 or Stata/SE 15.1

[mcaceresb]

Are you on a server or just a regular Windows 8 machine?

[AnneShi]

on a network

[AnneShi]

All commands from gtools worked till two days ago, when the IT updated the windows. I talked to our IT specialists and they are trying to figure out as well

[mcaceresb]

(Not 100% what you mean by "network").

Anyway, I wonder if it is related to this bug. It's a bit of a different situation since that was back when I still put the hashing library in a DLL (and I thought it was fixed).

Do you happen to have cygwin installed on your windows system? No worries if you don't.

[AnneShi]

Server, then.
Yes I read the discussions and tried the suggested solutions therein. None works.
No I do not have cygwin.

[AnneShi]

Out IT people said they might try to scale the windows security updates they installed a couple of days age -- to see whether those are the cause.
Are the gtools plugins security sensitive?

[mcaceresb]

I do recall somebody else reporting that gtools stopped working after a Windows Server security update.

All gtools commands use temporary files, but none require any special permissions to run. I am really not sure why a security update would break gtools. Maybe it's a versioning issue? (i.e. I compile using a set of libraries that get updated and that breaks gtools). I don't have access to Windows server, however, so it's a bit difficult to debug.

When you say "none work" for the solutions in that thread, what did you try? I was going to try and compile a very basic plugin to see if whether the issue was gtools or Stata.