Cannot minimize windows to taskbar after explorer.exe crash

[Dave]

Hi,

Every now and then when explorer.exe crashes and restarts automatically I
lose the ability to minimize all old (opened before explorer crash) windows
by clicking their tabs in the taskbar. Restore works fine and clicking
minimize buttons work fine too. Just clicking the taskbar tab of a window
has no effect.

Any windows opened after explorer crash work as expected.

The system goes back to normal after reboot but if you are like me who has
daily apps for ongoing tasks open all the time, you know that reboot is a
major inconvenience as far as gettinmg "re-organized" again for work.

Is there a fix other than reboot?

Thanks

Dave

 

[RalfG]

Possibly rebooting is your only option at this point but what you should
really do is track down the cause of your explorer crashes. I suspect your
symptom could be directly related to that cause. Usually I'd expect a
corrupt media (or other) file to be the primary suspect for explorer crashes
but the subsequent problem with the taskbar suggests that some software
conflict (DLL file?) could be at the root of both problems.

 

[Dave]

Possibly rebooting is your only option at this point but what you should
really do is track down the cause of your explorer crashes. I suspect your
symptom could be directly related to that cause. Usually I'd expect a
corrupt media (or other) file to be the primary suspect for explorer
crashes but the subsequent problem with the taskbar suggests that some
software conflict (DLL file?) could be at the root of both problems.

Ralf,

Thanks for your response.
I have noticed that crashes happen when switching between applications and
could be due to exhausting either RAM or VRAM. VRAM because the explorer
"appears" to crash during screen refresh.when switching between apps. My GPU
is ATI Fire GL E1 (64MB).

I just did another experiment:
Because "new" windows are not affected by this issue, I started creating new
windows for relevant old programs, so that I could preserve my work state
without reboot. After "recycling" a few old windows like that, the last 2-3
regained the ability to get minimised by clicking the task bar tab.

By the way, all other functions (maximize, restore, etc.) worked as usual.

 

[RalfG]

I don't think you can exhaust RAM or VRAM in that way, because of FIFO and
because switching between already loaded apps in itself shouldn't change
memory usage. Unless perhaps you ran out of physical drive space for VRAM
but I'd expect worse than an explorer reset if that were the case. In any
case with explorer restarting again I'd think you'd be right back to the
same status so if your scenario were true Explorer should crash again
practically immediately unless you closed some apps to free up RAM or one of
the apps closed spontaneously during the crash.

I still tend to think that something you are running, or that is running
automatically, is invoking an old or otherwise incompatible DLL or other
shared file. Once it's crashed a different version begins to be used and all
is well again except for those running apps that are still linked to the NFG
file. A lot of programs come bundled with older versions of system or shared
files. Those files get loaded when the relevent program is run but other
subsequent apps you start, which may need functionality only provided in
newer versions of the same file, will also use the already loaded but
obsolete file. When an app calls a function (for example) that isn't
provided for in the file the problems start.