Crashing Explorer

[John]

Hi
Does anyone know why explorer crashes so often with XP? I have worked on
several machines lately that when you right click on anything, explorer
crashes. It's nothing new to me that explorer crashes often so no apparent
reason, but lately it seems that several machines have been affected to the
point where a system restore is required to fix the problem. I have tried
removing all the most recent updates and things of that nature but not sure
what has been causing the problem. Today on my machine, explorer crashed so
i rebooted and when it booted back up, explorer did not load. I opened task
manager and started it as a new task, but before it would load it said
"sorry for the.....explorer has encountered an error" I rebooted again and
it was fine. I have nothing running at startup other than AV and FW... If
anyone can shed some light on why it crashes so often, or more specifically
if there has been an update recently that is causing this behaviour, it
would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Guest]

Wish I could help but I just want to chime in that I'm having a similar
problem (I posted it here but it hasn't shown up yet on the board.) I get
that same error message whenever I try to access files that are nested
6-deep. "Explorer has encountered and error and has to close." I really
think this got worse after SP-2. Did yours? I LOVED this operating system
before. Now it has real problems -- and I'm extremely careful about
updating, keeping a clean system, etc.

leemce

 

[Kelly]

Hi John,

It depends on many issues. Some info and suggestions are listed below:

1. Run Ad-Aware SE, Spybot and HijackThis:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads31.html

Note: Update the first two programs, once installed, before running.

Free Online Virus Scan
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

2. Explorer Crashes - No desktop/Icons/Start Button

Control/Alt/Delete - When the Windows Task Manager dialog box appears, go
to Processes, find Explorer.exe highlight it and choose End Process.

Keep the task manager open then select the File menu and then New Task
(Run). When the Create New Task dialog box appears, type in Explorer and
press the OK button. Windows Explorer should restart complete with the
Taskbar and Start button.

If still nothing: Go back to the Task Manager/File/New Task and type in
msconfig. On the General Tab choose Expand File.

Or go to Start/Run and type in CMD:
expand x:\i386\explorer.ex_ c:\windows\explorer.exe

Restore Taskbar to Default Functionality (Line 164)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Added help:

Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

3. Explorer.exe May Generate an Application Error When You Close a Folder
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q329692

Explorer.exe Process Uses Many CPU Cycles When Windows Is Idle
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;EN-US;q317751

Windowx XP Patch: Explorer May Generate an Application Error When You Close
a Folder: http://tinyurl.com/68pt

Error Message: Explorer.exe Has Generated Errors and Will Be Closed by
Windows - Norton Cleansweep
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;EN-US;Q314867

100% CPU usage when using Media Player/AVI files

AVI Search Remove (Line 74)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

4. Right Click: Having Spysweeper installed can cause this.

Also: can be due to updates 817287 and/or 821557.

Good luck and keep us posted.

--
Happy Mardi Gras,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com

 

[Rock]

Hi
Does anyone know why explorer crashes so often with XP? I have worked on
several machines lately that when you right click on anything, explorer
crashes. It's nothing new to me that explorer crashes often so no apparent
reason, but lately it seems that several machines have been affected to the
point where a system restore is required to fix the problem. I have tried
removing all the most recent updates and things of that nature but not sure
what has been causing the problem. Today on my machine, explorer crashed so
i rebooted and when it booted back up, explorer did not load. I opened task
manager and started it as a new task, but before it would load it said
"sorry for the.....explorer has encountered an error" I rebooted again and
it was fine. I have nothing running at startup other than AV and FW... If
anyone can shed some light on why it crashes so often, or more specifically
if there has been an update recently that is causing this behaviour, it
would be appreciated.
Thanks

In addition to what Kelly posted, right click menu extensions in the
context menu can cause problems. One way to debug this is to use
ShellExView from here: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

After running it click on the type column to sort that alphabetically
and scroll down to the context menu grouping. Start by disabling the
non Microsoft ones one at a time. Then do the MS ones. Media type
extensions have been known to be problematic.

If you have SP2 installed and an older version of DivX, that can cause
right click problems:

Right click causes an error and crashes Explorer.exe after installing
Windows XP SP2
http://www.winxptutor.com/sp2/divxcrash.htm

To emphasis the first thing Kelly indicated, the presence of malware on
a system can cause a variety of these types of problems too.

http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm
http://www.spywareinfo.com
http://rgharper.mvps.org/cleanit.htm