DEP causing explorer to close

[Rocky]

Hi. The few weeks, without any major changes to my system, I've been having
a dialog box come on saying DEP has closed explorer.exe to protect your
computer. This usually happens when I have a few folders open or I move or
execute files from the folder. When explorer crashes, half of the icons in
the system are removed and everything seems fine afterwards. Can I shut DEP
off? I understand what it's purpose is, to protect files from accessing
protected parts of memory, but if it's causing a problem is it vital I use
it?

Thanks

 

[Jon]

You can turn off DEP by *carefully* changing

/NoExecute=OptIn

to

/NoExecute=AlwaysOff

in the file boot.ini


Jon

 

[Rocky]

Thanks! Is there a danger of not having it running? Or should I go in
to the settings and just exclude Explorer from the list? It seems when I
launch an website from the folder is when I have the problem.

 

[Guest]

Here's a link to a description of DEP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;875352

And, here's a search of the KB for "data execution prevention"
http://support.microsoft.com/search...ry=data+execution+prevention&x=0&y=0&srch=sup

- John

 

[Rocky]

Thanks.

Here's a link to a description of DEP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;875352

And, here's a search of the KB for "data execution prevention":
http://support.microsoft.com/search...ry=data+execution+prevention&x=0&y=0&srch=sup

- John

 

[Jon]

If you want to read up on it, then there's also some more information in the

CIF_Memory_Protection.DOC

document

available here

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...d7-b791-40b6-8364-685b84158c78&DisplayLang=en

Personally, I turned it off, since it was a pain constantly creating
exceptions, for errors caused by incompatible software etc., but others may
have a different perspective on that.

Jon

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hi. The few weeks, without any major changes to my system, I've been
having a dialog box come on saying DEP has closed explorer.exe to protect
your computer. This usually happens when I have a few folders open or I
move or execute files from the folder. When explorer crashes, half of the
icons in the system are removed and everything seems fine afterwards. Can
I shut DEP off? I understand what it's purpose is, to protect files from
accessing protected parts of memory, but if it's causing a problem is it
vital I use it?

Others have already shown you how to turn it off. Doing so will get you
working again but is only curing the symptom not the cause. Something you
have installed that is hooked into Explorer is causing the problem. Could be
anything that shows up in the right click context menu, toolbar, spyware,
almost anything. Have you installed any new programs lately? Have you
checked for malware?

Kerry

 

[Rocky]

Thanks. I went ahead and created an exception for explorer and it seems
back to normal. I was just wondering about the data integrity with it not
enabled.

Thank you again for your help.

Rocky

 

[Rocky]

Others have already shown you how to turn it off. Doing so will get you
working again but is only curing the symptom not the cause. Something you
have installed that is hooked into Explorer is causing the problem. Could
be anything that shows up in the right click context menu, toolbar,
spyware, almost anything. Have you installed any new programs lately? Have
you checked for malware?

Kerry

I am pretty good about scanning for spyware, viruses, etc. I'm not sure
what the problem was, but as I mentioned in other correspondence, I was just
wondering if I disabled part of it if it would affect the stability or data
integrity of my hard drive. Thanks your help.
P.S As far as any changes, I did a system restore yesterday and the
overall performance seems to have increased.

 

[Jon]

You're welcome.

The term "data" might be causing a bit of confusion here.

It's not referring to the physical files on your machine, but rather to a
portion of a running program, that is normally used for information, to be
used as a program runs, ( like say "apple" or "pear" ), but aren't
instructions to the computer to actually do anything. The code portion, of a
program, is the portion of a program, that should contain those
instructions.

So enabling or disabling the feature, will not affect the stored
information, at all, on your hard drive.


Jon

 

[Kerry Brown]

I am pretty good about scanning for spyware, viruses, etc. I'm not
sure what the problem was, but as I mentioned in other correspondence, I
was just wondering if I disabled part of it if it would affect the
stability or data integrity of my hard drive. Thanks your help.
P.S As far as any changes, I did a system restore yesterday and the
overall performance seems to have increased.

Explorer shouldn't cause DEP problems so something else that uses Explorer
is likely the cause of the problem. It can be very hard and time consuming
to figure out exactly what the cause is.

If you did a system restore and performance increased then something changed
between the time you took the restore point and now.

All this points to something hooked into Explorer. It could be malware or
something you installed. You'll have to figure out if you installed anything
after the restore point and/or do a deeper scan for malware.

Kerry