explorer crashes when closing a window

[Mitch Deoudes]

Recently, I've been having a problem where windows explorer dies when I
close a folder window. These are regular "open" (as opposed to
"explore") type windows, and may be focused on any folder (local or
network) as far as I can tell. When the window is closed, the desktop /
taskbar / etc. disappear.

Oddly enough, trying to re-start explorer pulls up a single folder
window, rather than restoring the desktop & taskbar. The reason: when
I look in the process list, explorer.exe is actually still running.
Manually killing it & then re-starting explorer restores the desktop as
expected. So essentially, it's dying but not exiting.

I've had this problem occur both with and without subsequent "windows
explorer needed to close" dialog boxes. In both cases, the process was
still running, and needed to be killed manually before restarting in
order to restore the desktop / taskbar. This happens a couple of times
a day.

Ideas?

 

[Don Varnau]

Hi,
See if a shell extension or another program is causing this. Start with
"Method 2" at http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm

If unsuccessful with ShellExView, look at third-party programs which load at
startup such as a desktop tweaking/customizing program, security, etc.-
anything that's running in the background.

Hope this helps,
Don
[MS MVP- IE]

 

[meeotch]

That utility is pretty slick - thanks. I felt like maybe it had done
the trick, but I got the crash again recently. On the up side, I think
I've narrowed it down... it seems that if I open the Briefcase on my
machine, then close the window, it causes the
explorer-crashes-but-doesn't-die problem. (I'm actually getting
"explorer needed to close" dialogs pretty regularly with the Briefcase
now.)

Any thoughts?

thanks,
mitch

Hi,
See if a shell extension or another program is causing this. Start with
"Method 2" at http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm

If unsuccessful with ShellExView, look at third-party programs which load at
startup such as a desktop tweaking/customizing program, security, etc.-
anything that's running in the background.

Hope this helps,
Don
[MS MVP- IE]

Recently, I've been having a problem where windows explorer dies when I
close a folder window. These are regular "open" (as opposed to
"explore") type windows, and may be focused on any folder (local or
network) as far as I can tell. When the window is closed, the desktop /
taskbar / etc. disappear.

Oddly enough, trying to re-start explorer pulls up a single folder
window, rather than restoring the desktop & taskbar. The reason: when
I look in the process list, explorer.exe is actually still running.
Manually killing it & then re-starting explorer restores the desktop as
expected. So essentially, it's dying but not exiting.

I've had this problem occur both with and without subsequent "windows
explorer needed to close" dialog boxes. In both cases, the process was
still running, and needed to be killed manually before restarting in
order to restore the desktop / taskbar. This happens a couple of times
a day.

Ideas?

 

[John]

Mitch Deoudes wrote:
Recently, I've been having a problem where windows explorer dies when I
close a folder window.

Another possible is a corrupted User profile.

How to copy data from a corrupted user profile to a new profile
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;811151