Opening My Computer causes Windows Explorer crash

[Guest]

Hopefully someone can help !

First of all the basics, I'm running W2K with the latest service pak with
IE6 SP1. I have a Radeon 9200 TV video card with (I think) 128M ram. I first
thought this might be a video card problem so I got the latest drivers for
that. I usually leave the automatic updates on so I get the latest updates. I
have a C: drive of 80GB and a D: drive 130GB - both Western Digital Caviar
drives. The PC is a ABS P3 733Mhz with 512M ram. I keep Norton Systemworks
and Norton antivirus up to date and do a routine scan every week or so.

I have a aggravating problem with Windows 2000 when I open up Windows
Explorer (default view with My documents opened) then I open My computer to
look at files on my D: drive and scroll down Windows Explorer crashes. It
will usually do this 3 or 4 times - at which point the active desktop
crashes, a lot of the icons in the system tray disappear - at which point I
can restart the active destkop open up windows explorer and use it normally.
It usually is when I'm scrolling but it also occurs when I click the + sign
to open up my computer. I usually get a messagebox Dr Watson 'This
Application has performed a illegal function and will be shut down' A log
file is being generated. If it's talking about the event log or application
log I haven't seen anything in there that seems to be related to the crash. I
turned DrWatson on for awhile but it only occured once - and DrWatson didn't
record anything ??

I have tried swapping the video card with a older one but doesn't make much
difference - I also put a 30Gb in place of the 130Gb - same problem - I saw a
recommendation on here that some windows 'scripts' might be causing a crash
if they weren't up to date or corrupt so I downloaded the scripts file from
here(Microsoft) and installed it - I thought it worked for awhile but it was
only a day or two. The problem comes back. I am almost at the point of wiping
out and complete re-install but I'm dreading the hundreds of installation
CD's and patches/updates ETC.... ETC.....

Anyone out there ever saw symptoms similar to this ???????????????

Any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Douglas Kentner]

I've run into a similar problem several times when browsing some folder on
my laptop. The extra information i've been able to glean from those
instances is that it usually happens when i have some file that contains a
GUID from another computer that i've copied to my laptop, like if I move
album art for media player, deleting the GUID containing files usually does
it for me, I'm guessing there's a problem resolving the non existent GUID
which makes explorer crash.

hope it helps.

 

[Guest]

Shouldn't that generate a 'Event message' under event viewer ??

I don't think the GUID's are doing it - there's nothing on D:\ (root folder)
except folders. It's where I store a lot of stuff - however it is plausible -
it might be that media player or Real player is linked to something on that
drive, I do have a lot of music and video files there.

How did you catch something like that ??

It's extremely frustrating - usually it won't do it if I have Dr Watson
active or if I take the time to clear out all event viewer logs before
opening explorer. Almost like it has a brain of it's own -- the ghost in the
machine perhaps bwaaa ha haaaa.

 

[Douglas Kentner]

Nothing was ever generated in the eventlogs on my box, i came to that
conclusion because most of the time it happened to me in my music folders
that had media player info generated on my desk computer when it happened,
and deleting the suspect files seemed to have resolved the issue. You can
always setup dr. watson to generate a user dump file and use windbg to
analyze it.