Right-click in Explorer causes crash

[Shane Archer]

Hi,

My system has developed a nasty habit of crashing when I right-click
on certain files in Explorer. So far it seems limited to MP3 files --
as far as I can tell -- although I seem to recall it happening on
others. Not totally sure about that just yet.

Anyway, this is what I have looked into and/or tried:

- all current Windows XP updates applied
- crashes occur on some files, not all files
- crashes occur in safe mode as well
- stripped out all processes I could, no effect
- the offending error is a kernel32.dll error
- system has been verified clean of viruses using the latest defs
- system has been scanned for spyware/adware

Since these crashes are limited to right-clicking and likely on MP3
files, I am thinking there might be a context-menu trigger that is
crashing on certain files. I did uninstall Winamp, just in case that
was related, but the problems persisted.

Can anybody recommend something to try next? Places to look, maybe
some way to remove any extra options from the context menus that might
be causing a crash?

Thanks!


- Shane [plaz at pro dash studios dot com]

 

[Shane Archer]

This is the exact error message from the Event Viewer:

Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2800.1221, faulting
module kernel32.dll, version 5.1.2600.1106, fault address 0x00013887.

I have since tried stripping just about every non-critical application
and service out of the system, and the results are the same. Some
files always crash and othes never do, on different hard drives, and I
can't find any correlations between those that do crash and those that
are fine.

Not quite sure what to do...

 

[Guest]

Similar problem here, although I'm not sure about the
exact 'kernal' error message. What I've found is that in
Windows Explorer, when I right-click on anything, the
program hangs. I can ctrl-alt-del and then end that
program manually, which produces a pop-up that I click on
to 'crash' the task. Windows Explorer disappears, and I
get my desktop back. I am able to right-click on desktop
items without experiencing any problems.

Help?