Windows Explorer appcrash on startup

[Johan Stäck]

At every startup now, Windows explorer gets an appcrash in module ntdll.dll
I can however start Task manager.
Using TM, I can start various programs such as Firefox, Thunderbird etc.
It now seems that if I maximize Task Manager, I can start Windows
explorer (using TM) and WE will come up without crashing.
However, if the desktop is (or rather, would be) visible upon an
attempted start of WE, it will crash.

When trying to start explorer using TM, the crash will be in various
modules, not only ntdll.dll.

So, my understanding is that WE crashes upon startup because of
something that is visible on the desktop.
But there are only various icons, and nothing special...

Anyone with thought/ideas on this?

/JS

 

[Johan Stäck]

Look at the more information and see if you can narrow it down and remove
the faulting program?

Rich

Things are getting clearer (in a way...)
There are other problems that probably have the same root cause.

I have a graphic program that opens image files.
If in the open menu I have the "icon" view selected, the program crashes.
(it is all jpeg:s)
If I have the "list" view selected the program opens the file OK.
So, the problem has something to do with graphic thumbnails/icons.

I have recently installed a new version of DIVX.
I removed it, but the problem remains...

Now, I have learned to live with/circumvent the problem since I seem to
understand it, but I must eventually find a solution.

My understanding is that programs that crash are badly written.
The crash occurs mostly in ntdll.dll which is written by Microsoft.
So, Ms ought to fix this, or am I getting it wrong?

It might of course be that ntdll.dll is being fed bad input data, but a
good program tries to validate its inputdata in order not to crash.
(At least that is the way I try to do things myself..)

/JS

 

[Johan Stäck]

ntdll.dll was the module that crashed you have to scroll down a little in
the box to see the faulting .exe or .dll file and then find that in program
files and remove the program and see if the problem goes away. Then either
live without that program that was causing the faults or get an updated
version.

Hope this help, Rich

I'm not sure I understand...
Below is a typical case:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: explorer.exe
Application Version: 6.0.6000.16549
Application Timestamp: 46d230c5
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6000.16386
Fault Module Timestamp: 4549bdc9
Exception Code: c0000420
Exception Offset: 000af1c9
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1053
Additional Information 1: a13e
Additional Information 2: aa6b3f636e9407b4c166e7ff61b71a38
Additional Information 3: 29e0
Additional Information 4: c91783e45b352eb15809192f9ce3cb52

As I understand it Explorer.exe calls ntdll which crashes.
Or is it that ntdll in its turn has called some other code that crashes?

/Johan