'Windows Explorer is Not Responding' - Help!

[Ringmaster]

It's OK.
Physically weak, whiney, girly men aren't expected to like football.

Now you're talking about Frank. I thought he was your friend.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Windows Explorer constantly keeps crashing because it was written by
the idiots of Redmond.

I'm not sure what flaw you're referring to: could you clarify?

I may not be the brightest bulb in the shed, but given a good pointer I can
probably fix whatever 'constant crashing' you're pointing to or triage it
appropriately. Constant crashes sound like something that would be good to
be fixed. Given that your previous crashing was in a bogus third party DLL,
though --

They know even their hand-picked
MVP's hate Explorer and many use a different shell.

I don't see why it'd matter: MVPs are picked for just being generally
excellent helpful people, not for goose-stepping to some imaginary party
line. Exposure to more experiences allows you to potentially provide better
more interesting feedback. Competition is an opportunity.

Need proof?
Next time you see Explorer crash look up the crash in Event Viewer and
cookies to donuts it will point to the kernel or some other MICROSOFT
file that caused it.

I respect you're not a developer and as such misinterpret that data.
Thankfully you should be able to use the Windows Debugging Toolkit to make
more sense of that data. Generally what happens is that Explorer
(ApplicationName) is transacting with random third party DLL that then does
bad things to memory at Fault Offset XXX that Faulting Module "kernel" (your
example) crashes on because the memory usage is invalid/bad/broken. The
important and difficult step is to walk back up to the actual source of the
crash. Debugging is rather an art form.

I would not expect any average citizen to be able to understand or make
sense of most crash reports by themselves. If you wish to interpret them,
party on - but your triaging method as specified above is dangerously
misleading. This falls into the "Just enough knowledge to be dangerous"
category.

The number one reason WHY Vista crashes is oops Windows
itself doing something stupid that requires it to shut down one of
it's applets.

I realize you have no backing to that assertion, but this article is
interesting and does provide some fascinating metrics:
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2008/05/21/8525411.aspx

So damn funny... Vista needs to close because IT did
something to cause it itself. The more you know about Windows, the
more you see how messed up it is.

Counter-point: if you do know more about Windows, what specific crashes have
you triaged from the event viewer fault data and led to any sort of specific
resolution? I respect your interest in this area - it's a fascinating
field! - but triaging these areas can be brutally hard even without people
jumping to conclusions. Even *with* great triaging it can take hard work to
track down the precise source of any given issue, and people polluting the
information channels makes that digging for information more difficult.

If you did actually know "messed up areas" of Windows, you should point
those out. Otherwise... it pleases me that trolls have to make stuff up at
this point because their other real actual criticisms aren't meaningful
enough. Clearly every OS, every application has problems, but if we're to
the point where people are making stuff up in order to produce fake
criticism: that's pretty sweet. If that's not the case... why make stuff
up? Seems like a waste of time for you.


It's my hobby to help solve top crashes in Windows (augmenting the work of
other teams here) because I think it's a) fascinating and b) beneficial to
the computing world. Your comments are pretty grossly offbase in an area
that I know very very well, but I'm pretty sure you know that and simply
have zero to little interest in accuracy (or are speaking to areas that you
have an understandably limited understanding of). Oh well: I and others
will continue helping people and solving problems, so we'll continue to
advance the computing world despite your mock attempts at sabotage.

-Zach

 

[Ringmaster]

I'm not sure what flaw you're referring to: could you clarify?

I may not be the brightest bulb in the shed, but given a good pointer I can
probably fix whatever 'constant crashing' you're pointing to or triage it
appropriately. Constant crashes sound like something that would be good to
be fixed. Given that your previous crashing was in a bogus third party DLL,
though --

You sound like Bush. For over a year he said he wouldn't help the
troubled banks and just watched as one after another crashed never
seeing the CAUSE was his inept team of bone headed financial advisors
sitting on their hands or at best offering band aid fixes one at a
time.

Then a scary think happened. Something that never happened before in
financial history. A major Money Market fund reported the NAV of their
fund went below a dollar. To avoid a run on money market funds that
have trillions of dollars and cause a 1929 type crash the feds had no
choice but to quickly say they would bail out not just a few troubled
banks but the whole shit load of them to finally get a handle on the
credit crisis.

Now the taxpayers will likely get a trillion dollar bill to fix the
mess. Maybe Microsoft should take a hint and look INWARD and oh my
God, discover many of the problems that plague Windows is due to bugs
in Windows. Just admit it's true, can you? I doubt it. Like the Feds,
Microsoft employs the band aid approach. How many hundreds more bugs
remain in Vista?

I don't see why it'd matter: MVPs are picked for just being generally
excellent helpful people, not for goose-stepping to some imaginary party
line. Exposure to more experiences allows you to potentially provide better
more interesting feedback. Competition is an opportunity.

Yea right. A guess you don't read the goose stepping MVP's that post
to this newsgroup. They're a riot. You should read the slop they
write.

Counter-point: if you do know more about Windows, what specific crashes have
you triaged from the event viewer fault data and led to any sort of specific
resolution?

You expect me to fix Vista? Give me a billion dollars and I'll give
it a shot.

Just once... try to be objective. If Windows Explorer crashes shortly
after booting from a cold start and NOTHING else is running other than
the shell itself except for TSR's like anti virus and a couple other
things that have nothing to do with file handing, that cuts your
feeble attempt to not blame Vista right off at the knees. I've seen
Explorer whine it needs to shut down right after clicking on it's
shortcut to fire it up. Haven't even asked Explorer to do a damn thing
yet, don't even get the chance, it already has throw up the moronic
needs to close window or Vista tries to launch Explorer and it dies
right after. Obviously others have seen this too, but you remain in
denial.

Here's something else for you to chew on. Vista is so poorly written
it now can force a bogus "not responding" error when it fact the
application is still loading. One example I've seen this happen with
more than once is Adobe's Photoshop. The FACT is there is nothing
wrong and if you wait, Photoshop will load normally, yet dumb as dirt
Windows Vista is already signaling something is wrong went there isn't
by tossing out a stupid not responding message. If you didn't know it
was in fact Vista just being stupid, you would try to force Photoshop
to shutdown when it isn't necessary.

Want more? Glad to educate you on how screwed up Vista really is.

I've used Forte's outstanding Agent (newsreader) for over fifteen
years. They do a excellent job in debugging and their software is as
bug free as any I've seen. Even since using Vista if I select some
headers to delete them and select one, then scroll down to include
more by the time I have got a couple hundred or so I often am able to
force a 'not responding' message from the application. Something it
never did under XP. Apparently the time length is the issue, Vista
seems to wrongly assume it is hung up when it isn't and the
application's window whites out. The telltale sign it likely is Vista,
not Agent, is if you wait and do nothing, the screen will return to
normal and you can proceed, if you select a few hundred more it will
throw another not responding message.

My favorite Vista screw up is if I accidentally select a group of
files that are images and as a group launch the first Vista will go
into a nervous breakdown and instead of being smart enough to sequence
through the other images selected as they get decoded and displayed
one after the other it being STUPID instead launches more and more
instances of Photo Gallery until it overwhelms resources and Vista
first slows to a crawl, then if enough images were in the group locks
up Photo Galley. Again, it didn't happen in XP. At least it was smart
enough to cycle through the images and display each in turn in ONE
instance of the image viewer, not try to launch a 100 or more
instances of the viewer which surely will crash it if over taxed.

Want more stupid Vista failings? I could give your hundreds. Just ask.

If you did actually know "messed up areas" of Windows, you should point
those out.

Just did.

Otherwise... it pleases me that trolls have to make stuff up at
this point because their other real actual criticisms aren't meaningful
enough.

Go ahead, take a cheap shot. Anybody pointing out flaws in Vista is a
troll. Sure. I probably know more about how Windows works then you do.
Make stuff up my ass. You're seen as a joke. You do know that don't
you Z? You can't even bring yourself to admit Vista has bugs. That
makes you just another laughing stock and you have the same
creditability as the idiot Frank, another worshiper of Microsoft.

 

[Frank]

The banks rule the world, I think this is deliberate for various reasons.
What do you say?

 

[Frank]

I don't work in a cubicle moron,

First lie.

Working in a cubicle is something you would dream of...

Second lie.

You are so stupid you cant even do that... lol

Third lie! Bingo!...You're out!...LOL!

 

[simcity]

Hi,

I also have the same problem (over multiple Vista machines). I've been
searching the Internet for "vista not.responding" and it looks to be a common
problem.

Many of the "help replies" start off with stuff like "how much memory do you
have", "is your anti-virus turned on", etc, etc. Many of them then get
side-tracked. As far as I can tell none of them provide an answer.

One responder said "did it happen on day one? NO!". Personally, I don't
really care when it started happening or what the cause might be. I just want
to know how to fix it.

This thread is going the same way as all the others - don't expect a
resolution by reading any further.

My suggestion is that if you can no longer live with it then downgrade to
XP.

SHAME ON MICROSOFT!!!!
Likewise with all the 'experts' in this forum.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

I also have the same problem (over multiple Vista machines). I've been
searching the Internet for "vista not.responding" and it looks to be a
common
problem.

.... with the notation that most every "not responding" issue you run into
will likely be different. If you see more than ~12 people with the same
exact "not responding" *cause*, then you've pretty clearly identified a bug.
=\

Many of the "help replies" start off with stuff like "how much memory do
you
have", "is your anti-virus turned on", etc, etc. Many of them then get
side-tracked. As far as I can tell none of them provide an answer.

Yes, those are good initial trouble-shooting steps attempting to check on
basic problems. If you say "I have done these XXX things" in your problem
report, you are less likely to get those basic questions re-asked. Then
again, I do get too many "I do not have sound" problems that resolve
themselves by people plugging in or turning on their speakers. =)

The most useful question that anybody can ask in this sort of situation is
also the hardest to analyze the answer for:
What's the fault bucket information for that crash according to the Problem
Reports and Solutions Center control panel's "View Problem History"?

This and the crash DMP file produced by the crash/hang can *potentially*
lead to a solution, but without that data, it's the equivalent of saying "I
hurt" to the doctor. Diagnostics really do have to be run. And most
systems are fascinatingly varied, so even if I completely understand Joe's
system from A to Z, Imelda's system might be completely different. You
really always need to get the diagnostics done so you can properly figure
out what's going on where.

-Zach

 

[Paul MontDenturesDropped]

I am also having this same problem. I would love to know if you found a
way to resolve it.

Thanks

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833

 

[simcity]

I totally agree with what you're saying re diagnostics, etc. Point I'm making
is that I seen lots of messages about this problem and they all take that
path (and rightly so) but I'm yet to see a positive outcome.

Having seen this pattern of no outcome 'everywhere' it's disapointing that
the problem is not being given greater attention by MS.

BTW, when we (those with the problem) see 'Not Responding' we're not talking
seconds but multiple minutes for a response - then all the clicks happen at
once. For me it can happen against almost any program - Internet Explorer,
Windows Explorer, Outlook, non-MS programs, .... the lot.

If you ask me I'd say there's a lock somewhere that's timing out. Questin
is, what's setting it and why? I suspect it's at the GUI level - cpu is not
being hit, and Task manager shows normal background paging activity.

VERY FRUSTRATING!!!

 

[simcity]

I shall try it.

 

[simcity]

I did not think that what Art suggested was worth trying but ===> IT WORKS <===
I have not had any 'Not Responding' messages since rebooting and using
FireFox rather than IE.
I suppose I could now try disabling IE plug-ins one at a time (starting with
Adobe?) to pin down the problem but that's a lot of work.

Thanks Art!

 

[simcity]

zachd, Thanks for taking the time to respond.
The thrust of my original message was that it's disapointing that such a
problem should exist. Focusing on how diagnostics take place is not the
issue.

And 'no' I'm not covered by NDA - I suppose MSFTs are.
Thanks to Art, switching to FireFox has got rid of my 'Not Responding'
problem.
Too bad I have to use IE to get here.

 

[roger friedman]

Hi have a problem with explorer crashing I get the following error message
dooes anyone have a solution?

szAppName : iexplore.exe szAppVer : 7.0.6000.16735 szModName : hungapp
szModVer : 0.0.0.0 offset : 00000000

C:\DOCUME~1\HP_ADM~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER8263.dir00\iexplore.exe.mdmp
C:\DOCUME~1\HP_ADM~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER8263.dir00\appcompat.txt

thanks
rf

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

It's not possible to guess at a hungapp problem like that given that little
data. The actually minidump (mdmp) file if looked at might yield secrets
but when the offset is 00000000, that data by itself could not be decoded
meaningfully by anyone, sorry.

Also, this seems to be an Internet Explorer hang, not a Windows Explorer
hang.

Reminder: crashes are easier to solve than hangs. =\

 

[thedogwarrior]

I am experiencing the same problems, seconds, sometimes minutes
between being responsive to mouse or keyboard - and sometimes even
having to power down and restart.

The difference I have with some of the suggestions here is that I use
Firefox already, I rarely get into IE. I'm using FF 3.03 on Vista
Ultimate x64, 4GB RAM. The only kind of error reporting I get is a OS
Stopped Working message in the Reliability and Performance Monitor, no
details beyond that.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

What sound card do you have? That tentatively looks like a hang in the
audio stack - perhaps it's not responding to some notification or query at
the driver level? I believe there's some outstanding set of audio card
drivers that have a high possibility of hanging. Knowing what sound card
you have (are driver updates available?) might be illuminative.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Drivers up to date according to Windows Update or according to the actual
sound card provider's site?

As far as I'm aware those sound card's drivers were indeed significantly
buggy and that you would really want to get updated drivers for them.

 

[Karen]

Thanks, Zach, for trying to help the majority of us having these issues.
Yesterday was the last straw, when I received the ever-present "MSN is not
responding..." After the 10gh time of rebooting, for some reason I was fully
disconnected from my network and had to go through the hoops to reboot the
modem, network, etc.
I have a 2GB HP Pavilion and a 8GB Dell, both wireless. Checked sound card
and network cards for updates--all up to date. Dumped temp files, ran a scan
on both machines.
This really is getting frustrating as it if happening when I am using MSN,
IE and Firefox. These all ocurred on 12/23/08 at 11:30am, 1:43, 9:47 and
10:15pm. I also received three 'service hangs.'
The dump logs are:
Bucket ID: 1061548131
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: msn.exe
Application Version: 9.60.53.2200
Application Timestamp: 48360fd6
Fault Module Name: mshtml.dll
Fault Module Version: 8.0.6001.18247
Fault Module Timestamp: 49437a70
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 003138f5
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 6776
Additional Information 2: 29cd6efa76ca302f07b7917db79a47f4
Additional Information 3: 6fbf

Bucket ID: 805656294Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: msn.exe
Application Version: 9.60.53.2200
Application Timestamp: 48360fd6
Fault Module Name: StackHash_fd00
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00000000

Bucket ID: 363799246
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: msn.exe
Application Version: 9.60.53.2200
Application Timestamp: 48360fd6
Hang Signature: fb54
Hang Type: 32768
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 049257333f42ef5f098dbd993c3cf0c0
Additional Hang Signature 2: 728e
Additional Hang Signature 3: cf3d534c575b9c10313954c65817185c
Additional Hang Signature 4: fb54
Additional Hang Signature 5: 049257333f42ef5f098dbd993c3cf0c0
Additional Hang Signature 6: 728e
Additional Hang Signature 7: cf3d534c575b9c10313954c65817185c

Bucket ID: 348868755
Description
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: msn.exe
Application Version: 9.60.53.2200
Application Timestamp: 48360fd6
Hang Signature: 1bff
Hang Type: 32768
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: aed35b578d66d6294c7af05ad6bddfa9
Additional Hang Signature 2: baf9
Additional Hang Signature 3: 1d1ab4f96f97ed28ee28debf2219832b
Additional Hang Signature 4: 1bff
Additional Hang Signature 5: aed35b578d66d6294c7af05ad6bddfa9
Additional Hang Signature 6: baf9
Additional Hang Signature 7: 1d1ab4f96f97ed28ee28debf2219832b

My apologies for the long post, but this is getting ridiculous and time
consuming. Any thoughts, ideas or assistance you have with this? Thanks.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Those are all crashes in MSN - what happens if you uninstall that?

 

[Karen]

Thanks for taking time to answer, Zach. I am using Verizon with MSN as my
internet service provider, because I am not fond of Verizon's site. Are you
suggesting I uninstall Verizon? Is this a Verizon issue?

I see another post about routers disconnecting--that is now my new issue!
Even though the router is approximately 15 ft. away from the laptop. Never
ending!

Thanks again for your assistance, it is appreciated.