Yet another Explorer.exe problem in XP SP2

[Guest]

Judging by the very large number of users reporting problems with
Explorer.exe under service pack 2 it seems that Microsoft has a major problem
with this important piece of software. It is disturbing that there seems to
be little official recognition of this judging by the lack of intelligent
responses to all these reported errors so far.

Unfortunately I have to add to this tale of woe with another instance of
problems with Explorer - specifically:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Description:
Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2900.2180, faulting module
ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.2180, fault address 0x0003426d.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 65 78 70 ure exp
0018: 6c 6f 72 65 72 2e 65 78 lorer.ex
0020: 65 20 36 2e 30 2e 32 39 e 6.0.29
0028: 30 30 2e 32 31 38 30 20 00.2180
0030: 69 6e 20 6e 74 64 6c 6c in ntdll
0038: 2e 64 6c 6c 20 35 2e 31 .dll 5.1
0040: 2e 32 36 30 30 2e 32 31 .2600.21
0048: 38 30 20 61 74 20 6f 66 80 at of
0050: 66 73 65 74 20 30 30 30 fset 000
0058: 33 34 32 36 64 0d 0a 3426d..

This error is completely replicable and so severe that it is totally ruining
my productivity so I would like to see some serious attempts to provide a
"real" solution rather than another attempt at obfuscation.

When do these error occur?
--------------------------

I am a multimedia developer and I frequently require access to various music
files stored in the default My Documents/My Music folders.

Note: I use Windows Media Player v10 to manage and play all these files and
generally DO NOT use any third party software.

Whenever I click on a subdirectory within the abovenamed folders Explorer
initially displays the directory's contents and then, after about 30 seconds,
crashes completely. DrWatson then loads and it too usually crashes during the
error reporting procedure.

Exactly the same errors occurs if I try to view the "Temporary Internet
Folder" with Local Settings.

I have tried a multitude of things suggested in this forum and elsewhere
without result. By experimentation on My Music folders I have gained the
impression that the error is triggered by the some mishandling of .jpg or
other image files, in particular the "album-art" files that Windows Media
Player seems to create everywhere because when I manually delete (using a dos
window) them I can view these directories without the errors.

It seems likely that this mishandling of image files in the Temporary
Internet Folders may be the cause of this constant crashing.

I also have a suspicion that the default location used by Windows Media
Player for storing music files (under the My Documents/My Music directory
ultimately creates folders & files that are too long to be effectively
handled by the o/s - in particular the automatically created "album art"
filenames are extremely verbose. If this is true then Microsoft needs to
serious rethink the strategy used by Media Player for saving files.

Please note the following:

1. I am a power user so I have tried all the obvious things like virus
scans/adware scans etc without result.

2. My hardware is working perfectly

3. The problem did not demonstrate until I installed Service Pack 2

4. The problem IS NOT related to "right click" context menus etc because (a)
because I never get a chance to right click on anything (b) I have read the
articles and run the software to check all these issues again without result.

Does anybody have a real solution to these problems?

 

[Guest]

Sorry I can't help you, but your description bears resemblance to something I
read the other day, which might be of interest to you:

http://channels.lockergnome.com/win..._media_player_windows_and_msn_messenger.phtml

 

[Guest]

I can recommend some troubleshooting suggestions that may help. I have seen
similar issues on a couple of machines and found it was something in the user
profile causing the problem. My issue was different in that the system would
blue screen and reboot either at logon or while mapping a network drive but
the errors were similar.

Try logging on as a different user and see if you can replicate the problem
as a different user. If you don't have another user you can create one to
test with, it won't affect the veracity of the test.

If the problem doesn't happen with the other user then you can logon as a
user with local administrative priveleges and backup and delete the problem
user profile as follows:

-- Open System Properties (right-click My Computer and select Properties)
-- On the Advanced tab, click the settings tab under User Profiles.
-- Select the problem user profile and select "Copy To". Choose a location
to save the backed up files where you can retreive anything you need after
the profile is deleted.
-- Delete the profile by clicking the Delete button.

Logon as that user and Windows XP will create a new, clean profile. You can
then copy back any critical information from the backed up profile folders,
such as IE favorites, My Documents folder, IE Identities, etc. into the new
profile. Copy the files in small batches and then reboot and check for a
recurrence of the error. If it comes back (which it may not), you'll know
which folder contains the item causing the problem and you can delete the
folder in question to get rid of the issue again.

Let me know if this was helpful or not. If it's not profile specific, I
still may have some ideas.