Error during every search

Every time I search, Explorer causes an error and fails to complete the
search. I have installed all service packs, updates, etc. Anyone know what
might be causing this or what to try for a solution. Reinstall is really not
an option...

Thanks,
Brennon

"=?Utf-8?B?QnJlbm5vbiBCb3J0eg==?=" writes:
Every time I search, Explorer causes an error and fails to complete the
search. I have installed all service packs, updates, etc. Anyone know what
might be causing this or what to try for a solution. Reinstall is really not
an option...

Thanks,
Brennon

Since "all installed all service packs" sounds like SP2 and since
Search uses the Windows Explorer base to run from, it is possible
that you are one more of the people seeing some of the following

New developments listed at the bottom of this, but still no fix, yet.

If you have recently installed SP2 on your computer then
there have now been over 200 people reporting very similar problems
to what you are reporting. Some find that anything which uses
Windows Explorer (Recycle bin, folder shortcuts, control panel,
search, etc) all have a similar problem. Some find that right
clicks are their major problem. Some find any click. Some find
it crashes on open. Some find it refuses any clicks. Some claim
they know how to fix this but I've read the tens of thousands of
postings on SP2 and I don't think you will find any with "the fix"
for this, at least not yet. Less than a dozen people ever reported
finding a solution for this.

But, some find it will work when you boot in safe mode.

And, some find it will work when you create a new user and switch
to that user to try it.

One of those might be a temporary work-around till you get an answer.

Some claim it is all spyware and viruses but I haven't seen any
posting that confirmed this for the Windows Explorer problem. I
carefully and repeatedly checked, no viruses or spyware and my
windows explorer locks up every time. Late breaking news, after
hundreds of people reporting this problem, ONE person did let me
know that trendmicro actually found a WORM_SDDROP.A virus/worm, he
removed that and it appeared to solve his problem, so that's 10,000
times people chanting "it's all viruses and spyware" and one correct
diagnosis

Some claim it is all "bad applications" like Divx or Spy Sweeper
being installed that is responsible for this, a very few people
have confirmed this appeared to be the source of their problem but
others have these installed and have no problem, most reporting the
problem don't have these installed and still have the problem. I
don't have either and it locks up every time. And unfortunately
there is still no list of specific files known to cause this.

Some claim it is all "ShellExtensions", little accessory gadgets
that sort of script extra cute features. The advice for that is
to install free ShellExView and to try (carefully) disabling these
features one at a time, if turning one off doesn't do anything then
turn it back on and try again. I did that with all 75 at once and
it made no difference at all. Two people have reported that disabling
one extension they had did appear to fix their problem.

Some claim it is all "corrupted user profiles" that are the
cause of this but I've never been able to track down a tool that
would check a user profile to see if it was corrupted. There was
one web page that Microsoft had which described a way of reporting
errors found in this but this doesn't appear feasible for XP.

You can try to uninstall SP2, there are various descriptions of how
to do that, using Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs or using a
Restore point or doing a Repair Install of Windows or reformatting
your hard drive, each of those is a bigger hammer than the previous
method, but a number of folks have reported having various problems
when they try to remove SP2 or after they do so. To be fair, SP2
probably fixes thousands of small and massive bugs in Windows XP
and if you can get it to work it is probably a good thing to have.

You can escalate to Microsoft, go to
http://support.microsoft.com/windowsxpsp2 and give them all the
details and clues and patterns you can find. There is no guarantee
that their analysis or directions will be correct or even not make
it worse. They told me I must "have some corrupted files, repair
windows back to install state and then reinstall SP2 twice while
in Safe mode." Before I did that someone posted the "switch user"
workaround that let me get by temporarily. I sent email saying
that if it worked for one user then it seemed less likely it was
"some corrupted files" and asked if they still wanted me to blow
windows away. They have not reponded to that in a number of days
now. But I can imagine what it is like inside now.

You can try each one of these things and see if any one of them
helps, but don't expect a fix.

New Developments
I just spent another two hours in chat with Microsoft Support, he
changed his diagnosis a dozen times, going back to things we had
already concluded had nothing to do with this, he thought that a
file might have been corrupted during installation and this would
leave an error message in /windows/setuperr.log, that file is empty,
so he thought there might be answers in /windows/setupapi.log but
he said he was not trained to know how to interpret that file, and
the final conclusion was that he didn't know how to fix this one
and I was "escalated", again.

So the next guy had me run msconfig, in the startup tab disable all
items, in the service tab hide all Microsoft services and disable
all, reboot the machine, tell it not to show or launch the config
window... If the problem had disappeared after this was done then
the instructions were to begin enabling these items one at a time
until the one was found that made this fail. My Windows Explorer
problem was unchanged and I was "escalated" again.

So the next guy had me download a copy of Process Explorer and dump
out all the dll's that are connected with Windows Explorer and mail
them to him. Just like the situation with shell extensions, I see
that all but a couple of these are Microsoft supplied. After he had
seen the list he asked that I rename some of the non-Microsoft dll's
and reboot, likely to see if they were responsible. The problem was
still there and I've restored the original names. Now we seem to be
back to square one and he's asking again if this happens in Safe
mode, which we have already repeatedly covered.

Now we've sent him HijackThis logs, 3 megabytes of ntuser.dat, he
keeps claiming they DO have a process for figuring this out but
there just isn't anything that can diagnose what the problem is and
they just keep trying things until the problem seems to go away.
And he asks me to send him HijackThis logs again. He admits that
lots of people have problems with Windows Explorer and that usually
they can figure something out but that there is no list of known
file names/sizes/dates/version numbers that fail, there is no list
of steps a person can follow to track this down. And they spent a
billion bucks making Sp2 more secure and bug free! But that doesn't
put anything in the event log for Windows Explorer failures and the
flood of error reports send to them when people have this happens
apparently doesn't give them any clue what the cause is either.

Another week goes by before he responds... and he didn't find
anything in the HijackThis logs this time either. And he didn't
find anything in ntuser.dat. Now he has me back to msconfig,
turning everything off in msconfig for selective startup and
rebooting, with a cute little note that doing this isn't recommended
for anyone but a pro to do. The problem is still there. As a
bonus, his directions have now blown away my Windows activation and
it is telling me that the computer has changed and I have to
reactivate, even though nothing has changed in months.

That didn't do solve the problem so now he concludes it must be one
of the hardware drivers and he tells me to start disabling those
until we find the culprit. But this is senseless, we have already
ruled that out because switching to a freshly created new user makes
the problem go away. He hasn't answered whether he still wants me
to disable the drivers yet.

Can you say "clueless groping, hoping for a miracle"? 3 1/2 weeks
of playing this game with them and no sign that any progress has
been made.

So I have repeatedly told them I don't just want to randomly change
things until we don't notice the problem anymore, I'm going to track
down the real root cause of this one and we are going to get a fix
for this.

I hope something in this helps someone. But it appears that the
large majority of people never get a fix for the "Windows Explorer"
problem. If someone tells you to try something and it doesn't help
then please make a posting so we can start accumulating what
suggestions don't do any good. And if someone tells you something
that does work then please report it.

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 20:40:23 -0600, (Don Taylor)
writes:

Every time I search, Explorer causes an error and fails to complete the
search. Reinstall is really not an option...

Reinstall should never be the forced option.

Search uses the Windows Explorer base to run from

Yep.

But, some find it will work when you boot in safe mode.

Safe Mode does not suppress all integrations into the shell.

Some claim it is all spyware and viruses but I haven't seen any
posting that confirmed this for the Windows Explorer problem.

Malware integrates into the system, and commercial malware typically
does so "nicely", i.e. through features offered by the OS for this
purpose, so they can plausibly deny they are malware.

So shell integration, whether it be CLSIDs, BHOs, toorbar trash or
whatever, is very popular.

carefully and repeatedly checked, no viruses or spyware and my
windows explorer locks up every time.

Locks up? This is new, and rather different to "does not complete".
Shades of "Miss Odes regrets she is unable to luncheon today".

Most ppl are pretty poor at excluding malware. No surprise; malware
is designed not be found! All too often one reads rubbish like "I
don't have a virus because {some Windows-based av} and/or {some
scanning web site} tells me I'm clean".

Some claim it is all "bad applications" like Divx or Spy Sweeper
being installed that is responsible for this

Because the likely nexus is integration of foreign code into the
shell, bad apps and malware can indeed be expected to be common
causes. Other causes include:
- "slow" drives, e.g. LAN mappings, CDRs, etc. that bog things down
- corrupted files, such as media files that bog down content lookup
- malware and av that intrude into file access
- issues with OS and add-on indexers
- sick HD retry loops (HD LED on, mouse pointer sticks)
- networking issues
- issues related to NTFS

Some claim it is all "ShellExtensions", little accessory gadgets
that sort of script extra cute features. The advice for that is
to install free ShellExView and to try (carefully) disabling these
features one at a time, if turning one off doesn't do anything then
turn it back on and try again.

"The problem" as you term it, is actually a failure pattern that can
have many causes. So of course one size doesn't fit all.

ShellExtensionViewer is a hot tip, though; it's the best tool to look
for a wide class of causes that are likely to apply.

Some claim it is all "corrupted user profiles" that are the
cause of this but I've never been able to track down a tool that
would check a user profile to see if it was corrupted.

This is relevant in that several settings, including classes (file
associations, CLSID integrations etc.) can be overlaid with
user-specific settings from that user profile.

They told me I must "have some corrupted files, repair windows
back to install state and then reinstall SP2 twice while in Safe

Ugly. If ChkDsk and AutoChk didn't automatically "kill, bury, deny",
you might have some chance of a cleaner fix.

Look at ChkDsk's logs; has it "fixed" any files lately?
Look at the av's logs; did it "clean" any existing code files lately?

Before I did that someone posted the "switch user" workaround
that let me get by temporarily.

More on that? Do you have low RAM with small pagefile? If so (e.g.
128M RAM, pagefile 256M) then set a larger pagefile; say, 512M, and
do NOT use fast user switching (as that increases memory load).

Also; purge web caches, and - in all user accounts - shrink those web
caches to (say) 20M. That will relieve C: of a lot of clutter and
fragmentation. You've defragged, right?

I just spent another two hours in chat with Microsoft Support ...
the next guy had me run msconfig, in the startup tab disable all
items, in the service tab hide all Microsoft services and disable
all, reboot the machine, tell it not to show or launch the config
window... If the problem had disappeared after this was done then
the instructions were to begin enabling these items one at a time
until the one was found that made this fail.

That's a good approach; you've saved me a lot of typing :-)
IOW:
- get a baseline that works
- add back items on a test-to-break basis

So the next guy had me download a copy of Process Explorer and dump
out all the dll's that are connected with Windows Explorer and mail
them to him. Just like the situation with shell extensions, I see
that all but a couple of these are Microsoft supplied. After he had
seen the list he asked that I rename some of the non-Microsoft dll's
and reboot, likely to see if they were responsible. The problem was
still there and I've restored the original names. Now we seem to be
back to square one and he's asking again if this happens in Safe
mode, which we have already repeatedly covered.

Does it happen in Safe Mode?
Does your mouse pointer stick?

Now we've sent him HijackThis logs, 3 megabytes of ntuser.dat, he
keeps claiming they DO have a process for figuring this out but
there just isn't anything that can diagnose what the problem is

Can you say "clueless groping, hoping for a miracle"?

Yes, but you are flaming the wrong guys. What I see is a list of
heroic attempts to solve a difficult problem. The folks worth flaming
are the folks who built this OS so that:
- every passing web page can dump trash in the system
- every "document" or "message" can SE it's way to same effect
- there's a huge surface of intrusion points
- there's no maintenance OS to manage these intrusion points

I'd say your problem is 80% likely to be an integration issue, but
there are other causes, especially if the PC is generally slow.

So I'd take a methodical approach, starting with hardware. Check RAM
(even tho that's unlikely to be the problem; bad RAM crashes at full
speed). Check fans; overheating can cause CPU to retreat into thermal
shutdown and thus slow performance. Check HD for physical defects!
This is crucial, because not only will a failing HD cause patchy but
profound slowdown, you'd be at risk of losing data too.

Once the hardware's OK, formally exclude viruses, then exclude
commercial malware. I know a lot of effort has gone into this; if
there's a slip-up, it will most likely be a virus that has eluded
informal attempts to find it.

Then, check some baseline states:
- Safe Mode
- MSConfig suppression with ALL networks/devices disconnected
- MSConfig suppression with ALL networks disconnected
- MSConfig suppression

One of those should give a "clean" (working) baseline. If not,
revisit earlier tests; bad hardware, file corruption, etc.

Once you have a good baseline, zoom in to what makes this differ from
your desired state (everything plugged in, normal mode).

So I have repeatedly told them I don't just want to randomly change
things until we don't notice the problem anymore, I'm going to track
down the real root cause of this one and we are going to get a fix
for this.

You've done good work and covered a lot of stuff, but you've
mis-interpreted the results. It's not that everone is too useless to
fix "this problem", it's that this problem *pattern* has multiple
possible causes at many levels of abstraction, so that one person's
fix is irrelevant to another person's case.



--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -
Tech Support: The guys who follow the
'Parade of New Products' with a shovel.
--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

This was an issue long before SP2 was even a twinkle in Bill Gates' eye. I
was hoping it would be resolved with SP2. It's just now getting to the point
where I am tired of manually going through folder after folder after folder
to find files. I don't have any other Explorer-related problems.
Unfortunately, neither a new user nor safe mode resolve the problem... And,
the problem is that search is erroring out and not completing, rather than
locking up the computer. Don't know if this helps refine things or not.

--Brennon

"Don Taylor" wrote:

"=?Utf-8?B?QnJlbm5vbiBCb3J0eg==?=" writes:
Every time I search, Explorer causes an error and fails to complete the
search. I have installed all service packs, updates, etc. Anyone know what
might be causing this or what to try for a solution. Reinstall is really not
an option...

Thanks,
Brennon

Since "all installed all service packs" sounds like SP2 and since
Search uses the Windows Explorer base to run from, it is possible
that you are one more of the people seeing some of the following

New developments listed at the bottom of this, but still no fix, yet.

If you have recently installed SP2 on your computer then
there have now been over 200 people reporting very similar problems
to what you are reporting. Some find that anything which uses
Windows Explorer (Recycle bin, folder shortcuts, control panel,
search, etc) all have a similar problem. Some find that right
clicks are their major problem. Some find any click. Some find
it crashes on open. Some find it refuses any clicks. Some claim
they know how to fix this but I've read the tens of thousands of
postings on SP2 and I don't think you will find any with "the fix"
for this, at least not yet. Less than a dozen people ever reported
finding a solution for this.

But, some find it will work when you boot in safe mode.

And, some find it will work when you create a new user and switch
to that user to try it.

One of those might be a temporary work-around till you get an answer.

Some claim it is all spyware and viruses but I haven't seen any
posting that confirmed this for the Windows Explorer problem. I
carefully and repeatedly checked, no viruses or spyware and my
windows explorer locks up every time. Late breaking news, after
hundreds of people reporting this problem, ONE person did let me
know that trendmicro actually found a WORM_SDDROP.A virus/worm, he
removed that and it appeared to solve his problem, so that's 10,000
times people chanting "it's all viruses and spyware" and one correct
diagnosis

Some claim it is all "bad applications" like Divx or Spy Sweeper
being installed that is responsible for this, a very few people
have confirmed this appeared to be the source of their problem but
others have these installed and have no problem, most reporting the
problem don't have these installed and still have the problem. I
don't have either and it locks up every time. And unfortunately
there is still no list of specific files known to cause this.

Some claim it is all "ShellExtensions", little accessory gadgets
that sort of script extra cute features. The advice for that is
to install free ShellExView and to try (carefully) disabling these
features one at a time, if turning one off doesn't do anything then
turn it back on and try again. I did that with all 75 at once and
it made no difference at all. Two people have reported that disabling
one extension they had did appear to fix their problem.

Some claim it is all "corrupted user profiles" that are the
cause of this but I've never been able to track down a tool that
would check a user profile to see if it was corrupted. There was
one web page that Microsoft had which described a way of reporting
errors found in this but this doesn't appear feasible for XP.

You can try to uninstall SP2, there are various descriptions of how
to do that, using Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs or using a
Restore point or doing a Repair Install of Windows or reformatting
your hard drive, each of those is a bigger hammer than the previous
method, but a number of folks have reported having various problems
when they try to remove SP2 or after they do so. To be fair, SP2
probably fixes thousands of small and massive bugs in Windows XP
and if you can get it to work it is probably a good thing to have.

You can escalate to Microsoft, go to
http://support.microsoft.com/windowsxpsp2 and give them all the
details and clues and patterns you can find. There is no guarantee
that their analysis or directions will be correct or even not make
it worse. They told me I must "have some corrupted files, repair
windows back to install state and then reinstall SP2 twice while
in Safe mode." Before I did that someone posted the "switch user"
workaround that let me get by temporarily. I sent email saying
that if it worked for one user then it seemed less likely it was
"some corrupted files" and asked if they still wanted me to blow
windows away. They have not reponded to that in a number of days
now. But I can imagine what it is like inside now.

You can try each one of these things and see if any one of them
helps, but don't expect a fix.

New Developments
I just spent another two hours in chat with Microsoft Support, he
changed his diagnosis a dozen times, going back to things we had
already concluded had nothing to do with this, he thought that a
file might have been corrupted during installation and this would
leave an error message in /windows/setuperr.log, that file is empty,
so he thought there might be answers in /windows/setupapi.log but
he said he was not trained to know how to interpret that file, and
the final conclusion was that he didn't know how to fix this one
and I was "escalated", again.

So the next guy had me run msconfig, in the startup tab disable all
items, in the service tab hide all Microsoft services and disable
all, reboot the machine, tell it not to show or launch the config
window... If the problem had disappeared after this was done then
the instructions were to begin enabling these items one at a time
until the one was found that made this fail. My Windows Explorer
problem was unchanged and I was "escalated" again.

So the next guy had me download a copy of Process Explorer and dump
out all the dll's that are connected with Windows Explorer and mail
them to him. Just like the situation with shell extensions, I see
that all but a couple of these are Microsoft supplied. After he had
seen the list he asked that I rename some of the non-Microsoft dll's
and reboot, likely to see if they were responsible. The problem was
still there and I've restored the original names. Now we seem to be
back to square one and he's asking again if this happens in Safe
mode, which we have already repeatedly covered.

Now we've sent him HijackThis logs, 3 megabytes of ntuser.dat, he
keeps claiming they DO have a process for figuring this out but
there just isn't anything that can diagnose what the problem is and
they just keep trying things until the problem seems to go away.
And he asks me to send him HijackThis logs again. He admits that
lots of people have problems with Windows Explorer and that usually
they can figure something out but that there is no list of known
file names/sizes/dates/version numbers that fail, there is no list
of steps a person can follow to track this down. And they spent a
billion bucks making Sp2 more secure and bug free! But that doesn't
put anything in the event log for Windows Explorer failures and the
flood of error reports send to them when people have this happens
apparently doesn't give them any clue what the cause is either.

Another week goes by before he responds... and he didn't find
anything in the HijackThis logs this time either. And he didn't
find anything in ntuser.dat. Now he has me back to msconfig,
turning everything off in msconfig for selective startup and
rebooting, with a cute little note that doing this isn't recommended
for anyone but a pro to do. The problem is still there. As a
bonus, his directions have now blown away my Windows activation and
it is telling me that the computer has changed and I have to
reactivate, even though nothing has changed in months.

That didn't do solve the problem so now he concludes it must be one
of the hardware drivers and he tells me to start disabling those
until we find the culprit. But this is senseless, we have already
ruled that out because switching to a freshly created new user makes
the problem go away. He hasn't answered whether he still wants me
to disable the drivers yet.

Can you say "clueless groping, hoping for a miracle"? 3 1/2 weeks
of playing this game with them and no sign that any progress has
been made.

So I have repeatedly told them I don't just want to randomly change
things until we don't notice the problem anymore, I'm going to track
down the real root cause of this one and we are going to get a fix
for this.

I hope something in this helps someone. But it appears that the
large majority of people never get a fix for the "Windows Explorer"
problem. If someone tells you to try something and it doesn't help
then please make a posting so we can start accumulating what
suggestions don't do any good. And if someone tells you something
that does work then please report it.

I know that this was mainly directed at Don, but I appreciate your comments,
as well. It will take me a good deal of time to work through all this, and I
will get back to you. Thanks again.

"cquirke (MVP Win9x)" wrote:

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 20:40:23 -0600, (Don Taylor)
writes:

Every time I search, Explorer causes an error and fails to complete the
search. Reinstall is really not an option...

Reinstall should never be the forced option.

Search uses the Windows Explorer base to run from

Yep.

But, some find it will work when you boot in safe mode.

Safe Mode does not suppress all integrations into the shell.

Some claim it is all spyware and viruses but I haven't seen any
posting that confirmed this for the Windows Explorer problem.

Malware integrates into the system, and commercial malware typically
does so "nicely", i.e. through features offered by the OS for this
purpose, so they can plausibly deny they are malware.

So shell integration, whether it be CLSIDs, BHOs, toorbar trash or
whatever, is very popular.

carefully and repeatedly checked, no viruses or spyware and my
windows explorer locks up every time.

Locks up? This is new, and rather different to "does not complete".
Shades of "Miss Odes regrets she is unable to luncheon today".

Most ppl are pretty poor at excluding malware. No surprise; malware
is designed not be found! All too often one reads rubbish like "I
don't have a virus because {some Windows-based av} and/or {some
scanning web site} tells me I'm clean".

Some claim it is all "bad applications" like Divx or Spy Sweeper
being installed that is responsible for this

Because the likely nexus is integration of foreign code into the
shell, bad apps and malware can indeed be expected to be common
causes. Other causes include:
- "slow" drives, e.g. LAN mappings, CDRs, etc. that bog things down
- corrupted files, such as media files that bog down content lookup
- malware and av that intrude into file access
- issues with OS and add-on indexers
- sick HD retry loops (HD LED on, mouse pointer sticks)
- networking issues
- issues related to NTFS

Some claim it is all "ShellExtensions", little accessory gadgets
that sort of script extra cute features. The advice for that is
to install free ShellExView and to try (carefully) disabling these
features one at a time, if turning one off doesn't do anything then
turn it back on and try again.

"The problem" as you term it, is actually a failure pattern that can
have many causes. So of course one size doesn't fit all.

ShellExtensionViewer is a hot tip, though; it's the best tool to look
for a wide class of causes that are likely to apply.

Some claim it is all "corrupted user profiles" that are the
cause of this but I've never been able to track down a tool that
would check a user profile to see if it was corrupted.

This is relevant in that several settings, including classes (file
associations, CLSID integrations etc.) can be overlaid with
user-specific settings from that user profile.

They told me I must "have some corrupted files, repair windows
back to install state and then reinstall SP2 twice while in Safe

Ugly. If ChkDsk and AutoChk didn't automatically "kill, bury, deny",
you might have some chance of a cleaner fix.

Look at ChkDsk's logs; has it "fixed" any files lately?
Look at the av's logs; did it "clean" any existing code files lately?

Before I did that someone posted the "switch user" workaround
that let me get by temporarily.

More on that? Do you have low RAM with small pagefile? If so (e.g.
128M RAM, pagefile 256M) then set a larger pagefile; say, 512M, and
do NOT use fast user switching (as that increases memory load).

Also; purge web caches, and - in all user accounts - shrink those web
caches to (say) 20M. That will relieve C: of a lot of clutter and
fragmentation. You've defragged, right?

I just spent another two hours in chat with Microsoft Support ...
the next guy had me run msconfig, in the startup tab disable all
items, in the service tab hide all Microsoft services and disable
all, reboot the machine, tell it not to show or launch the config
window... If the problem had disappeared after this was done then
the instructions were to begin enabling these items one at a time
until the one was found that made this fail.

That's a good approach; you've saved me a lot of typing :-)
IOW:
- get a baseline that works
- add back items on a test-to-break basis

So the next guy had me download a copy of Process Explorer and dump
out all the dll's that are connected with Windows Explorer and mail
them to him. Just like the situation with shell extensions, I see
that all but a couple of these are Microsoft supplied. After he had
seen the list he asked that I rename some of the non-Microsoft dll's
and reboot, likely to see if they were responsible. The problem was
still there and I've restored the original names. Now we seem to be
back to square one and he's asking again if this happens in Safe
mode, which we have already repeatedly covered.

Does it happen in Safe Mode?
Does your mouse pointer stick?

Now we've sent him HijackThis logs, 3 megabytes of ntuser.dat, he
keeps claiming they DO have a process for figuring this out but
there just isn't anything that can diagnose what the problem is

Can you say "clueless groping, hoping for a miracle"?

Yes, but you are flaming the wrong guys. What I see is a list of
heroic attempts to solve a difficult problem. The folks worth flaming
are the folks who built this OS so that:
- every passing web page can dump trash in the system
- every "document" or "message" can SE it's way to same effect
- there's a huge surface of intrusion points
- there's no maintenance OS to manage these intrusion points

I'd say your problem is 80% likely to be an integration issue, but
there are other causes, especially if the PC is generally slow.

So I'd take a methodical approach, starting with hardware. Check RAM
(even tho that's unlikely to be the problem; bad RAM crashes at full
speed). Check fans; overheating can cause CPU to retreat into thermal
shutdown and thus slow performance. Check HD for physical defects!
This is crucial, because not only will a failing HD cause patchy but
profound slowdown, you'd be at risk of losing data too.

Once the hardware's OK, formally exclude viruses, then exclude
commercial malware. I know a lot of effort has gone into this; if
there's a slip-up, it will most likely be a virus that has eluded
informal attempts to find it.

Then, check some baseline states:
- Safe Mode
- MSConfig suppression with ALL networks/devices disconnected
- MSConfig suppression with ALL networks disconnected
- MSConfig suppression

One of those should give a "clean" (working) baseline. If not,
revisit earlier tests; bad hardware, file corruption, etc.

Once you have a good baseline, zoom in to what makes this differ from
your desired state (everything plugged in, normal mode).

So I have repeatedly told them I don't just want to randomly change
things until we don't notice the problem anymore, I'm going to track
down the real root cause of this one and we are going to get a fix
for this.

You've done good work and covered a lot of stuff, but you've
mis-interpreted the results. It's not that everone is too useless to
fix "this problem", it's that this problem *pattern* has multiple
possible causes at many levels of abstraction, so that one person's
fix is irrelevant to another person's case.



--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -
Tech Support: The guys who follow the
'Parade of New Products' with a shovel.
--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

"cquirke (MVP Win9x)" writes:
On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 20:40:23 -0600, (Don Taylor)
writes:

Every time I search, Explorer causes an error and fails to complete the
search. Reinstall is really not an option...

Reinstall should never be the forced option.

Search uses the Windows Explorer base to run from

Yep.

But, some find it will work when you boot in safe mode.

Safe Mode does not suppress all integrations into the shell.

I never claimed it did. All I said was that almost five months
ago somebody discovered that some folks who had Windows Explorer
crashing or locking up immediately after installing SP2, and not
before, would discover it didn't do that in safe mode, nothing else.

But some reasonable fraction of the folks reporting did find that
their problem went away either in Safe mode or when creating a
new fresh user and switching to that. The rest reported that
neither of those made the problem go away, but perhaps that is
just the nature of the bug(s).

Some claim it is all spyware and viruses but I haven't seen any
posting that confirmed this for the Windows Explorer problem.

Malware integrates into the system, and commercial malware typically
does so "nicely", i.e. through features offered by the OS for this
purpose, so they can plausibly deny they are malware.

So shell integration, whether it be CLSIDs, BHOs, toorbar trash or
whatever, is very popular.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people never found any such
malware, despite all the advice they were given about what to check
for.

carefully and repeatedly checked, no viruses or spyware and my
windows explorer locks up every time.

Locks up? This is new, and rather different to "does not complete".
Shades of "Miss Odes regrets she is unable to luncheon today".

Some report it crashes on open, many report it crashes on clicks,
some find it is simply extremely slow to respond, and a few report
that it just stops responding. Mine simply beeps at any click or
keystroke, like some others report.

I've been in this game since about a week after SP2 was widely
released, collecting and documenting only the seemingly similar
Windows Explorer problems that people reported appearin
immediately after installing SP2. There seems to be a good
deal of similarity between the several hundred cases I've seen
but I don't think anybody is claiming they are all identical.

Most ppl are pretty poor at excluding malware. No surprise; malware
is designed not be found! All too often one reads rubbish like "I
don't have a virus because {some Windows-based av} and/or {some
scanning web site} tells me I'm clean".

What can anyone say to that. All the advice given here didn't
enable the vast majority of people with this to ever find anything
like this that fixed the problem.

Some claim it is all "bad applications" like Divx or Spy Sweeper
being installed that is responsible for this

Because the likely nexus is integration of foreign code into the
shell, bad apps and malware can indeed be expected to be common
causes. Other causes include:
- "slow" drives, e.g. LAN mappings, CDRs, etc. that bog things down
- corrupted files, such as media files that bog down content lookup
- malware and av that intrude into file access
- issues with OS and add-on indexers
- sick HD retry loops (HD LED on, mouse pointer sticks)
- networking issues
- issues related to NTFS

And even after five months there is no list of file name/date/size
that are known to be problems. And nothing in SP2 appears to
take offensive action to deal with such problems.

Some claim it is all "ShellExtensions", little accessory gadgets
that sort of script extra cute features. The advice for that is
to install free ShellExView and to try (carefully) disabling these
features one at a time, if turning one off doesn't do anything then
turn it back on and try again.

"The problem" as you term it, is actually a failure pattern that can
have many causes. So of course one size doesn't fit all.

I'd love to see any diagnostic method to point out the causes.

ShellExtensionViewer is a hot tip, though; it's the best tool to look
for a wide class of causes that are likely to apply.

Did that, many others did too, only 1% found success with this.

Some claim it is all "corrupted user profiles" that are the
cause of this but I've never been able to track down a tool that
would check a user profile to see if it was corrupted.

This is relevant in that several settings, including classes (file
associations, CLSID integrations etc.) can be overlaid with
user-specific settings from that user profile.

I'd dearly love to see diagnostic advice or tools for this.

They told me I must "have some corrupted files, repair windows
back to install state and then reinstall SP2 twice while in Safe

Ugly. If ChkDsk and AutoChk didn't automatically "kill, bury, deny",
you might have some chance of a cleaner fix.

Look at ChkDsk's logs; has it "fixed" any files lately?
Look at the av's logs; did it "clean" any existing code files lately?

Nope, squeaky clean. Haven't had a problem like that in 5 years,
since I tried to help somebody in the office fix his spreadsheet
and we found he gave me a macrovirus (before I opened the sheet).

Before I did that someone posted the "switch user" workaround
that let me get by temporarily.

More on that? Do you have low RAM with small pagefile? If so (e.g.
128M RAM, pagefile 256M) then set a larger pagefile; say, 512M, and
do NOT use fast user switching (as that increases memory load).

1024 meg, I use Mathematica and want 2048 meg soon.

Also; purge web caches, and - in all user accounts - shrink those web
caches to (say) 20M. That will relieve C: of a lot of clutter and
fragmentation. You've defragged, right?

several times. People used to chant "defrag it again, maybe a miracle
will happen" but that didn't make any difference here. But I've never
seen credible evidence that defrag fixed a real problem.

I just spent another two hours in chat with Microsoft Support ...
the next guy had me run msconfig, in the startup tab disable all
items, in the service tab hide all Microsoft services and disable
all, reboot the machine, tell it not to show or launch the config
window... If the problem had disappeared after this was done then
the instructions were to begin enabling these items one at a time
until the one was found that made this fail.

That's a good approach; you've saved me a lot of typing :-)
IOW:
- get a baseline that works
- add back items on a test-to-break basis

Safe mode works.
A new freshly created user works.
The original user doesn't work no matter how many things MS Support
has me disable. So add-back hasn't been an issue yet.

So the next guy had me download a copy of Process Explorer and dump
out all the dll's that are connected with Windows Explorer and mail
them to him. Just like the situation with shell extensions, I see
that all but a couple of these are Microsoft supplied. After he had
seen the list he asked that I rename some of the non-Microsoft dll's
and reboot, likely to see if they were responsible. The problem was
still there and I've restored the original names. Now we seem to be
back to square one and he's asking again if this happens in Safe
mode, which we have already repeatedly covered.

Does it happen in Safe Mode?

As I said

Does your mouse pointer stick?

never

Now we've sent him HijackThis logs, 3 megabytes of ntuser.dat, he
keeps claiming they DO have a process for figuring this out but
there just isn't anything that can diagnose what the problem is

Can you say "clueless groping, hoping for a miracle"?

Yes, but you are flaming the wrong guys. What I see is a list of
heroic attempts to solve a difficult problem. The folks worth flaming
are the folks who built this OS so that:
- every passing web page can dump trash in the system
- every "document" or "message" can SE it's way to same effect
- there's a huge surface of intrusion points
- there's no maintenance OS to manage these intrusion points

Just in case I don't understand, I'm talking about the paid people
at Microsoft who are supposed to be paid because they are the second
and third level "escalation experts" I get bumped to. If you can
get me escalated to the guys who wrote the OS I'd be impressed.
If you can get them to fix the flaws you mention I'll buy you dinner.

I spent a decade of my life writing high reliability software,
stuff that is now called "six sigma" and a bit beyond that,
stuff that would average 1 failure/2000 user*years.

I don't believe there is any excuse for the failure rate of stuff
that people sell today, but nobody seems to care anymore.

I'd say your problem is 80% likely to be an integration issue, but
there are other causes, especially if the PC is generally slow.

Wonderful. But I don't see how that helps diagnose this. And, nope,
sits here grinding away at Mathematica jobs just as fast as ever.
Only locks up if I touch anything that uses Windows Explorer.

So I'd take a methodical approach, starting with hardware. Check RAM
(even tho that's unlikely to be the problem; bad RAM crashes at full
speed). Check fans; overheating can cause CPU to retreat into thermal
shutdown and thus slow performance. Check HD for physical defects!
This is crucial, because not only will a failing HD cause patchy but
profound slowdown, you'd be at risk of losing data too.

Machine sits here running hard on math jobs without ever burping.

Once the hardware's OK, formally exclude viruses, then exclude
commercial malware. I know a lot of effort has gone into this; if
there's a slip-up, it will most likely be a virus that has eluded
informal attempts to find it.

Ran several different companies antivirus tools several times after
update after update

Ran several different companies antimalware software tools several
times after update after update

and like 95% of the people with the Windows Explorer problem,
never found a thing, given similar advice

Then, check some baseline states:
- Safe Mode
- MSConfig suppression with ALL networks/devices disconnected
- MSConfig suppression with ALL networks disconnected
- MSConfig suppression

Safe mode works, creating fresh user works, original user fails
and I'm trying to get them to diagnose the real cause, not just
bury it and declare a success.
Did all that with MS Support, no joy

One of those should give a "clean" (working) baseline. If not,
revisit earlier tests; bad hardware, file corruption, etc.

Once you have a good baseline, zoom in to what makes this differ from
your desired state (everything plugged in, normal mode).

User x versus user y, Microsoft ran profile x in their lab, no problem.

So I have repeatedly told them I don't just want to randomly change
things until we don't notice the problem anymore, I'm going to track
down the real root cause of this one and we are going to get a fix
for this.

You've done good work and covered a lot of stuff, but you've
mis-interpreted the results. It's not that everone is too useless to
fix "this problem", it's that this problem *pattern* has multiple
possible causes at many levels of abstraction, so that one person's
fix is irrelevant to another person's case.

So I'd think there would be a way, after as they admit to me "that
lots of people have problems with Windows Explorer and we have a
way to diagnose this" that they would have a way to diagnose this.
I purposefully didn't install,uninstall,repair,reformat,etc,etc,etc
because what I had was a completely reproducible example of the bug.
Back when I was in the business I would have killed to have a customer
with a reproducible bug that wanted to help track down the source and
help us get it fixed. And Microsoft support hasn't returned my email
since before christmas now. Maybe after months of doing what they
told me to do they got tired and declared it was a success anyway.

So tell me how to interpret this differently. The Windows Explorer
bug that appears immediately after SP2 for some folks seems pretty
concrete and reproducible for lots and lots of people. Search for
my postings since August in the group, that will show you 200+
people with very similar descriptions.

--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -
Tech Support: The guys who follow the
'Parade of New Products' with a shovel.
--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

I spent 8 years building a product and 2 years supporting it.
Been there, done that, wouldn't ever want to do that for the
quality of stuff they sell today.

thanks for any tangible help in getting this bug or bugs diagnosed
and fixed.

"=?Utf-8?B?QnJlbm5vbiBCb3J0eg==?=" writes:
This was an issue long before SP2 was even a twinkle in Bill Gates' eye.

My apologies for the state of what they call software today.

I was hoping it would be resolved with SP2.

It really puzzles me, how a company can spent likely a year and a huge
sum of money carefully going over every line of software looking for
problems. But when SP2 comes out nothing is mentioned about perhaps
thousands of bugs having been fixed in that year. Even more puzzling
is how the belief got started that nobody in a year ever fixed a single
bug. That's very very odd. But that's what some who supposedly know
what they are doing claim.

It's just now getting to the point
where I am tired of manually going through folder after folder after folder
to find files.

Again, my apologies, and I'm not even responsible for this.

One half-assed bandaid idea: some folks have suggested using non-MS
search tools. They have claimed some of these work much better.
I finally did that with IrFanView because of the problems with the
MS picture and fax viewer saying it couldn't show some gif files.

I don't have any other Explorer-related problems.
Unfortunately, neither a new user nor safe mode resolve the problem... And,
the problem is that search is erroring out and not completing, rather than
locking up the computer. Don't know if this helps refine things or not.

I appreciate the feedback. If there was anything else I could do
I'd be glad to try to help. But it doesn't sound like your problem
is quite the same as the other hundreds of SP2 Windows Explorer
people's problems.

Thanks again

--Brennon

"Don Taylor" wrote:

"=?Utf-8?B?QnJlbm5vbiBCb3J0eg==?=" writes:
Every time I search, Explorer causes an error and fails to complete the
search. I have installed all service packs, updates, etc. Anyone know what
might be causing this or what to try for a solution. Reinstall is really not
an option...

Thanks,
Brennon

Since "all installed all service packs" sounds like SP2 and since
Search uses the Windows Explorer base to run from, it is possible
that you are one more of the people seeing some of the following

New developments listed at the bottom of this, but still no fix, yet.

If you have recently installed SP2 on your computer then
there have now been over 200 people reporting very similar problems
to what you are reporting. Some find that anything which uses
Windows Explorer (Recycle bin, folder shortcuts, control panel,
search, etc) all have a similar problem. Some find that right
clicks are their major problem. Some find any click. Some find
it crashes on open. Some find it refuses any clicks. Some claim
they know how to fix this but I've read the tens of thousands of
postings on SP2 and I don't think you will find any with "the fix"
for this, at least not yet. Less than a dozen people ever reported
finding a solution for this.

But, some find it will work when you boot in safe mode.

And, some find it will work when you create a new user and switch
to that user to try it.

One of those might be a temporary work-around till you get an answer.

Some claim it is all spyware and viruses but I haven't seen any
posting that confirmed this for the Windows Explorer problem. I
carefully and repeatedly checked, no viruses or spyware and my
windows explorer locks up every time. Late breaking news, after
hundreds of people reporting this problem, ONE person did let me
know that trendmicro actually found a WORM_SDDROP.A virus/worm, he
removed that and it appeared to solve his problem, so that's 10,000
times people chanting "it's all viruses and spyware" and one correct
diagnosis

Some claim it is all "bad applications" like Divx or Spy Sweeper
being installed that is responsible for this, a very few people
have confirmed this appeared to be the source of their problem but
others have these installed and have no problem, most reporting the
problem don't have these installed and still have the problem. I
don't have either and it locks up every time. And unfortunately
there is still no list of specific files known to cause this.

Some claim it is all "ShellExtensions", little accessory gadgets
that sort of script extra cute features. The advice for that is
to install free ShellExView and to try (carefully) disabling these
features one at a time, if turning one off doesn't do anything then
turn it back on and try again. I did that with all 75 at once and
it made no difference at all. Two people have reported that disabling
one extension they had did appear to fix their problem.

Some claim it is all "corrupted user profiles" that are the
cause of this but I've never been able to track down a tool that
would check a user profile to see if it was corrupted. There was
one web page that Microsoft had which described a way of reporting
errors found in this but this doesn't appear feasible for XP.

You can try to uninstall SP2, there are various descriptions of how
to do that, using Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs or using a
Restore point or doing a Repair Install of Windows or reformatting
your hard drive, each of those is a bigger hammer than the previous
method, but a number of folks have reported having various problems
when they try to remove SP2 or after they do so. To be fair, SP2
probably fixes thousands of small and massive bugs in Windows XP
and if you can get it to work it is probably a good thing to have.

You can escalate to Microsoft, go to
http://support.microsoft.com/windowsxpsp2 and give them all the
details and clues and patterns you can find. There is no guarantee
that their analysis or directions will be correct or even not make
it worse. They told me I must "have some corrupted files, repair
windows back to install state and then reinstall SP2 twice while
in Safe mode." Before I did that someone posted the "switch user"
workaround that let me get by temporarily. I sent email saying
that if it worked for one user then it seemed less likely it was
"some corrupted files" and asked if they still wanted me to blow
windows away. They have not reponded to that in a number of days
now. But I can imagine what it is like inside now.

You can try each one of these things and see if any one of them
helps, but don't expect a fix.

New Developments
I just spent another two hours in chat with Microsoft Support, he
changed his diagnosis a dozen times, going back to things we had
already concluded had nothing to do with this, he thought that a
file might have been corrupted during installation and this would
leave an error message in /windows/setuperr.log, that file is empty,
so he thought there might be answers in /windows/setupapi.log but
he said he was not trained to know how to interpret that file, and
the final conclusion was that he didn't know how to fix this one
and I was "escalated", again.

So the next guy had me run msconfig, in the startup tab disable all
items, in the service tab hide all Microsoft services and disable
all, reboot the machine, tell it not to show or launch the config
window... If the problem had disappeared after this was done then
the instructions were to begin enabling these items one at a time
until the one was found that made this fail. My Windows Explorer
problem was unchanged and I was "escalated" again.

So the next guy had me download a copy of Process Explorer and dump
out all the dll's that are connected with Windows Explorer and mail
them to him. Just like the situation with shell extensions, I see
that all but a couple of these are Microsoft supplied. After he had
seen the list he asked that I rename some of the non-Microsoft dll's
and reboot, likely to see if they were responsible. The problem was
still there and I've restored the original names. Now we seem to be
back to square one and he's asking again if this happens in Safe
mode, which we have already repeatedly covered.

Now we've sent him HijackThis logs, 3 megabytes of ntuser.dat, he
keeps claiming they DO have a process for figuring this out but
there just isn't anything that can diagnose what the problem is and
they just keep trying things until the problem seems to go away.
And he asks me to send him HijackThis logs again. He admits that
lots of people have problems with Windows Explorer and that usually
they can figure something out but that there is no list of known
file names/sizes/dates/version numbers that fail, there is no list
of steps a person can follow to track this down. And they spent a
billion bucks making Sp2 more secure and bug free! But that doesn't
put anything in the event log for Windows Explorer failures and the
flood of error reports send to them when people have this happens
apparently doesn't give them any clue what the cause is either.

Another week goes by before he responds... and he didn't find
anything in the HijackThis logs this time either. And he didn't
find anything in ntuser.dat. Now he has me back to msconfig,
turning everything off in msconfig for selective startup and
rebooting, with a cute little note that doing this isn't recommended
for anyone but a pro to do. The problem is still there. As a
bonus, his directions have now blown away my Windows activation and
it is telling me that the computer has changed and I have to
reactivate, even though nothing has changed in months.

That didn't do solve the problem so now he concludes it must be one
of the hardware drivers and he tells me to start disabling those
until we find the culprit. But this is senseless, we have already
ruled that out because switching to a freshly created new user makes
the problem go away. He hasn't answered whether he still wants me
to disable the drivers yet.

Can you say "clueless groping, hoping for a miracle"? 3 1/2 weeks
of playing this game with them and no sign that any progress has
been made.

So I have repeatedly told them I don't just want to randomly change
things until we don't notice the problem anymore, I'm going to track
down the real root cause of this one and we are going to get a fix
for this.

I hope something in this helps someone. But it appears that the
large majority of people never get a fix for the "Windows Explorer"
problem. If someone tells you to try something and it doesn't help
then please make a posting so we can start accumulating what
suggestions don't do any good. And if someone tells you something
that does work then please report it.