Problem with Windows Explorer on XP-Pro/SP2

Recently I am having problems with Windows Explorer (NOT Internet Explorer!)
on my laptop running XP-Pro with SP2 installed. Intermittently, when I start
it I get the following error message: "Windows Explorer has encountered a
problem and needs to close." The desktop then refreshes and some of the
icons in the tray on the right side of the task bar disappear, though the
programs are still active.

I keep my Norton Internet Security and Lavasoft programs up to date and run
virus and spyware checks at least once a week. So it is unlikely to be a
problem related to a virus or spyware.

I know I didn't have the problem before I installed SP2, but can't swear to
it that it started right after the SP2 upgrade.

Any ideas?

--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr
3906 Ridge Road
Annandale, VA 22003-1833, USA
Phone (703)637-0358
This message has been virus checked by Norton AntiVirus

Karl -- sorry no fix here, but I experience the exact same problem with my
system. So the problem is not you, but Microsoft. I hope they give you a
fix because I am monitoring your message.
Denny

"Karl Jahr" wrote:

Recently I am having problems with Windows Explorer (NOT Internet Explorer!)
on my laptop running XP-Pro with SP2 installed. Intermittently, when I start
it I get the following error message: "Windows Explorer has encountered a
problem and needs to close." The desktop then refreshes and some of the
icons in the tray on the right side of the task bar disappear, though the
programs are still active.

I keep my Norton Internet Security and Lavasoft programs up to date and run
virus and spyware checks at least once a week. So it is unlikely to be a
problem related to a virus or spyware.

I know I didn't have the problem before I installed SP2, but can't swear to
it that it started right after the SP2 upgrade.

Any ideas?

--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr
3906 Ridge Road
Annandale, VA 22003-1833, USA
Phone (703)637-0358
This message has been virus checked by Norton AntiVirus

Thanks, Denny. Dan Taylor responded to an earlier message of mine with 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.

--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr
3906 Ridge Road
Annandale, VA 22003-1833, USA
Phone (703)637-0358
This message has been virus checked by Norton AntiVirus
"Denny Sharpe" wrote in message
...
Karl -- sorry no fix here, but I experience the exact same problem with my
system. So the problem is not you, but Microsoft. I hope they give you a
fix because I am monitoring your message.
Denny

"Karl Jahr" wrote:

Recently I am having problems with Windows Explorer (NOT Internet
Explorer!)
on my laptop running XP-Pro with SP2 installed. Intermittently, when I
start
it I get the following error message: "Windows Explorer has encountered a
problem and needs to close." The desktop then refreshes and some of the
icons in the tray on the right side of the task bar disappear, though the
programs are still active.

I keep my Norton Internet Security and Lavasoft programs up to date and
run
virus and spyware checks at least once a week. So it is unlikely to be a
problem related to a virus or spyware.

I know I didn't have the problem before I installed SP2, but can't swear
to
it that it started right after the SP2 upgrade.

Any ideas?

--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr
3906 Ridge Road
Annandale, VA 22003-1833, USA
Phone (703)637-0358
This message has been virus checked by Norton AntiVirus

Karl

it sound like you have got a virus, see discussion of this error message on
the following link

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper....html#10534701

Definitely no virus or spyware. I update both virus and spyware definitions
regularly and ran virus checker Norton Internet Security and Lavasoft
Ad-Aware with not bad results.

"Uncle John" wrote in message
...
Karl

it sound like you have got a virus, see discussion of this error message
on the following link

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper....html#10534701

Karl
Yes but you may have had a virus which has done some damage and anyway the
article tells you how to fix the problem from the ground up, whatever the
cause.

Thanks. But I am sure, I never had a virus. Others had the same problem, and
it wasn't virus related either.
--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr
3906 Ridge Road
Annandale, VA 22003-1833, USA
Phone (703)637-0358
This message has been virus checked by Norton AntiVirus
"Uncle John" wrote in message
...
Karl

it sound like you have got a virus, see discussion of this error message
on the following link

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper....html#10534701

Karl,
There is a lot of malware out there. Ad-aware is good but won't catch
everything- neither will any anti-virus program.

This problem is probably being caused by another program- something
interacting with Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer- possibly even a
legitimate program.

I'd suggest that you work through the pre-cleaning steps at
http://www.aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm then post a HijackThis log to the forum
at http://forum.aumha.org/viewforum.php?f=30

Or, a legitimate program may be causing the problem. Disable any programs
which might be interacting with IE. Look at privacy/security programs,
ad-blockers, AV, etc. One of them may need to be reinstalled or may need an
update to work with SP2.

This article may help:
276393 - Understanding and Troubleshooting Unrecoverable Errors in Internet
Explorer: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=276393

Don
[MS MVP- IE/OE]


"Karl Jahr" karl[at]jahr.us wrote in message
...
Thanks. But I am sure, I never had a virus. Others had the same problem,
and
it wasn't virus related either.
--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr

I think the chance of this being caused by virus or spyware is very slim,
because I am so conscious about what I am doing and in keeping my machine
clean and in top condition by checking for virus and spyware. Before I go to
the rigmarole of checking and trying based on suspected malware activity, I
believe I am suffering something where SP2 doesn't like to cooperate with
Win Explorer. So, I live with the problem until either MS solves it, or
someone has figured out what really happens. Thanks for your advise,
however.

--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr
3906 Ridge Road
Annandale, VA 22003-1833, USA
Phone (703)637-0358
This message has been virus checked by Norton AntiVirus
"Don Varnau" don_04[at]varnau[dot]org wrote in message
...
Karl,
There is a lot of malware out there. Ad-aware is good but won't catch
everything- neither will any anti-virus program.

This problem is probably being caused by another program- something
interacting with Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer- possibly even a
legitimate program.

I'd suggest that you work through the pre-cleaning steps at
http://www.aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm then post a HijackThis log to the
forum
at http://forum.aumha.org/viewforum.php?f=30

Or, a legitimate program may be causing the problem. Disable any programs
which might be interacting with IE. Look at privacy/security programs,
ad-blockers, AV, etc. One of them may need to be reinstalled or may need
an
update to work with SP2.

This article may help:
276393 - Understanding and Troubleshooting Unrecoverable Errors in
Internet
Explorer: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=276393

Don
[MS MVP- IE/OE]


"Karl Jahr" karl[at]jahr.us wrote in message
...
Thanks. But I am sure, I never had a virus. Others had the same problem,
and
it wasn't virus related either.
--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr

"Don Varnau" don_04[at]varnau[dot]org writes:
Karl,
There is a lot of malware out there. Ad-aware is good but won't catch
everything- neither will any anti-virus program.

I've been dealing with "The Windows Explorer" problem that several
hundred people have reported showing up immediately after installing
SP. Of all those reports a single person did find a virus and that
removing it did appear to fix his problem.

Now I realize that someone could report that flames were shooting
out of their computer and a dozen people would begin chanting that
it is obviously a malware problem.

But lets you and I settle what this problem is in just my case.
I've been obediently followwing all the instructions for three
months with Microsoft support. Nothing they have asked me to do
has found any evidence of malware. Nothing they have done has
given any hint what the problem was. But let's settle it.

This problem is probably being caused by another program- something
interacting with Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer- possibly even a
legitimate program.

I'd suggest that you work through the pre-cleaning steps at
http://www.aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm then post a HijackThis log to the forum
at http://forum.aumha.org/viewforum.php?f=30

Or, a legitimate program may be causing the problem. Disable any programs
which might be interacting with IE. Look at privacy/security programs,
ad-blockers, AV, etc. One of them may need to be reinstalled or may need an
update to work with SP2.

I've mailed them hijack logs, I've mailed them ntuser.dat, I've done
virus scans, I've done malware scans, I've disabled every shellextension
in the entire system, I've disabled EVERYTHING in msconfig before boot.

And I and hundreds of others still find that everything which uses
Windows Explorer still just keeps demonstrating the exact same problem.

Let's settle this.

This article may help:
276393 - Understanding and Troubleshooting Unrecoverable Errors in Internet
Explorer: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=276393

Don
[MS MVP- IE/OE]


"Karl Jahr" karl[at]jahr.us wrote in message
...
Thanks. But I am sure, I never had a virus. Others had the same problem,
and
it wasn't virus related either.
--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr

Hi Don,
I've seen your posts. I agree that you've been thorough. I believe that
malware is only one of many possible causes of the Windows Explorer problem.

In Karl's case, if he has *only* used Ad-aware, NIS and an AV program, he
hasn't done a complete and thorough check for malware. I helped someone with
this recently and removing some adware/spyware files fixed Explorer.

Don
[MS MVP- IE/OE]

"Don Taylor" dont[at]agora.rdrop.com wrote in message
...
"Don Varnau" don_04[at]varnau[dot]org writes:
Karl,
There is a lot of malware out there. Ad-aware is good but won't catch
everything- neither will any anti-virus program.

I've been dealing with "The Windows Explorer" problem that several
hundred people have reported showing up immediately after installing
SP. Of all those reports a single person did find a virus and that
removing it did appear to fix his problem.

Now I realize that someone could report that flames were shooting
out of their computer and a dozen people would begin chanting that
it is obviously a malware problem.

But lets you and I settle what this problem is in just my case.
I've been obediently followwing all the instructions for three
months with Microsoft support. Nothing they have asked me to do
has found any evidence of malware. Nothing they have done has
given any hint what the problem was. But let's settle it.

This problem is probably being caused by another program- something
interacting with Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer- possibly even a
legitimate program.

I'd suggest that you work through the pre-cleaning steps at
http://www.aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm then post a HijackThis log to the
forum
at http://forum.aumha.org/viewforum.php?f=30

Or, a legitimate program may be causing the problem. Disable any programs
which might be interacting with IE. Look at privacy/security programs,
ad-blockers, AV, etc. One of them may need to be reinstalled or may need
an
update to work with SP2.

I've mailed them hijack logs, I've mailed them ntuser.dat, I've done
virus scans, I've done malware scans, I've disabled every shellextension
in the entire system, I've disabled EVERYTHING in msconfig before boot.

And I and hundreds of others still find that everything which uses
Windows Explorer still just keeps demonstrating the exact same problem.

Let's settle this.

This article may help:
276393 - Understanding and Troubleshooting Unrecoverable Errors in
Internet
Explorer: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=276393

Don

"Karl Jahr" karl[at]jahr.us wrote in message
...
Thanks. But I am sure, I never had a virus. Others had the same
problem,
and it wasn't virus related either.

"Don Varnau" don_04[at]varnau[dot]org writes:
Hi Don,
I've seen your posts. I agree that you've been thorough. I believe that
malware is only one of many possible causes of the Windows Explorer problem.

I created that to list off every known thing to try for the hundreds of
people who found this problem minutes after they installed SP2. And it
doesn't really look like it did any good for anyone, with the exception
of three or four people out of the hundreds who did find that one of
the chanted platitudes actually did turn out to apply to their case.

In Karl's case, if he has *only* used Ad-aware, NIS and an AV program, he
hasn't done a complete and thorough check for malware. I helped someone with
this recently and removing some adware/spyware files fixed Explorer.

So let's actually track down and really diagnose the causes. By
my count about 95% of the people reporting the Windows Explorer
problem never reported finding a solution. And from what I can
tell there has been ZERO progress on this after the first week or
so of people reporting the problem, not a single new method of
tracking this down, not a single discovery, nothing.

There is lots of finger pointing and chanting that it is spyware.
And absolutely zero diagnostic information has been presented.
There isn't even a list of file name/path/size/date that are known
to be problems. Nobody has a script that scans a system and points
out a list of files that are known to have caused SP2 problems.

Corrupted user profiles are blamed. There is no cute script for
XP that can catch errors generated by a corrupted profile, even
though there is apparently something like this for NT mentioned in
one of the Microsoft web pages.

Something that astonishes me, Microsoft likely spent billions
creating SP2 and from the tens of thousands of messages I've read
it doesn't contain a single line of code to prepare itself for being
installed on compromised machines WHEN THE REASON THEY SPENT THE
BILLIONS WAS BECAUSE THERE WERE MILLIONS OF COMPROMISED MACHINES
OUT THERE.

There is apparently not a single line of code to recognize a
machine compromise and put it into the log so that it can be
recognized and sterilized. Shortly after SP2 was released there
was a stream of messages posted by people about an error with
not being able to run a DOS program. Autoexec had been clobbered
and nothing in SP2 considered corrupting a system file as anything
that needed to be noted in the logs.

So as I said, let's settle it, let's diagnose a cause, or a few
dozen causes if you believe there are multiple causes.

Don
[MS MVP- IE/OE]

"Don Taylor" dont[at]agora.rdrop.com wrote in message
...
"Don Varnau" don_04[at]varnau[dot]org writes:
Karl,
There is a lot of malware out there. Ad-aware is good but won't catch
everything- neither will any anti-virus program.

I've been dealing with "The Windows Explorer" problem that several
hundred people have reported showing up immediately after installing
SP. Of all those reports a single person did find a virus and that
removing it did appear to fix his problem.

Now I realize that someone could report that flames were shooting
out of their computer and a dozen people would begin chanting that
it is obviously a malware problem.

But lets you and I settle what this problem is in just my case.
I've been obediently followwing all the instructions for three
months with Microsoft support. Nothing they have asked me to do
has found any evidence of malware. Nothing they have done has
given any hint what the problem was. But let's settle it.

This problem is probably being caused by another program- something
interacting with Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer- possibly even a
legitimate program.

I'd suggest that you work through the pre-cleaning steps at
http://www.aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm then post a HijackThis log to the
forum
at http://forum.aumha.org/viewforum.php?f=30

Or, a legitimate program may be causing the problem. Disable any programs
which might be interacting with IE. Look at privacy/security programs,
ad-blockers, AV, etc. One of them may need to be reinstalled or may need
an
update to work with SP2.

I've mailed them hijack logs, I've mailed them ntuser.dat, I've done
virus scans, I've done malware scans, I've disabled every shellextension
in the entire system, I've disabled EVERYTHING in msconfig before boot.

And I and hundreds of others still find that everything which uses
Windows Explorer still just keeps demonstrating the exact same problem.

Let's settle this.

This article may help:
276393 - Understanding and Troubleshooting Unrecoverable Errors in
Internet
Explorer: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=276393

Don

"Karl Jahr" karl[at]jahr.us wrote in message
...
Thanks. But I am sure, I never had a virus. Others had the same
problem,
and it wasn't virus related either.

Don
You say, let's settle it, let's diagnose a cause, or a few dozen causes if
you believe there are multiple causes. The link I gave earlier
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper....html#10534701
can be viewed by non-members: joining is easy and then a number of valid
solutions can be viewd solutions can be viewed.
This particular post related to the same question as Karl's. Although the
first attempted solutions were based on the assumption that the problem was
due to a virus or malware of some kind, the eventual solution found showed
that this was not the case.

So why not visit the group, joining is easy.

"Uncle John" writes:
Don
You say, let's settle it, let's diagnose a cause, or a few dozen causes if
you believe there are multiple causes. The link I gave earlier
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper....html#10534701
can be viewed by non-members: joining is easy and then a number of valid
solutions can be viewd solutions can be viewed.
This particular post related to the same question as Karl's. Although the
first attempted solutions were based on the assumption that the problem was
due to a virus or malware of some kind, the eventual solution found showed
that this was not the case.

So why not visit the group, joining is easy.

Well that sounds like a reasonable option.

Before I spend the money to do this would you offer an opion?

Based on your experience, given what you have already said you have
seen me do to try to resolve my Windows Explorer problem and that
I've decided I actually want to track down the cause of this (rather
than just reinstall or randomly change things until we don't see
the problem any more, apparently wanting to actually track down the
real cause of something so that it might someday benefit others or
maybe even get fixed appears to dumbfound some folks)

What do you estimate my chances might be of success with the list
if I paid for a few months?

Reading the exchange you pointed towards did finally appear to get
him an answer after a bit of groping around, dead ends, "delete
this", "restore that", "reinstall this", and the usual blame that
anyything wrong is because of spyware and viruses, and even after
it appeared he had a solution someone was saying this was likely
not the correct answer.

If I'm nuts enough to really want to resolve the cause of at least
one Windows Explorer bug, what do you guess my chances of success
are? And I realize this is just an estimate, given your experience
with being a member of the group there. If there is a reasonable
chance then spending $30 or so for this seems reasonable. If there
is little or no chance of accomplishing what I've described then
this seems much more questionable.

Thanks

Very interesting news:

On my system the problem is NOT intermittent, but the crash occurs
every second time I invoke Windows Explorer or one of its derivatives
(control panel, my computer, etc).

Can anyone reproduce this?

Karl Jahr wrote:
Recently I am having problems with Windows Explorer (NOT Internet
Explorer!)
on my laptop running XP-Pro with SP2 installed. Intermittently, when
I start
it I get the following error message: "Windows Explorer has
encountered a
problem and needs to close." The desktop then refreshes and some of
the
icons in the tray on the right side of the task bar disappear, though
the
programs are still active.

I keep my Norton Internet Security and Lavasoft programs up to date
and run
virus and spyware checks at least once a week. So it is unlikely to
be a
problem related to a virus or spyware.

I know I didn't have the problem before I installed SP2, but can't
swear to
it that it started right after the SP2 upgrade.

Any ideas?

--
Have a nice day
Karl Jahr
3906 Ridge Road
Annandale, VA 22003-1833, USA
Phone (703)637-0358
This message has been virus checked by Norton AntiVirus