Explorer.exe crashing when closing a folder?

JoeWed · 9 Sep 2008 at 12:33

Hi All,

Over the last 2 days explorer.exe has decided to crash whenever I close a folder, I scanned with Anti-Virus/Spyware/Adware scanner(s) but they find nothing.

I haven't installed any new software (or windows updates) so I really don't know what would have caused it. I have System-Restore turned off so I can't "roll-back" to a few days ago, and EventViewer just reports:

WinLogon: The shell stopped unexpectedly and Explorer.exe was restarted.

Any ideas how to narrow down what could be causing this? Thanks in advance.

bledd · 9 Sep 2008 at 12:59

do you have crap like toolbars and google desktop installed?

anything like this that hooks into explorer can cause problems

JoeWed · 9 Sep 2008 at 13:02

Hey,

Thanks for the reply, nope, no toolbars for Explorer, only Web Dev Toolbar for IE - but I've always had that.

bledd · 9 Sep 2008 at 13:04

is it EVERY time you close a folder..?

do you have daemontools or any virtual cd/hard drive software installed?

what AV do you have? -does it still crash if this is disabled?

perhaps try creating a new user account and see if that one has the same problem.

lots of questions

JoeWed · 9 Sep 2008 at 13:12

It seems to happen when you close the last instance of a folder, so say you had 3 folders open, you can close 2 of them without it crashing... but once you close the final one it will crash.

Don't have Daemon Tools, or any other Virtual CD.

AV is Avast and it crashes with it both on/off.

Just created a new user account and it does it on there too.

Thanks again for the reply.

bledd · 9 Sep 2008 at 13:25

post a hijackthis log on here

link to hjt
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5554.html

JoeWed · 9 Sep 2008 at 13:45

Hmm, weird I see a few references to Yahoo! Toolbar in that log but I have no Yahoo Toolbar, nor a "C:\program files\Yahoo!" folder, so perhaps that's what is causing the problem.

Log; http://pastebin.com/m21cb3b2f

bledd · 9 Sep 2008 at 13:51

ooh i like that pastebin thing

this is good at reading the logs

http://hijackthis.de/

nothing dodgy looking in there, but you have a lot running to be fair, i'd disable everything that isn't a driver or AV (be careful though)

how heavy were your nlite removals?

JoeWed · 9 Sep 2008 at 14:51

Only used nLite to strip unwanted languages and automate a few bits.

Just stopped pretty much everything that was running (apart from, as you said, drivers/essential system executables) and it's still doing it

!

Edit: Might just use this opportunity to stick my spare copy of Vista on here instead, can't be bothered messing with XP anymore but I'm sure it had something to do with Yahoo

. Thanks for the help.