Hello, I have recently updated from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1. When it finished the install and reboot, it went to my desktop where my background image was gone, Kaspersky Pure 3.0 was gone, and Windows Explorer crashes every time it is opened. The other two problems are not as big of a problem right now so I searched around for a fix on this issue. I found that some applications, specifically Autodesk, were causing conflicts. I don't have Autodesk but I decided to update everything anyways. I reinstalled Kaspersky, fully updated it and ran a scan to see if it was a virus, which it is not. I updated AVG 2014 free, Malwarebytes free, and many others. I also ran Windows Update. I ran CCleaner to see if it would fix the problem and it didn't either. I looked at the error report and saw that it was caused by StackHash_35ff, which through further investigation turned out to be a fancy term for nothing. What is my problem? I really don't want to restore to an older version because I've spent the better part of the day allowing Windows 8.1 to bother me. Please help because I'm out of ideas and nothing from other responses seemed to be the solution.

Okay I have started to just end processes in Task Manager and test Windows explorer after each one. After ending the Com Surrogate task Explorer works again.

Okay, so the above worked. I ended the Com Surrogate task, the went into cmd and typed in these two commands;

regsvr32 vbscript.dll
regsvr32 jscript.dll

Everything seems to be back in order. I hope this helps anyone who has the same problem, seeing as no one else came up with this solution.

• Marked as answer by TanglingPig 8 hours 51 minutes ago