Explorer.exe failure upon lack of partition
OS: Windows 7 HP 32bit Hey, i'm not quite sure how to describe this. It is more of a perplexing observation than anything else. Here's the situation: 1. Have shortcut in your start menu (On the righthand pane) to ...say d:\Folder1 2. Suddenly find yourself without a d:\ partition due to unrelated reasons 3. See explorer.exe and anything related to it completely fail on the next reboot. 4. Point shortcut in your start menu to a existing drive. 5. See everything working again. What is up with that? Why is explorer.exe falling apart (No file explorer, no control panel, no nothing. The taskbar works, however.) if a shortcut in the start menu pane points at a invalid location? The eventlog didn't record anything for this.
October 17th, 2011 7:53pm

Hi, I would like to verify the following situation. 1. Does the D partition disappear when having a shortcut D:\Foder? 2. Where did the shortcut come from? Does it create automatically? If possible, please help me collect the screenshot of the error. How to capture a screenshot ------------------------------------------ a. When the invalid shortcut occurs, press the Print Screen key (PrtScn) on your keyboard. b. Click the "Start" menu, type "mspaint" in the Search Bar and Press Enter. c. In the Paint program, click the "Edit" menu, click "Paste", click the "File" menu, and click "Save". d Save the picture onto your desktop and Upload to SkyDrive. Regarding the issue, please boot in Safe Mode to check the result. Also scan for the computer. Best Regards, Niki Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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October 19th, 2011 12:32pm

What happened to the formating in my original post? It's just one big block now. \:| No, the disappearance of the d: partition was due to some unrelated event involving a partitioning program. (Extended the c: partition size and apparently messed with the table for d: ). The shortcut was put there by making use of the "customize..." option of the task bar. I added "Downloads" as link there, renamed it and changed its location to d:\Folder. So technically this is one of the internal MS shortcuts. (I just repurposed it.) No screenshots can be taken of this, as i'd rather not repeat this particular event, but i suspect it can be done by merely removing the drive letter of the d:\ partition to make it unavailable and rebooting. Edit: I can't for the life of me keep the formatting readable.
October 19th, 2011 8:01pm

Hi, Sometimes the invalid shortcut location corrupts Windows Explorer, it will also make the explorer.exe not responding or fail. As far as I know, most programs or processes corruption will cause explorer.exe failure. I notice you have found solution for this kind of issue, please let me know if you need any further help. Best Regards, Niki Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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October 21st, 2011 5:36am

What exactly is causing this? A (invalid) shortcut seems like a rather harmless thing to completely take out something as integral as the file explorer. I guess all in all this is more me informing you about this particular issue. The more you know.
October 22nd, 2011 4:54am

Hi, The invalid shortcut may take huge CPU usage, then cause other processes not responding. At this time, if explorer.exe process needs to refresh, it will be not responding and then close. The issue also should be related to the priority of the process handling. Best Regards, Niki Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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October 26th, 2011 12:29pm

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