Windows explorer crashes when I attempt to rename or play an avi file. Doesn't happen every time, when it does crash it won't crash again for another half hour or something. Also the Dr Watson Postmortem Debugger crashes sometimes when it does as well.1 person needs an answerI do too

What isyour system make and model?What is your XP version and Service Pack?What does crashing mean to you?If you are seeing some kind of error message, it would help to know exactly what it says. Of course Explorer should not be crashing and chances are somebody has already seen your type of failure condition and knows exactly how to fix it.When Explorer does crash, do you have to reboot your system to get it going again and if not, what to you do after a crash?If you are renaming of playing an AVI file are you right clicking it to do so and is that when then this crash occurs (when right clicking a file)/Please provide additional information about your system:What is your system make and model?What is your XP version and Service Pack?Describe your current antivirus and anti malware situation: McAfee, Symantec, Norton, Spybot, AVG, Avira!, MSE, Defender, ZoneAlarm, PC Tools, Comodo, etc.If it is Windows Explorer that is malfunctioning, suspect a non Microsoft Explorer Shell Extension. Shell Extensions help make up the Right Click menu for files you see in Explorer.You can download ShellExView from here to see which ones you have loaded:http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.htmlShellExView doesn't install anything on your computer, it just runs and displays.When you launch it, the non MS extensions will be in light pink, but on some systems that is a hard color to see, so click View, Choose Columns and move the Microsoft column closer to the top so you can see it on your screen without having to scroll left and right.Sort the display by clicking the Microsoft column so all the "No"s are at the top and easy to see.The "No"s in the list would be things you or applications you have installed have added to your system (the non Microsoft ones).I am not a trial and error advocate, but I can't think of another way to do this...Right click and disable the non Microsoft extensions one at a time keeping a list so you can enable them again later if desired. The result of the change is immediate and no reboot is required. Test your failure condition. Disabling an extension does not uninstall anything.If you recognize any extensions that may have been added or downloaded recently, start with those. The Extensions are not uninstalled, just temporaruly disabled.You could also just disable all the non Microsoft extensions, reboot and enable them one at a time until you find the one that generates the condition.The hope is that you will find the one Extension that causes the error and then you can figure out what to do about it - usually you need to get an update from the maker of the extension from their WWW page.I don't have your issue but I can when you disable/enable the extensions, the Extension is immediately disabled, so disabling one does not seem to require a reboot but if you find the problem, I would reboot anyway to really be sure.If you find the extension that is the problem, please let us know what it is so i can add it to my list.While you are waiting, it would not hurt to scan your system for malicous software:Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining issues:Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware detection programs:Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/They can be uninstalled later if desired.When the scans run clean, then troubleshoot any remaining issues.Do, or do not. There is no try.I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

I have Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002 SP3 on a dell dimension 9150I have McAfee Security Center and my subscription is fully paid up.When windows explorer crashes, a message pops up saying windows explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close, so I send an error to microsoft and then my toolbar disappears and windows explorer restarts, so no need to reboot my system. Sometimes when it happens dr watson postmortem debugger also crashes, the same message pops up but my system then freezes, so I have to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, find the drwtsn.exe file and manually close it and that reboots windows explorer.I have disabled all non microsoft extensions and I will wait and see if that has fixed it. I will do what you suggested and try the malware detection programsthank you, I will let you know how I get on

Good job.Do not get your hopes up about getting any kind of response back from Microsoft when you choose to send them those information requests. Sometimes folks find feel that request for information is an invasion of their privacy, so you can configure XP to stop doing that part, but that will not fix the problem of explorer crashing... The explorer.exe should not be crashing so it is better to just figure it out and fix it.You will figure it out.Do, or do not. There is no try.I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

Would changing those settings on the shellexview cause windows to completely freeze on startup? Woke up this moring and booted up my system and my desktop completely froze, I'd double click on my documents and it would open like 5 minutes later, then it would freeze again, I eventually got it to unfreeze by opening mcafee and starting a virus scan but now it keeps on freezing, I tried undoing the things I did on shellexview and that didn't work.

You implemented ShellExView to figure out if a non Microsoft shell extension was causing Explorer to crash. If Explorer is no longer crashing with the non MS extesnions disabled, that would be good prgoress.You could now have some other problem to figure out because your system should not be hanging. You are zeroing in on it.Once things got going, did everything work okay and you only have the problem when you first start up and is it repeatable?I would be more inclined to look at McAfee since it is known to be a system resource hog - and I don't remember what it does when it starts up (scan the whole system, update itself, etc.). I am not going to install it to experiment with it anymore either. I just stay away from it.Did you buy, download or get your McAfee free from your Internet Service Provider and when you installed it, did you have something in place before McAfee (like Norton)? If you had something else and did not uninstall the old stuff properly before installing McAfee, that can cause problems via conflicts. Do you have anything else installed with McAfee? It is possible to have too much protection installed and some tools don't like the other tools.I would do some more shutdown/restart testing and try to see if the hanging happens again and is repeatable (maybe you have to do it 10 times). If it is repeatable and that is your only clue, that would be good and you will have to isolate the fault by starting to eliminating "extra" things one at a time.I would disable McAfee completely, or temporarily uninstall it (if that is not too much burden) and see if your repeatable slow restart/hanging issue is resolved when McAfee is not in the picture. How do things work if there is no McAfee (there are "better" alternatives to McAfee IMHO, but some folks adore it). I am not sure what all you would have to do to just temporarily disable McAfee using something like MSCONFIG.Many AV tools have gotten so complicated that uninstalling them from Add/Remove Programs is no longer sufficient. Some now have their own cleanup tools and so does McAfee. Here is a comprehensive list of AV uninstalling tools (McAfee is in there).http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2009/05/05/comprehensive-list-of-uninstallers-or-removal-tools-for-antivirus-software/#more-2878If your new issue goes away with no McAfee, you could reinstall a fresh copy of McAfee if you are compelled to use it and see if the issue comes back and/or then look at some alternatives.If XP keeps freezing, there is a way to figure that out too, but I would squint at McAfee first. Other folks may have some other ideas too.Do, or do not. There is no try.I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

It did keep repeating, I could click on any icons or the start button so I had to press and hold the power button to shut it off that way. When McAfee starts up it just checks for updates. I had mcafee with the system when I bought it and I have continued to renew it every year. I have never used another anti virus program on my system. I have uninstalled and installed it again and it seems to have done the trick. I did a full system scan for any viruses or spyware and it came up with nothing.After reinstalling mcafee that seems to have done the trick, the system isn't freezing anymore. After all this should I redo what I did at first and disable all non microsoft shell extensions? Windows hasn't crashed yet from the original problem with the avi files.

It did keep repeating, I could click on any icons or the start button so I had to press and hold the power button to shut it off that way. When McAfee starts up it just checks for updates. I had mcafee with the system when I bought it and I have continued to renew it every year. I have never used another anti virus program on my system. I have uninstalled and installed it again and it seems to have done the trick. I did a full system scan for any viruses or spyware and it came up with nothing.After reinstalling mcafee that seems to have done the trick, the system isn't freezing anymore. After all this should I redo what I did at first and disable all non microsoft shell extensions? Windows has crashed once since all this happened with mcafee

It sounds like you are making good progress.Explorer should not be crashing and if it is, I would work isolating it to one of the non MS shell extensions to figure it out (like you are doing). If it still crashes with just legitimate Microsoft extensions, we need to look someplace else. When you find the extension that you think is the problem, I wish you would let us know (I have a list).Just because McAfee didn't find anything, doesn't mean there is no malicious software. It just means that McAfee didn't find any malicious software that it knows about. No single scanning program knows about everything so it is wise to use more than one but it is usually unwise to have more than one that uses some kind of real time protection (one that runs all the time in the background) since they will sometimes collide with each other and your system performance will be impaired.You can certainly keep your McAfee, but I would also recommend doing updated scans with MBAM and SAS once in a while (as indicated above) to see if they will find things that McAfee might have missed. The free MBAM and SAS only run on demand. After you run MBAM, then run SAS, SAS will usually just find a bunch of tracking cookies, but that combination of the two works pretty good for me and I surf dangerously (on purpose of course). If you don't like MBAM and SAS, just uninstall them.Do, or do not. There is no try.I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

Windows explorer just crashed again so I made a note of the version number of the program that is causing the problem, it's version 6.0.2900.5512 and the only shell extensions with that version numbers are all microsoft ones. There are approx 40 of them