The shell stopped unexpectedly and Explorer.exe was restarted

[jean-paul martell]

My windows xp system is not working properly. At the time of boot up system freezes and after restarting it works for 10 minute but when i open any application it shows error message " The shell stopped unexpectedly and Explorer.exe was restarted". Does anyone know what causes this issue and how to fix it?Any help will be extremely appreciated.

[Calvin K]

To resolve this problem, follow these steps:Click Start, click Run, type regedt32, and then click OK.

Note You must type regedt32. Do not type regedit.
Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/User Shell Folders
In the right pane, double-click StartMenu.
In the String Editor dialog box, type %userprofile%\StartMenu, and then click OK.
Exit Registry Editor.

[jesse]

You can solve this problem by changing the path in Explorer shortcut C:\WINNT\explorer.exe /e,/n OR change your shell to use taskmgr instead of explorer. After changing the shell you can upload explorer.

[Wynn]

To resolve this issue, replace the %windir%\System32\Shell32.dll file with the Osshell32.dll file that is included in update 841356. To do this, follow these steps:

• Extract the Osshell32.dll file from update 841356. To do this, follow these steps: Press CTRL+ALT+DEL, click Task Manager, and then click New Task.
• Extract the Osshell32.dll file from update 841356. For example, type the following in the Open dialog box, and then click OK:
• Drive:\UpdateFolder\UpdateFileName /c
• When you are prompted, type the location of the folder where you want to extract the update files. For example, type the following, and then click OK:
• Drive:\UpdateFolder\841356
• Press CTRL+ALT+DEL, click Task Manager, and then click New Task.
• Extract the Osshell32.dll file from update 841356. For example, type the following in the Open dialog box, and then click OK:
• Drive:\UpdateFolder\UpdateFileName /c
• When you are prompted, type the location of the folder where you want to extract the update files. For example, type the following, and then click OK:
• Drive:\UpdateFolder\841356
• Switch to Task Manager, and then click New Task.
• Copy the Osshell32.dll file that you extracted earlier to the following folder with the following file name:
• Drive:\%windir%\System32\Shell32.dll
• For example, type the following in the Open dialog box, and then click OK:
• xcopy Drive:\updates\841356\Osshell32.dll Drive:\%windir%\System32\Shell32.dll
• Type f when you are prompted to determine whether Shell32.dll is a file or a folder.
• Restart your computer.