Windows Explorer has stopped working

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Anyone having this problem? Windows Explorer has stopped working and then
closes and restarts. It doesn't happen initially after booting up. But
after a short period of usage like 3-10 mins, every time I open up Explorer
or Control Panel, Windows Explorer crashes and has to restart.

Look in Event Viewer for clues. Also check out Vista's built-in
troubleshooting tools.

Built-in Diagnostics -
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...agnostics.mspx

Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor (TechNet) -
http://tinyurl.com/2mlbws

Event Viewer How To (TechNet) - http://tinyurl.com/2jejzc

Report back with what you find/results.

This is the event log:

Log Name: Application
Source: Application Error
Date: 5/29/2009 3:28:43 PM
Event ID: 1000
Task Category: (100)
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: User-PC
Description:
Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.6002.18005, time stamp 0x49e01da5, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 6.0.6002.18005, time stamp 0x49e03821, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x00046cb6, process id 0xcbc, application start time 0x01c9e0932ef310ec.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Application Error" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>100</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2009-05-29T19:28:43.000Z" />
<EventRecordID>17644</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>User-PC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>explorer.exe</Data>
<Data>6.0.6002.18005</Data>
<Data>49e01da5</Data>
<Data>ntdll.dll</Data>
<Data>6.0.6002.18005</Data>
<Data>49e03821</Data>
<Data>c0000005</Data>
<Data>00046cb6</Data>
<Data>cbc</Data>
<Data>01c9e0932ef310ec</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

I found one tip that worked for some other people...

Originally Posted by SoftMOL
If your folder contains media files, then this might be the solution:

1. Open command-console (START > RUN > CMD.EXE)
2. enter the command: regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll
3. enter the command: regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll

And that's all folks.

The reason for your crash is a problem with media previews in explorer (explorer calculates a thumbnail view of an image or the first frame of a video file). By disabling this feature (which is useless anyway) explorer stops crashing.

I could not get this to work for me though. It says, "The module 'shimgvw.dll" was loaded but the entry-point DllUnregisterServer was not found." and "The module 'shmedia.dll' was loaded but the entry-point DllUnregisterServer was not found." when I tried it.

Is btncopy.dll on your system... ?

I found one tip that worked for some other people...

Why?
What happens if you remove it?

I've seen it from time to time when mal-formed media files were present on
the harddrive, especially video files, or if there was a problem with an
installed CODEC. Also, just lately, there is an apparent conflict when both
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 and C++ 2005 redistributables are installed at the
same time, which causes random Explorer restarts. In that scenario playing
media files also seems to be implicated in causing the Explorer crash, or
possibly switching between different players. Removing one or the other C++
redistributable solves the problem, at least until some 3rd party software
update/installer re-installs the second C++ version again.

I downloaded ShellExView and disabled Video Thumbnail Extractor and it seems
to have stopped crashing Windows Explorer.

It's possible there is a mal-formed media file or bad codec on the hard
drive, but you would think that would be taken into account and MS would
make Explorer more fault tolerant. I think it more likely it is buggy code
in the way Explorer handles media metadata.

What are you, some kind of trouble maker?

It's for Bluetooth, BT stops working properly if you remove it.

That solution is pretty much the same as was prescribed to fix the same
issue in XP. I prefer to isolate then either repair or delete the culprit
file. Not so sure about building in fault tolerance for malformed files. I'd
rather have Explorer crash than something worse happening after the file is
opened. OTOH a user friendly warning pop-up like "This file is FUBAR,
Quarantine or Delete?" would be more to my liking.

Bluetooth is also causing a problem, but I think it's Broadcom's WIDCOMM
software/driver.

Really not trying to cause trouble. Just curious if that might be related to the problem. For example if removing that stopped the crashing, then you would definitely want to look for an updated version. =\

After installing some windows updates, I was having issues as well. The
error is most notable when attempting to move files in windows explorer
(right click, and windows explorer crashes), but my "save as" button is
also missing much of the time when attempting to download files. The
error showed iexplorer as the culprit, but upon more investigation, it
turned out to be WMP.

Fix for me was to download shellmenuview from 'ShellMenuView -
Disable/enable context menu items of Explorer'

Run the program. Look for greyed out items, highlight them, then right
click and select "enable selected."

Then try to replicate your problem to see if it is fixed.