windows vista explorer crashes when idle

[jester81]

Firstly i am not all that technological, but we bought this new computer 6 months ago. it is as you would expect fairly new and up to date... it is hp pavilion slimline with intel core 2 duo cpu e4600 @ 2.40GHz with 2046 Mb ram.

basically we download from a P2P website and it is left idle for hours to allow it to download.... but recently whenever it is left idle (after 5 mins or sometimes 2 hrs) explorer freezes even if i am using a new window to check out other stuff on the net.... it just does not register the curser and then says windows explorer not responding and the curser has the busy (circular) symbol which just stays like that....occasionally i can open task manager but a lot of the time that just leads to the curser being busy again and i have no option but to restart the computer.....,

i tried only downloading when doing nothing else....just at night with nothing else running but when i awake it is the same story and i gotta restart again....

any ideas why this is happening? has it happened to others.... looked on net and lots of similar but nothing i could find specifically to help me...

[T.J.]

most often than not, hibernate issues are because of bad/outdated display
drivers. One suggestion would be to visit the device manufacturer's site and
download the latest display drivers and see if the problem goes away. Also
check to see laptop's manufacturer's site for possible BIOS updates.

Please post more information (based on the crash) if the problem persists.

[EINSTEIN_007]

See suggestions given in similar threads: Vista Explorer Crashes When opening Folder containing Vector files
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[unidentified]

The solution is to reset IE to the original defaults.