explorer.exe crashing when expanding "My Computer" 1

[DrMaggie]

Hi,

I have a Windows 2000 Professional system which suddenly started experiencing severe problems with its Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) after that I had installed the latest upgrades from the windowsupdate website (windowsupdate.microsoft.com).

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that everything was fine until I upgraded to Internet Explorer 6 (from 5.5 SP2).

The symptom was that whenever I opened an instance of Windows Explorer to work with the file system, and clicked to expand "My Computer" (to see my local disks), up popped a window with the message "explorer.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created."

Of course, explorer restarted itself which was fine (except for the loss of a few icons in the tray), but a new attempt caused the same problem. Funnily enough, clicking on any other entry except My Computer didn't cause any crashes, including My Documents, My Network Places and the Recycle Bin.

I decided to reapply Win2000 service pack 2 and to reinstall Internet Explorer 6. Neither helped - my Windows Explorer was still crashing whenever I selected My Computer.

Now I got mad, and wanted to uninstall IE 6 - but I could no longer find the corresponding entry under Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs ! (It had been there previously.) Now, that is bad, since I don't know any other way to uninstall it - and IE 5.5 can't be installed on top of IE 6, but I decided not to worry more about this particular problem. (Anyone know what to do about this???)

I started looking around on the web, and saw that many other people are reporting similar problems with "upgraded Win2000" systems experiencing explorer crashes - but I didn't find any solutions, only problem reports. Searching the Microsoft site didn't offer any help on this particular problem, but I did find some info on command-line switches for explorer.exe

To implement these switches, one can modify the definition of the "Windows Explorer" shortcut under Start->Programs->Accessories - simply change the command line in the Target: field. Default is "%systemroot%\explorer.exe" (without the double quotes).

After I changed this to
"%systemroot%\explorer.exe /select,c:\" in order to force the system to start with displaying another root, I ended up with explorer starting up with My Computer already expanded - and the problem I had before is gone!

Now, this is not a solution but only a workaround - there must be something fishy going on "behind the scenes" - but at least I can now manage my file system again...

Does anybody out there have a proper explanation for all of this (and/or a real fix - like a registry hack)?

Peace and Prosperity!

DrMaggie

 

[kannanof]

hi,
I don't know if this will help in any way, but I had a recent problem with my 2k Pro because of a trojan virus named W32.dlder
I used Inoculate virus protection and it picked it up and got rid of it. I checked some sites and found that the virus was only detected and protected against around 12/29/01. So if your problems were recent, then that could have soem play in the problem.

 

[DrMaggie]

kannanof:

Thank's for your suggestion - but I don't think that was it.

Firstly, my system is scanned daily using up-to-date anti-virus software (Trend PCcillin), and this didn't report any virus infections.

Secondly, the problem only started (directly) after I had made the system upgrades (including the recommended critical upgrades starting with those dated early December 2001) and upgraded IE from 5.5 to 6.

This suggests to me that there is now some mismatch between dll's or that explorer.exe became corrupted... However, running the system file checker (SFC) didn't point to any really necessary files having been altered in any way.

However, you are perfectly right that various worms & viruses can wreak havoc with system-related files...

DrMaggie

 

[Tudor]

The same thing happened to me after upgrading to IE 6.I also had problems with IE, the computer suddenly just freezed, aspecially on pages with Javascript. I solved the problem by uninstalling IE 6, reinstalled IE 5.5 sp2 and change my Bios setting for System Performance from High Performance to Normal Performance.

Tudor

Hope this can help you...

 

[DrMaggie]

Tudor:

Thanks for the information! I would like to try to uninstall IE 6, but since for some reason there is no longer an entry for it in the Add/Remove Programs list, I don't know how to get rid of it!

When I tried installing IE 5.5 on top of IE 6 (without doing an uninstall), I got a message that this was not possible because I had a later version of the software installed.

Do you know how I can reobtain the Add/Remove entry for IE 6? I used to have some "tweak" program that did things like that, but I can't find it anymore.

In the meantime, I am pretty happy with the workaround I described - but of course it would be good to fix it.

Thanks anyway!

DrMaggie
---------
"Those who don't know the mistakes of the past won't be able to enjoy it when they make them again in the future."
— Leonard McCoy, MD (in Diane Duane's Doctor's Orders)

 

[rjbj]

In the C:\WINNT folder there is a text file called "Active Setup log.txt" This tells you what went wrong with the setup of IE6.0

 

[DrMaggie]

rjbj:

Thanks for the tip regarding the installation log file - but I see no signs of problems there (all exit codes are 0, meaning the various steps were all OK)...

I'll just wait for the next version/upgrade of IE.

DrMaggie
---------
"Those who don't know the mistakes of the past won't be able to enjoy it when they make them again in the future."
— Leonard McCoy, MD (in Diane Duane's Doctor's Orders)

 

[MovingTarget]

Try this:

Since your having problems with explorer, go to Start, Run and type in the following

C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Setup\setup.exe

Once you the file, it will ask you "Do you want to rollback to a previous version of IE"

That should do it

 

[DrMaggie]

MovingTarget:

Thanks for the advice, but there is no such folder and no corresponding exe-file on my computer (there is an "Uninstall information" folder, though).

When I run ie6setup.exe, I have no choice but to install from scratch (and on Win2k, MS don't give you any other options, like customizing the install, that you had for Win9x and NT).

However, like I said, my system runs more or less OK, so I'll rather let it be. Thanks for your helpful hint, though!

DrMaggie
---------
"Those who don't know the mistakes of the past won't be able to enjoy it when they make them again in the future."
— Leonard McCoy, MD (in Diane Duane's Doctor's Orders)

 

[MovingTarget]

No worries, just sorry it didn't help

 

[mrblonde]

Are you up to date with all your patches n' such? I had the similar problem. Oh wait, I ran a scandisk, and then a defrag. I'm pretty sure that's what nailed it. I am using IE 6 as well.

Good luck...