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Once again...explorer illegal operation error...

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jessiem25

Technical User
Feb 18, 2002
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Well, a while back I was having many problems with windows explorer doing an illegal operation and crashing out. It got so bad that I ended up having to reformat my hard drive and do a clean install of Win 98 (second edition). After all of that, everything was fine. Two days ago, I got another "explorer has performed an illegal operation..." error. But then, after I told it to shut down, I got three more explorer errors just like it! Even after I had told it to shut down. I shut down the machine and restarted it this morning with no problems, but this is very confusing. Is this a windows 98se problem, or should I just chuck my hard drive out the window? Thanks for any help!
 
What is the error message you are getting. Try writing it down and look on the Microsoft support site.
I used to assume when I got IE crashes it was a corrupt installation or registry but I found out alot of IE problems can be caused by something as trivial as the password database or a true type font being corrupted. All you have to do then is resolve a locallised issue and it's alot quicker than re-installing.
 
the problem is with Windows explorer, not internet explorer. And it's always an "explorer has performed an illegal operation and will shut down" message. I've asked around with a lot of tech people, and they've all said it sounded like a hardware problem. I'll check microsoft anyways, though. maybe they'll say something else.
 
Does the Details tab give you any info at all? I've been getting a lot of illegal operations with explorer, and get a lot pointing to Kernel32.dll as the problem module - i have a sinking feeling that kernel32 errors might relate to hardware.. but i get others referring to hp files, in which case i remove & reinstall the printers, similar goes with office.. Depends tho on if you mean the blue screens of death, or jsut the illegal operations..
HTH.
 
the details tab does say that it is a kernel32.dll error, every time. i've been told that this is indeed related to hardware problems. since i'm upgrading anyways, i'm just biding my time until then. but it would be nice to know what causes this problem. thanks for your input!
 
run system file checker and have it check the system files for alterations. It may help.
click on start>run in open type sfc. Then click on scan files. It will go through and check the files. If it finds one that has been altered, it will prompt extract that file, click on yes, but click on "skip" when prompted to create a backup.
When finished, it will probably tell you to reboot, either way reboot the pc.
It has helped me many, many times.
It could be a hardware problem, but with it pertaining to Explorer.exe and pointing to kernel32.dll, I would susptect that if it is not memory related, Explorer.exe could be corrupted, or could have a corrupted driver.
Fedto[cheers]
 
actually the error message is referring to explorer which is one of two programs that are necessary to run windows(the other one being systray)

you can view the task manager (press cntrl+alt+delete 1x only!) sytray and explorer should be in there. those are the ONLY 2 processes needed to run Windows.

your error message is more than likely do to to many programs using memory not avail on your sys.

a fix would be to reboot your computer.

after windows loads see whats in task manager.

anything other than systray and explorer can be "end tasked".

when u end task on explorer you will crash every time!

if you noticed quite a bit of processes in the Task Manager, there are a few ways to prevent this.

one of the basics is to run msconfig at a dos prompt and check out the startup tab. remove what you want (except systray and explorer!)

also, you can reboot into step by step config mode by holding down the f8 after the system boot is complete (if you get to windows splash screen, you went to far, reboot again and tap f8 repeatedly until the boot menu appears)
select the step by step option and see what is being loaded.

let me know if any of this helps

also, a poss fix
 
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