Windows Explorer crashes when viewing certain folders 10

[BooYaKaSha]

I have this bizarre problem that keeps popping up and is really starting to annoy me:

I have all my documents and my backup files on a D: drive. When I open and view certain folders in Explorer, suddenly that Explorer window quits and I can't access any of the files in there. Usually, but not always, this occurs in a folder in which I have Images.

In the case of my backup files, I can open and view the folder, but when I try to run the installation program, it fails.

And yet still when I try to do any of the above, I get a "Windows Explorer has encountered an error and needs to close..." error, then all of my explorer processes close, including my start menu, and I have to manually restart explorer.

When I copy the parent folder to the desktop and run/open it from there is works fine. I've run Scandisk many times and it never found any problems.

Is there some sort of a limit on the amount of characters in a path & filename that would be causing this error?

Thanks

 

[smah]

Are there MP3's or AVI files in the problem folders?

 

[linney]

Any help or further information from the Event Viewer?

I think the maximum path and file name should not exceed 255 characters but I would of thought that would produce an invalid filename type of error.

 

[BooYaKaSha]

Wow, thanks for the quick response:

Smah: Yeah, I saw that thread about MP3's and AVI's causing a similar problem. But I haven't noticed it with these file types. Right now I am having a problem with one folder in particular that has TIFF, PSD, AI, EPS, and JPG files. A few others I have sinced moved (further up the directory tree, which gave me the thought that maybe it had to do with filenames / paths) and the problem has gone away.

Linney: Yeah, the path doesn't exceed 255, so that's probably not it. This problem has occured several times, and I've reproduced it just a few minutes ago, but there are no event logs. However there is this one from last night:

Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2800.1106, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.1106, fault address 0x00002a84.

Of course when you click the link there is no more available information on this.

On other thing: I did a search inside the offending folder and there is no thumb.db file, but before it crashes and closes, it seems like it is trying to build one, as the thumbnails start appear next to the files, then it dies. Maybe somehow it is choking on the thumbnails? Does this make sense?

 

[beerhunter2]

Don't know if any of these apply.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320563

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811266

 

[linney]

The favourite response seems to be repair or re-install XP. You can read these to see what you think.
Are any of these folders storing compressed thumbnails?
If you are accessing these using Thumbnail view try another view and see if that caused the fault to go away too.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...+ntdll.dll,+version+5.1.2600.1106&sa=N&tab=wg

(Read the last couple of paragraphs also)

http://www.stanford.edu/group/itss-ccs/security/windows-shell.html

286069 - Thumbnails Are Missing from Compressed Folders

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;286069&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[BooYaKaSha]

Thank you.

Beerhunter: Thanks for the links, but I don't have the hardware listed on those links.

Linney:
Thanks for the links -- The first one especially. Seems like I'm not the only one, and the first posting on that link describes the same exact problem, although no solutions as of yet.

I am not using compressed folders. I have tried many different views since you suggested changing the view settings and no luck. But when I copy or move the folder to another location, like the desktop, it's fine.

And recently I had a reoccurence of the Application that refuses to install. I downloaded an update to my keyboard driver from Microsoft. "Could not find Setup.exe (or one of its components)" when I ran it from my downloads folder, but when I copied it to the desktop, it ran fine.

To throw another curveball at you, I thought about checking my system files (sfc /scannow). But since I installed SP1, when it asks me to insert my original XP CD, it tells me I put in the WRONG CD!!!! WTF?

Thanks for you help, I guess the cure-all will be that I'll have to reinstall very shortly. I guess that's cool. Oh well.

 

[linney]

263499 - Prompted for CD-ROM When You Run System File Checker While Correct CD-ROM Is in Drive

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;263499&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[beerhunter2]

You mention the problem with folders with graphic images in them. This may be a file association issue. What grapic image software do you have loaded (ie. Photosuite)?

Try uninstalling this software, then reinstall it to see if this resolves your problem.

 

[BooYaKaSha]

Guys, your suggestions are both MONEY...

Linney: I followed the procedure to change the security settings on the link you provided and not only can I use SFC now, my long-dead autorun has come back to life. Sweet.

Beerhunter: I uninstalled Photoshop, and I can browse the folder with no problems. Reinstalled Photoshop (7) and the problem returns. Unfortunately I need Photoshop.

Thanks Again

 

[pete2eat]

Pete2eat: I had the same problem with the disappearing files in Explorer, XP shutdown and restart. Thanks beerhunter! I use Photoshop 6, removed it according your suggestion, using: Control Panel, Software, remove. To my big surprise Photoshop is still working and now without the file-problem!

 

[beerhunter2]

BooYaKaSha. You mention the following file extensions TIFF, PSD, AI, EPS, and JPG files. Some of these I'm not familiar with. Are they all image files?

If they are, try changing the file associations to point to Internet Explorer. You will still be able to open them using Photoshop, and this may solve your problems.
Is it Happy Hour yet?

 

[BooYaKaSha]

Yeah, TIFF, EPS, and obviously JPG are all image files. TIFF and EPS won't open with IE, prolly because they are Hi-Res print images.

PSD is the native Adobe Photoshop format, and AI is native Adobe Illustrator format.

At this point, I'm willing to put up with the problem. It is a seldom-used folder now anyway. When I need the stuff in there again, I'll just copy it to the desktop and use it from there. I'm just glad I have an idea what the problem is, and that it prolly isn't impending hardware failure. Thanks again for everyone's help.

P.S. -> Pete2Eat: I'm not following you. You said you uninstalled Photoshop and it still works without the file association problem?

 

[pete2eat]

BooYakasha: To be more specific: I tried to uninstall Photoshop. Normally I would use the Photoshop uninstall prgr but I did use the windows software remove prgr. It said it could not remove a lot of files and as a result Photoshop seems to work perfectly. Also the thumbnails in explorer do not change (very)slowly into photoshop-thumbnails as before, ending in a shut down, but they are windows-viewer thumbnails now and don't cause problems. What exactly happened I don't understand but I'm satisfied for the time being. Maybe somebody else knows more about it?

 

[BooYaKaSha]

Wow that is just bizarre. But you described exactly what is happening to me (icons change very slowly to photoshop icons or thumbnails then crash).

What file formats do you have in the folders that are crashing? Are they all Native PSD files?

 

[BooYaKaSha]

I've got it:

At least a big part of it:
I had TIFF files associated with Photoshop. This is off by default, but I changed it because it was more convenient for me. When I changed the file associations back to Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, then problem has since gone away.

 

[pete2eat]

BooYaKaSha: It seems we're coming closer to the point! I had JPG, BMP, PDD, TIFF as wel as PSD Files in the folders. It didn't seem to have anything to do with the type of file. Mostly it happened as far as I was able to see, always on the same file. In a few folders I tried to get rid of the "bad" file before the photoshop-thumbnails slowly "arrived". It helped for a while, but came back. Yes this was really bizarre. Being desperate I even installed a Virtual Machine with Win98 to be able to run Photoshop on my expensive new computer! But it works fine now. Hope the same for you.

 

[KnutG]

Have you tried to disable thumbnails on this folder?
I have seen that some grafics sends the creation of thumbs.db out into the dark forrest.

It is a selection available not to cache the thumbs, try it.

 

[LewfromTampa]

I too have had the problem on numerous occasion. For a while it seemed to occur only with folders with specific .tif files. Renaming, copying, or moving them seemed to work around the problem. Since I do a lot of scanning of fairly large files in .tif format, I decided that a good work-around was to scan in .tif and then save in .psd as my archive copy and then delete the .tif. This worked for quite a while. Then I had a couple of crashes that were resolved by using the DOS shell to delete the .tif files. Then I encountered the problem with a folder that had only .psd files. At that time the problem was occurring when opening any of the image folders that were on the same directory level. These folders and their files had not had a problem before and no changes had been made to them. Numerous re-boots had no effect. This time the work-around was to rename the parent folder. The crashes stopped. I then renamed it to the original name and the problem was still gone. On another occasion I got around the problem by renaming the offending file and then naming it back to its original name. The "fix" has always been associated with some manipulation of the file/directory structure (rather than file content) either through renaming, copying, or moving. It has only happened with folders that have .tif or .psd files. No other folders have crashed. The same offending files do not crash under Win98 Explorer on a different system. It does not seem to be associated with thumbnails (as I too originally suspected) because it has failed without thumbnails and without a thumb.db file in the crashing folder.

I have a Dell Dimension 8250 with 1.5GB RAM, and lots of stuff hanging off it. I keep current with Automatic Updates. I am running Win XP Pro, SP1.

 

[pete2eat]

I re-installed Win XP, installed Photoshop 7, NO Photoshop File-associations (It's now Irfanview-associated) and no Explorer-crashes any more.
Thanks to everyone who contributed solving this problem.