Windows SP3 Error...

[neowillendit]

Hello all,

I receive the following error on occasion and it makes me have to restart my "Explorer.exe" process, which is the start menu, windows explorer, and desktop...and it annoys me severly becuae I am so O.C.D. about my laptop. Could anyone please shed some light on what this possible error could be for:

AppName: explorer.exe AppVer: 6.0.2900.5512 ModName: unknown

ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 03ce5b90

I think the only helpful piece of info in the error above is the "offset:, so I did a search in google for that and it came up with nothing. If there's anything else anyone could ask me to provide, I will do so promptly. I tried to locate the error file windows made, but by the time I got to my "Temp" folder, it had dissappeared, and I did a search and that didn't find it either...please help me.

Thank you all in advance.

[CoffeeFiend]

A large number of those explorer.exe crashes I've seen were due to badly behaving shell extensions, you can disable them using tools like Autoruns.

If that fails, enable minidumps, and once it crashes, zip up the memory dump, upload it on rapidshare or any other similar site, and post a link here. We'll have a peek.

[neowillendit]

Hi "crahak"

Thank you for the reply.

If the problem were with a shell extension, would the error happen when I "Right-Click" the desktop, or files (when it shows the context menu)? I ask because, as of right now, the error happens very randomly, like when I click on a shortcut to files, or open the start menu...there's no behavior pattern.

I'll wait until the error occurs again and get that minidump for you.

Thank you again, "crahak"

[CoffeeFiend]

Nah. Those can crash explorer just about anytime. There's tons of stuff that tends to hook into it (to show special preview thumbnails of certain files, etc), and some shell extensions that associate themselves with all files or folders... They often do bad things (e.g. open file handles and never close them), and eventually explorer.exe crashes. Some of the worst-behaved ones will crash it instantly though.

[neowillendit]

Thank you for the very fast reply "crahak"

Do you happen to know/ever hear if any of the following programs (with shell extensions) have poorly written shell extensions:

-Spy Sweeper w/ AntiVirus

-NOD32 AntiVirus

-FineCrypt

-WinRAR

-Outpost Firewall Pro

Those are all the programs that have entries in my context-menu.

Thank you for your time!! B)

[JedMeister]

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that whilst one of these may be guilty, it could be any software installed on your PC that hooks into explorer.exe. So your list of possibilities is not limited to entries in your context menu, although if they appear there they definitely do!

Even with your list, without version numbers, you can't be assured that your comparing apples to apples. For example I have a copy of WinRAR installed which causes me no problems, but you may have an earlier or later version that had/has a bug that could cause a crash. Just to complicate the issue, it could be caused by a combined effect of two (or more) apps interacting poorly.

The only way you'll be able to figure it out, is if you get some of the Win gurus here to check out your dump file or do what crahak suggested and disable shell extensions using something like Autoruns.

I'd do a full system scan using your current tools, and for good measure try some 2nd and 3rd opinions (such as Spybot, BitDefender online scan, AVG AntiRootkit, etc). As crahak says shell extensions often do bad things, and it doesn't get any badder than malware!

[edit: poor grammar]

Edited August 12, 2008 by JedMeister

[cluberti]

If you want to be sure, attach adplus to explorer and get a crash dump of the application.

[neowillendit]

Thank you all for the replies. The support is appreciated.

I will wait for my laptop to randomly crash again, and I'll upload that minidump file and let you guys know.

Again, I am appreciative for the help.