WinXP SP3 explorer.exe crashes after nvidia driver 3xx installed when right click on the desktop

[xrayer]

Hi,

I upgraded VGA in my PC from 7900GT to GTX670 (WinXP SP3 with current XPE/POS Ready updates). Even when I cleaned out old drivers with Driver Sweep I'm having troubles with newly installed nvidia drivers. I tried different versions from 305.x to latest XP compatible ver. 368.81 and I installed only the driver (no update, physx, etc.) The problem is when I clicked with right mouse button on the desktop (or press windows context menu key) the explorer.exe crashes with typical error window with available stackdump to send a report. When I click OK the desktop disapears for a second and explorer process restarts itself. When I go to control panels I can start nvidia control panel normally and everything else seems to be working. When I uninstall nvidia drivers via control panels add/remove it still keeps crashing when click on desktop. I repeated instalation process more times and found that the problem appears just before the driver installation is finished (at ~90% of progressbar). Next I tracked the problem must be in windows registry. When I (offline) restored my previous NTUSER.DAT file the problem disappeared but of course I have not working driver then. I also tried Nirsoft shexview to disable all nvidia shell extensions but didn't help. Any idea? I really want to avoid reinstalling.

[xrayer]

I moved a little bit further. Diffing register files I found that for some reason it was completely deleted the content of registry key

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Discardable\PostSetup\ShellNew]

When I restored this key from backup before driver installation explorer.exe stopped crashing when right click on desktop but it crashes a bit later when I move cursor to "new" entry in context menu. It seems the content of key above gets deleted again on next crash so it's not a cause but consequence that have further impact on system.

When I try to import complete HKCU backup .reg file I got warning that some keys was unable to import because are used by system and explorer still crashes then. Only when I replace offline the NTUSER.DAT file it fix. I need some offline registry editor that allows me replace multiple keys from backup .reg file to track down which key is corrupted.

[Destro]

Would try this. driver sweep isn't going to do as well of a job as DDU.

DDU last version supporting XP requires .NET 4.0 https://www.afterdawn.com/software/system_tools/misc_system_tools/display-driver-uninstaller.cfm/v18_0_0_4

 

After that I would just install the old card and try to get that working properly.  If it works fine leave it alone.  If you really want to run the new card, and none of the stuff u tried can make it happen.  Reinstal windows with the new card and install from scratch.  If that doesn't work than your new card is probably bad.

 

PS I would use a older driver than the one you are using...Much older. like 314.22

Reason is this is like what i consider "older driver"  and uses the old style before they changed the drivers.

https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/59642

 

Edited March 22, 2019 by Destro

[dencorso]

3 hours ago, xrayer said:

I need some offline registry editor

Here you go:  offlinereg 

 

[Destro]

I used bart PE to offline reg, if dencorso link doesn't work for you message me, and I could help you.

[Dave-H]

@xrayer
Have you tried reducing the resolution and/or colour depth on the Nvidia Control Panel?
Obviously it's a severe problem, but if the Windows Explorer being unstable is the only issue, and all other display functions are fine, I wouldn't have thought that the driver itself was unstable or the card physically faulty.
I would have suspected the shell extensions as being the likely culprit too, but if you have disabled them and it makes no difference presumably it can't be that!
FWIW I have Nvidia driver version 320.92 installed (this is a Quadro driver, not GeForce) and it works fine, and before that I had GeForce 340.52 installed with a GeForce card, and that worked fine too. Maybe try that version as it certainly worked for me.

Edited March 22, 2019 by Dave-H

[xrayer]

I have found that my problem is not triggered only by nvidia installer but also others. When I tried to use DDU I had to install .NET before and I got the same explorer hang/crash problem after .NET installed. So it seems some more generic problem not nvidia related, it was just coincidence that I first saw this problem after installing nvidia driver.

I have ~1/2 year old backup of my WXP installation that doesn't have this problem. So I'm trying to isolate which component became broken in my current setup. I still have nothing in focus but seems it's not registry. I could import my entire user profile from current setup to old backup windows and it works but after copying some other components it breaks. It's quite time consuming.

If I remember I didn't installed much new apps neither a driver since that time. I only installed some XP embedded updates...

 

[Dave-H]

I assume you've tried a clean startup using the system configuration editor?
Is the problem still there if you do a clean startup?

[antiproton]

1 hour ago, xrayer said:

I have found that my problem is not triggered only by nvidia installer but also others.

Have you ruled out a malware infection?

 

[xrayer]

I finally found the problem, I had corrupted the file WINDOWS\INF\UNREGMP2.EXE

I just replaced this one file in my current XP and installation of drivers was OK, no more explorer crash...