Explorer.exe crashing randomly a lot

[kuja killer]

Hello, I don't know if i'll be able to get my problem fixed here or not, but I'd like to try asking here. I recently had only installed Windows Media Player 11 (version says 11.0.5721.5145), and the last available K-Lite Codec Basic Pack version for windows XP (version 13.8.5), so that I could use the viewtube script for firefox/youtube, which took a long time to get sorted out. About K-Lite, i did "not" choose to install the codec tweak tool, or the icaros extension (during install process) as I didn't want to add more unncessary stuff to my computer.

Ever since then, i've been getting seemingly random explorer.exe crashes and I just don't know if it was because of one of these 2, or neither, or something else. I've never had this sort of problem ever before for as long as i've had my comp (since 2010). I'll try my best to explain. Please bear with me.

It seems to only happen while i'm browsing my folders, - My documents, pictures, videos, really "anywhere" on the hard drive. It does "not" happen if i leave the computer idle for however long i choose. Just only eventually after browsing around apparently. -- I dont know how to reproduce it because things will be fine after explorer.exe restarts itself. But there's no telling when the next time it happens. sometimes once in hours, or once a day or longer.

I've checked my computer at least twice with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware updated, and no viruses/threats detected. -- I've tried "sfc /scannow" and that didnt find anything. It's supposed to log entries in Event Viewer if a file was detected/replaced/etc. But none - So i assume that didnt help as everything was okay.

I've downloaded and checked with "autoruns" and "shell extension viewer" and followed guides about disabling all non-microsoft services. But I only have 1 for Intel Media Accelerator Graphics Panel (needed to get video card settings, thats been there since day 1 so that's not it) -- i disabled the context menu's that were added by Windows Media player 11, but that didnt make a difference.

I cant ever tell what's the problem because the event viewer always says "Faulting application , version 0.0.0.0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00000000"

I then read about disabling DEP on explorer.exe, and then finally i get at least something...but it still doesnt say "what" - "Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2900.5512, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x058844f6"

I have a couple screenshots so far:

https://i.imgur.com/S4uuJMj.png - dep

https://i.imgur.com/UKguS6A.png - no dep

I don't think I'm infected with any viruses, at least... i hope not. I use IE and firefox only with "sandboxie" for extra protection. But I am very worried that somehow i must of screwed up really bad with installing media player 11 ..or latest k-lite codec pack. (i had an older version before, i dont remember what it was) - I dont really quite know what to do to get rid of these crashes.

[sparty411]

1 hour ago, kuja killer said:

Hello, I don't know if i'll be able to get my problem fixed here or not, but I'd like to try asking here. I recently had only installed Windows Media Player 11 (version says 11.0.5721.5145), and the last available K-Lite Codec Basic Pack version for windows XP (version 13.8.5), so that I could use the viewtube script for firefox/youtube, which took a long time to get sorted out. About K-Lite, i did "not" choose to install the codec tweak tool, or the icaros extension (during install process) as I didn't want to add more unncessary stuff to my computer.

Ever since then, i've been getting seemingly random explorer.exe crashes and I just don't know if it was because of one of these 2, or neither, or something else. I've never had this sort of problem ever before for as long as i've had my comp (since 2010). I'll try my best to explain. Please bear with me.

It seems to only happen while i'm browsing my folders, - My documents, pictures, videos, really "anywhere" on the hard drive. It does "not" happen if i leave the computer idle for however long i choose. Just only eventually after browsing around apparently. -- I dont know how to reproduce it because things will be fine after explorer.exe restarts itself. But there's no telling when the next time it happens. sometimes once in hours, or once a day or longer.

I've checked my computer at least twice with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware updated, and no viruses/threats detected. -- I've tried "sfc /scannow" and that didnt find anything. It's supposed to log entries in Event Viewer if a file was detected/replaced/etc. But none - So i assume that didnt help as everything was okay.

I've downloaded and checked with "autoruns" and "shell extension viewer" and followed guides about disabling all non-microsoft services. But I only have 1 for Intel Media Accelerator Graphics Panel (needed to get video card settings, thats been there since day 1 so that's not it) -- i disabled the context menu's that were added by Windows Media player 11, but that didnt make a difference.

I cant ever tell what's the problem because the event viewer always says "Faulting application , version 0.0.0.0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00000000"

I then read about disabling DEP on explorer.exe, and then finally i get at least something...but it still doesnt say "what" - "Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2900.5512, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x058844f6"

I have a couple screenshots so far:

https://i.imgur.com/S4uuJMj.png - dep

https://i.imgur.com/UKguS6A.png - no dep

I don't think I'm infected with any viruses, at least... i hope not. I use IE and firefox only with "sandboxie" for extra protection. But I am very worried that somehow i must of screwed up really bad with installing media player 11 ..or latest k-lite codec pack. (i had an older version before, i dont remember what it was) - I dont really quite know what to do to get rid of these crashes.

In my experience, exloprer crashes have been due to hardware failure. Usually memory related. Is your processor overclocked?

[kuja killer]

56 minutes ago, sparty411 said:

In my experience, exloprer crashes have been due to hardware failure. Usually memory related. Is your processor overclocked?

No, not at all. But I do have a program called "RMClock" that lowers the voltage. i use this because it drastically keeps the overall CPU tempature much cooler than normal (20 to 30 or more degrees F "less" on full load)

https://i.imgur.com/S3zqDqq.png

Im not interested in that overclocking type stuff. I've had this installed since pretty much almost since i've had this comp. It's never caused any problems of it's own whatsoever. I cant imagine it possibly being suspect. As i've not touched any settings on it in years. i haven't installed any new hardware or anything like that. I'm on a laptop by the way.

This whole explorer.exe thing started about 8-ish days ago. wmp11 (used to be 9) and k-lite (cant remember last ver) were the only things i've put on this since that time, (latest k-lite was the only way to ever get that viewtube thing to work) really starting to regret it.

 

Edited February 20, 2020 by kuja killer

[Dave-H]

I suspect that a shell extension could well be causing this.
It triggers when you select certain files, and crashes explorer.
Download this (it's free and quite safe).
It will give you a list of all the shell extensions installed. Any that you are suspicious of, especially any related to K-Lite (perhaps a thumbnailer) or WMP, disable them and see if things are then OK.
If the problem goes away, re-enable them one by one until you find the culprit.
HTH.

 

 

[kuja killer]

14 hours ago, Dave-H said:

I suspect that a shell extension could well be causing this.
It triggers when you select certain files, and crashes explorer.
Download this (it's free and quite safe).
It will give you a list of all the shell extensions installed. Any that you are suspicious of, especially any related to K-Lite (perhaps a thumbnailer) or WMP, disable them and see if things are then OK.
If the problem goes away, re-enable them one by one until you find the culprit.
HTH.

 

 

yea i've looked through it several times over already. - i disabled everything that showed up recently since then (sorted by date on the right as you'll see) these were all just the WMP things, after that is 2011 and earlier.

https://i.imgur.com/6adFJ7p.png

I dont have a single "non-microsoft" thing whatsoever (or pink highlited lines) except "hyperterminal icon" which i disabled too just in case. and "intel graphics control panel" ..if i turn that off, then i cant access graphic/video card options. so have to leave that alone.

I dont find anything at all related to k-lite on the list. probably because i chose "not" to install that optional iacros thing mentioned on their website and in the installer.

1 thing i notice though is, sometimes while browsing my video folders, all those k-lite codec dlls and such will get loaded in explorer.exe (not always) as i watch with process explorer. And after awhile (dont know how long) they'll be unloaded. Dont know if that's related or not. Does not cause crashes, cause i still dont know how to actually reproduce this random behavior. I've currently not had any crash since I started this topic, yet. I started this topic a few minutes after it did though. But i bet it'll come soon.

** by the way, these 2 files seem to always be present (from wmp 11) -- i dont know what an ASF type of video or whatever is, and i've never had one in my life before. (never will) ...and i'm not sure what "wmvcore" does or is for. but again it seems like there not part of the problem.

https://i.imgur.com/RUhiDbc.png

Edited February 21, 2020 by kuja killer

[Dave-H]

Icaros is a very good thumbnailer system, as it allows explorer to generate thumbnails from many video formats which aren't natively supported.
If you didn't install it that can't be the problem though!
ASF is a Microsoft media video/audio format, pretty much the same as WMV, but IIRC was more often used for streaming.
I would have thought that it's pretty obsolete now.

[kuja killer]

I see. I still just dont know what's wrong. - Umm...would doing this help at all ??

The next time it crashes, which i dont have a clue when. If it's able to capture the dll or whatever file is wrong ?? since the regular windows crash window itself always says "unknown model"

Edited February 21, 2020 by kuja killer

[Dave-H]

Surely "unknown module", not "unknown model"?!
Installing the debugger certainly wouldn't do any harm, and might give a diagnosis clue if you can capture what happened when explorer crashed.
Occasional intermittent problems like this are always very hard to diagnose.
If you could find any particular file selection, for instance, which triggers the crash, that would be very helpful.

 

[kuja killer]

Where would i get this by the way ? clicking the x86 link on that topic says "Access Denied You don't have permission to access that path on this server." I see the original author of the post has never edited it from 2009, so that link is obviously outdated.

And yea sorry for the typo earlier. I just got it again a minute ago.. and as soon as it happened, i quickly went to the process explorer again while that "explorer encountered a problem" window was up (didnt click out of it) and none of the k-lite dll's were loaded at that momment) ..and as usual, it just said "unknown"

Edited February 22, 2020 by kuja killer

[Dave-H]

Sent you a PM.

[kuja killer]

Sorry i havent replied back in awhile. I think i might finally be back to normal, saturday morning i was going to wait 1 final last time for a crash before i tried out the crash dump debugger thing, before that though. I tried something.

I un-installed the k-lite codec pack around 11 AM saturday morning, their website claims that it removes everything including all registry keys it creates from the install process. Which i hope was really true. I then re-installed it fresh, and i also included the "codec tweak tool" this time. I did "not" select the icaros thing.

So i looked at the codec tweak tool and tried out the "detect/remove broken codecs" and it found 1. So i let it delete that. Also run the "clear windows icon cache" and clear thumbnails from all my personal folders in My Documents too just-in-case.

It's now tuesday afternoon, and i've browsed around my folders, continue doing work like normal, test all my videos, etc etc a whole bunch since then, and i've not had a single explorer crash whatsoever. I think this might of really worked. Maybe it's possible the K-Lite codec pack had a corrupted registry entry or two from the very 1st time, and maybe that's why the crashes would always keep saying "unknown 0.0.0.0" like explorer is pointing to non-existent registry lines, or a file that doesnt exist, or something like that for example ?? is that an actual possibility ??

Well reguardless if I last a whole week or so, then i assume everything's finally back to normal.

Edited February 26, 2020 by kuja killer

[Dave-H]

Glad to hear that it seems that things are OK again now.
Fingers crossed!

[kuja killer]

hey there. It's been a long time i know, but...this just happened again all of a sudden this morning after a few weeks. Again just from randomly doing anything. I opened notepad at one point this morning, closed it without typing anything cause I wasn't "thinking" about anything in my mind at that momment ...10 seconds later, explorer.exe crashed again ...same as always "unknown 0.0.0.0" --

And no this wasnt a notepad problem, cause i've opened it dozens of times in the past couple weeks, like to type thoughts or whatever. Like i said it's impossible to find out where or what is causing this because "anything" might cause the stupid explorer crash ..dont ever know when it will be. Either a day...or several weeks later like just now.

I've finally tried out that Debugger thing now, only difference compared to the instructions in that thread was i had a "adplus_old.vbs" instead of adplus.vbs. I hope that's okay.

But i need to know...do i need to setup a config file for this ?? So far i seen this thing creates dump files whenever "guard page violation" happens. When i was viewing some of my personal images, it happens only GIF animations, it freezes the screen and created hundreds of dump files with "1st chance guard page violation" until i closed the window..

How do i ignore this so it doesnt make files on this type of error ?? explorer did NOT crash during it, and has not yet so far since this debugger thing's been running on it. so that's obviously NOT the problem ...just that it seems to be making these dump files for that case so far. Do i need a config file to ignore that error ?? I dont know what i would do.

Or some extra command or something so this dump thing only happens once that "windows explorer needs to close" popup appears ??

https://i.imgur.com/XnJ8cak.png

Edited March 12, 2020 by kuja killer

[kuja killer]

Sorry to bump this topic after so many months, but may i possibly get some help still on this ?? I had that debugger program sitting in the taskbar, and it took almost 4 months until explorer.exe crashed again, so that i finally got a "2nd chance violation" crash dump file from it. I attempted to load it in the "windbg" thing and followed the instructions on just viewing what the problem was, and even that doesnt tell me anything at all. It "still" didnt say exactly what dll or file caused it, and it had a bunch of question marks on all the values. what the hell!! how is this possible!!

here's what i mean, it just shows question marks for this 77444f6, and doesnt even say what dll it is on the 1st line of "stack text" area at the bottom besides "ntdll" which i doubt is it, since thats a main OS file

https://i.imgur.com/1mHVvmx.png

This crash dump file is almost 150 MB in size, there's another crash dump labeled "1st chance shut down" also 150 MB, but im guessing only the access violation one is relevant here. should i try uploading it mediafire or something so one of you guys might be able to check it and figure out what the cause is ?? cause im sick and tired of never gettinng any information out of this. Always these freaking "unknown model" ...unknown... question marks, version 0.0.0.0 - etc etc.

Edited November 3, 2020 by kuja killer

[SC7601]

Try this:

Open Regedit.

Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

Delete every "ShellEx" under video extensions (such as MP4, AVI, 3GP, etc.)

If that doesn't fix:

Reinstall K-Lite Codec Pack but with Icaros enabled.

Check if the problem still exists.