When I have Windows Explorer open, it randomly crashes and i have to end the process. I'm using Windows XP Pro Media Center Edition with Service Pack 3. I'm also using Internet Explorer 8. Any help would be appreciated.
If you have corrupt drives/files that will cause the crashing, a scandisk with the boxes to fix errors can fix the corruption.
If it crashes when trying to open a folder with video files, you might have to disable the thumbnail shell.
Description: When opening folders with movie files in them, windows explorer (the desktop) crashes.
Problem: This is a known issue with Windows XP's braindead video thumbnail thing in Explorer. Being a thing invented by MS, it's buggy and doesn't always know how to handle things not supported by MS, and occasionally fails on things it does know how to support too. Every now and again it will crash and take Explorer down with it. Easy to solve thankfully.
Solution:
Windows XP:
* Go to Start -> Run... and type
regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll
Press enter. Done. It's as simple as that. If you, for some reason want it back, simply do the same thing again, but remove the "/u". That is: Start -> Run...
regsvr32 shmedia.dll
This will only disable movie thumbnails/previews, not picture thumbnails.
The video thumbnail fix has worked for me previously.
Other things that will casue explorer to crash
1. hard drives not set to DMA
2. 2 ide drives connected on the same cable both jumpers set to master
3. corrupt SD card/usb pen drive plugged into computer.
4. hardware (ie onboard audio) using 100 percent cpu, this can only be fixed by installing a pci audio card.
It can also happen if applications install a faulty
shell extension. Download shellexview, run it, and look at the items
in pink. Disable them all and see if problem is resolved.
If it is, re-enable them one at a time and retest. Eventually
you'll find the problem.
If Shellexview doesn't help, you may have malware. Do a full virus
spyware scan.
f that doesn't find anything, run the command
SFC /SCANNOW to see if any windows files have been
corrupted.
I'll wager the random crashes are when Windows Explorer is displaying multiple video files ?. I find the easiest workaround is to always keep Explorer is 'List' view as it's always the details view that causes crashes..
