Peculiar bug concerning explorer.exe on Windows 7 (x64 Pro)

[Alpha-Critik]

Can you check to make sure that the following have FULL permission (Full Control)

SYSTEM
LOCAL SERVICE
NETWORK SERVICE
Administrators
Performance Log Users

If they do not - Take ownership of the folder and give full permissions to the afore mentioned users

That worked and Event Viewer is now working just fine, from what I can see. So I understand now I should try and make explorer crash and view the log?

[Phenom II]

Yea give that a go, and then check the logs

Im pleased that worked because the next thing I was going to post was a VERY long fix

[Alpha-Critik]

Yea give that a go, and then check the logs

Im pleased that worked because the next thing I was going to post was a VERY long fix

Well this is proving annoying. Now Windows refuses to crash, hahah... I'll keep at it for the time being, though.

EDIT: Anyone got any ideas for crashing explorer?

[Phenom II]

lol You dont want to crash explorer by any other means - you want it to do it on its own so it is deffinately the same reason it has been crashing all this time

Just do some CPU intensive tasks and disk intensive tasks like copying / extracting large files


But its possible all the above fixes you have performed may have cured it - the sfc command and fixing the permissions for event viewer are high in my list of probable repairs

Its possible that when the system was trying to write an event, the permissions issue was causing the crash


Reinstall a driver that should cause the system to write an event

[Alpha-Critik]

Reinstall a driver that should cause the system to write an event

What type of driver?

[Phenom II]

Reinstall the chipset and graphics

Its a good idea anyway due to the unsigned issue

[Alpha-Critik]

Reinstall the chipset and graphics

Its a good idea anyway due to the unsigned issue

OK, I installed the updated chipset driver. I'm not familiar with the Event Viewer so could you give me some pointers as to what I'm looking for?

[Phenom II]

Yea, if you open the event viewer and navigate here:





Have a look down the list for any critical, errors or warnings around the time of the last crash


The test of the driver update was to see if explorer would crash writing an event, which it has not, which is a good thing.

[Alpha-Critik]

It would appear that no recent crashes have been logged (most recent being the 2nd of August)... because the event logger hasn't been turned on in months!? Here's a snippet of the System section of the Event Viewer, with the items sorted by date.


I've not been able to get explorer to crash under stress yet, so I've ended explorer.exe manually a few times to see if that would give any different results. This is not the case; whenever I try and relaunch explorer I do not get my desktop environment back.

[Phenom II]

Yea sounds like you have had the Event log issue for some time.

Restarting explorer from task manager does not give back the full explorer ?

What does it do?


Good that it has not crashed on its own so far though

[Alpha-Critik]

Restarting explorer from task manager does not give back the full explorer ?

What does it do?

It just opens an explorer Window as if you've pressed Windows Key + E.

Offtopic Comment

To top this all off my wireless adapter for my PC just died... Christ.

[Phenom II]

Sounds like the explorer shortcut is set to Win + E (Maybe a registry error)

Have you tried navigating to the Windows folder and actually double clicking the Explorer.exe icon ?

[Alpha-Critik]

Sounds like the explorer shortcut is set to Win + E (Maybe a registry error)

Have you tried navigating to the Windows folder and actually double clicking the Explorer.exe icon ?

Win + E is the default shortcut to open an explorer window on pretty much all Windows systems since XP... possibly before that unless I'm mistaken.

I will however try navigating to explorer instead now.

EDIT: HOLY S***! That worked! But why isn't it recovering itself like it should be?

[Phenom II]

Well typing "explorer" into the New Task window, I think must load a shortcut to Explorer.exe

But in your case, the shortcut is pointing to WIN + E instead

Like I say it sounds like a registry error for the shortcut


If you type in the exact address of explorer instead of just "explorer" into the new task window, does it load explorer correctly ?

New Task > C:\Windows\explorer.exe


EDIT - Why is it not restarting explorer on its own you mean ?

Mine doesnt restart on its own everytime I crash it either - it does sometimes, not other times

I would say you have registry problems

The only registry cleaner I trust is called "Registry Mechanic" - it has fixed numourous problems that I failed to fix manually for me

Its not free, but google is a friend

EDIT - There is a promotional copy that was given away free - everyone got the same key and setup file so this is classed as freeware

Code: Select all

Name: Computer Active
License key: 98F8-50D5-05BB-98B1-02BD-A379-84B5-4ADB
Download link:
http://www.vnudownloads.co.uk/8.0.0.910Computeractive_68296-RMinstall-promo.exe

This is the same version that has fixed many issues I had - give it a spin, reboot and see how you go

[Alpha-Critik]

If you type in the exact address of explorer instead of just "explorer" into the new task window, does it load explorer correctly ?

It does indeed load it correctly.

EDIT - Why is it not restarting explorer on its own you mean ?

Mine doesnt restart on its own everytime I crash it either - it does sometimes, not other times

I was under the impression that it was supposed to recover automatically after a crash occurs...

[Phenom II]

Well its deffinately how task manager is interpreting the "explorer" shortcut command that is the problem

And Ive never had a system that recovered each and everytime explorer crashed - I guess it depends on why it crashed, and if the issue that caused the crash is still active



Give that reg mechanic a go and see if it helps - but things are slowly improving.

[Alpha-Critik]

Give that reg mechanic a go and see if it helps - but things are slowly improving.

I gave it a go. It fixed a fair few problems, or so it claims. I'll reboot now.

[Phenom II]

Any joy ?

[Alpha-Critik]

Any joy ?

Nope. Typing "explorer" still yields that bloody window.

Is there any way I could alias explorer to C:\Windows\explorer.exe?

[zamadatix]

Any joy ?

Nope. Typing "explorer" still yields that bloody window.

Is there any way I could alias explorer to C:\Windows\explorer.exe?

That's what it's already opening when you type "explorer", you can type "explorer.exe" and get the same result. It defaults to WINDIR when you just type in a file name so you can even type in "system32/calc.exe" and it will run calc.exe the same as if you typed "calc" because it also searches the directories in WINDIR

[Phenom II]

Any joy ?

Nope. Typing "explorer" still yields that bloody window.

Is there any way I could alias explorer to C:\Windows\explorer.exe?

That's what it's already opening when you type "explorer", you can type "explorer.exe" and get the same result. It defaults to WINDIR when you just type in a file name so you can even type in "system32/calc.exe" and it will run calc.exe the same as if you typed "calc" because it also searches the directories in WINDIR

Thats the issue though, its not calling Explorer.exe from the windir - its calling the win + E command

[Phenom II]

Any joy ?

Nope. Typing "explorer" still yields that bloody window.

Is there any way I could alias explorer to C:\Windows\explorer.exe?

You could try making a shortcut to C:\Windows\Explorer.exe and putting it in C:\Windows

Other than that, I am at a loss as to why it calls the wrong command as Explorer.exe obviously is working when you manually run it

Maybe a permissions issue again

Download this

Code: Select all

http://www.blogsdna.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/takeownership.zip

Extract it and install the "Install Take Ownership" reg entry

Now goto your C:\ and right click on the Windows folder - there will be a new option on the right click context menu called "Take Ownership" choose that, and let it give you permissions for the entire windows folder -

It will take a while depending on your system speed - but once its done, reboot and try "explorer" command from new task again

[Alpha-Critik]

You could try making a shortcut to C:\Windows\Explorer.exe and putting it in C:\Windows

Did it, called it "ohsh*t". So now I've just gotta run the command "ohsh*t" and I get my desktop environment back.

And I've already got that reg tweak in my context menu and I took ownership of all of C:\ a while ago.

[Phenom II]

Haha !

Brilliant, nice touch - Lets hope this is the end of the problems then !

Let me know how it goes with the whole not crashing thing

[Alpha-Critik]

Haha !

Brilliant, nice touch - Lets hope this is the end of the problems then !

Let me know how it goes with the whole not crashing thing

Hah, thanks.

Preliminary reports show no crashes so far. Excellent job, Phenom!