Jsmply
asked on
Can anyone think of a way a user could cause explorer.exe to crash? If not, most likely cause
Hi All,
Here is the deal, we have a user on a Windows 7 laptop that's been doing some strange things. For a while, they had Outlook and Excel appcrashes on a regular basis. We did some troubleshooting on that and it got better, but then while doing a basic drag and drop of files today the user ended up "crashing the machine" which we then reviewed the event log and saw it was explorer.exe that crashed and the faulting module was shell32.dll.
We are trying to determine if the events are related, or explorer.exe randomly crashed. The user has been having some trouble adapting to Windows 7 (accidentally opening multiple copies of programs, etc).
Can anyone think of any obvious ways a normal user could crash Windows Explorer? We were just teaching them to drag files recently and they claimed it crashed while doing this, so that is why we are suspicious.
Thanks!
Here is the deal, we have a user on a Windows 7 laptop that's been doing some strange things. For a while, they had Outlook and Excel appcrashes on a regular basis. We did some troubleshooting on that and it got better, but then while doing a basic drag and drop of files today the user ended up "crashing the machine" which we then reviewed the event log and saw it was explorer.exe that crashed and the faulting module was shell32.dll.
We are trying to determine if the events are related, or explorer.exe randomly crashed. The user has been having some trouble adapting to Windows 7 (accidentally opening multiple copies of programs, etc).
Can anyone think of any obvious ways a normal user could crash Windows Explorer? We were just teaching them to drag files recently and they claimed it crashed while doing this, so that is why we are suspicious.
Thanks!
Matt V
Sounds like the user has some sort of malware infection. Run Malwarebytes in safe mode on the machine.
ASKER
Thanks. Last scan came back clean, no other malware symtpoms (no pop-ups, re-directions, etc).
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I read the directions of the experts and they are right it can also be for a faulty hardware, run diagnostics as suggested, you can also run a linux live cd for a while and see if it is OS dependant. Give a check also to the bios in order to see if there are strange settings, eventually bring them to defaults and avoid enhanced features.
If it is not the hardware, in windows 7 you have a well working embedded restore system, try to use it, if you never created a backup with this system you can not though.
If you did not create a preventive recursive backup with clonezilla or similar program, if you did not backup the registry and you did not backup with the emebedded restore system the only way is to find the problem and reapir it or reinstall from scratch....
If at the end you have to reinstall then immediately perform a backup with the embedded system and also a recursive backup with clonezilla or savepart, you will later on notice that are much faster than the windows restore system
Bye
If it is not the hardware, in windows 7 you have a well working embedded restore system, try to use it, if you never created a backup with this system you can not though.
If you did not create a preventive recursive backup with clonezilla or similar program, if you did not backup the registry and you did not backup with the emebedded restore system the only way is to find the problem and reapir it or reinstall from scratch....
If at the end you have to reinstall then immediately perform a backup with the embedded system and also a recursive backup with clonezilla or savepart, you will later on notice that are much faster than the windows restore system
Bye
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Very useful tool, simlpe neat and nice, I did not know it, thank you Aleinss
ASKER
Thanks all. Starting to lean towards hardware. Explorer has not crashed again yet, but the user Office crashes on a regular basis despite an uninstall and re-install. Going to run hardware diagnostics ASAP!
ASKER
That should have read the "user reports MS Offices crashes on a regular basis" . . .
ASKER
Haven't had Explorer crash on the repaired machine yet, but having other issues. Please see: https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/26569202/Keep-getting-an-ntdll-dll-error-in-Outlook-Dell-changed-out-hardware-tried-the-PST-on-a-different-machine-etc-No-dice.html
ASKER
Thx all!