Windows 7: explorer.exe problem

When I click on the taskbar it will say Windows Explorer has stopped working, so I go into task manager and start explorer.exe again and after that I can't open anything on the desktop and can't click on anything in the start menu.



Any ideas????

Have you recently added something to the startup menu? Unticking everything in msconfig would be a good place to start, also taking a look at Event Viewer for that session.

You could also troubleshoot with a clean boot.

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

I would close and restart explorer.exe. Take a look at this tutorial to see if it gives you any additional information. It was written for Vista
but is pretty much the same for Windows 7: Restart Explorer

First go into Task Manager, Processes, highlight 'explorer.exe' and click on End Process. Then, to restart explorer.exe go back into Task Manager, and in File section, select New Task (Run). Type explorer.exe (or C:\Windows\explorer.exe) in the Run box (it may be there already). Below the command, it should say: This task will be run with Administrator privileges. Click Okay

I built a new system and went to Win 7 64 bit. Gave me hell with windows explorer crashes. finally tracked it down to my TrendMicro Internet Security Suite. Took it out, life is good and new system is finally performing as expected.
Pity. Been with them since they were PC Cillin.

Sorry it turned out the way it did. Thanks for posting back to let us know.

Software vendors need to get on board with 64 bit and stop dragging their feet.
I see a 10X system performance gain on my 64bit multithreading BOINC apps.

TrendMicro was always a valued and trusted app --- and I still use their scans when I'm searching for malware. Is it possible that you got a corrupted download, or that something in your TrendMicro app became corrupted or conflicted with another app? Might be worth a try to set a System Restore point and then re-download it. If it still causes a problem you can utilize your new Restore Point and go back to where you were.

Unlikely. Reinstalled it twice, second time with a fresh copy of the dl/installer file.
And this was all right on top of a brand new, fresh, clean Windows 7 XN. There were no other apps at this point for it to conflict with.
Continual Windows explorer crashes. From something as simple as right clicking on the desktop to get the menu.
From my BOINC daily scores, it was even affecting general system performance.
The heck with them. I only had 5 months left on the current license and I've been doing PC's far too long to kill myself trying to make easily replaceable software work.
I did a lot of searching on this problem. It seems quite a few people have the explorer crashes in 64 bit. It's looking like the problems come down to software that doesn't play well, in some subtle way, in that environment.