Explorer.exe hangs on Boot

Hi All,
any help would be appreciated.

I received a new PC build with Windows 7 home 64 bit, Intel i7 3820K 4 Core 3.6GHz, 16GB RAM.

After setting up my PC with applications a day or 2 later Explorer.exe started to hang. Upon boot all seems ok but when you attempt to navigate into a directory it hangs. If you leave the system and dont try navigate eventually a message will appear saying explorer.exe is having issues. You can shutdown explorer.exe via the task manager and from that point on until reboot it seems fine.

event viewer shows:
he program Explorer.EXE version 6.1.7601.17514 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.
Process ID: 8e0
Start Time: 01cd117639823653
Termination Time: 0
Application Path: C:\Windows\Explorer.EXE
Report Id: b1132771-7d69-11e1-b214-5404a64dd7f0


- System

- Provider

[ Name] Application Hang

- EventID 1002

[ Qualifiers] 0

Level 2

Task 101

Keywords 0x80000000000000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2012-04-03T08:48:07.000000000Z

EventRecordID 2390

Channel Application

Computer JB-PC

Security


- EventData

Explorer.EXE
6.1.7601.17514
8e0
01cd117639823653
0
C:\Windows\Explorer.EXE
b1132771-7d69-11e1-b214-5404a64dd7f0
430072006F00730073002D0074006800720065006100640000000000

I also get:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.1.7601.17514
Application Timestamp: 4ce7a144
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7601.17725
Fault Module Timestamp: 4ec4aa8e
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000000000052fc6
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 3081
Additional Information 1: 36d3
Additional Information 2: 36d34e8ca2953a5087b597942ce6f835
Additional Information 3: c060
Additional Information 4: c060256fd4730385d65b9373fb739f5e

I have attached the hijackthis log

I would appreciate any help as this is a new PC and it upsetting me to say the least

thanks
Jason

Thank you Arc. I will try your recommendation and send the results soon.

More info...
The issue is intermittent, but always happens after boot. Once I kill the hanging explorer.exe process the issue doesnt occur until next boot.
I have bitdefender antivirus and have ran full scans and there are no reported issues

Hi Arc,
I didnt run it at boot as I can boot up ok.
Here are the results of sfc /verifyonly. It looks good.
How do we determine why explorer sometimes hangs after startup

C:\Windows\system32>sfc /verifyonly
Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.
Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.
Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.
C:\Windows\system32>

Issue happened again as I rebooted to perform above actions:

Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 6.1.7601.17567, time stamp: 0x4d672ee4
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17725, time stamp: 0x4ec4aa8e
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000052fc6
Faulting process id: 0x9c8
Faulting application start time: 0x01cd12fbe41a4bcb
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: a24a8dee-7eef-11e1-b607-5404a64dd7f0

Any help would be appreciated
regards
Jason

download (free) MalwareBytes install, update then do a scan of your system in safe mode, to make sure it is indeed clean! Once the scan is done delete anything it finds. Then simply reboot your PC to see if your issue has been resolved!

Hi alishathomaz,
thanks for the suggestion.
I download and installed MalwareBytes and performed an update.
Rebooted in safe mode and scanned all disks. There were no reported issues.

Is there some way of tracing explorer.exe to see what uses it just before it crashes?

regards
Jason

Create a New User Account.. hope this problem is resolved.

You might try a System Restore to a time previous to this issue. If that doesn't work, a Repair Install might be your best bet. You can often spend forever trying to track down the culprit of issues like this.

Guys I think I solved this.
I had previously uninstalled Logitech setpoint but I noticed in msconfig there was a registry entry still trying to start setpoint even though it wasnt installed. I unticked it and now I havent had the issue for a number of days.

thanks to all those that helped
cheers
Jason

I was having the Black Screen of Death with mouser pointer and realised through Event Viwer (eventvwr.msc) that the explorer.exe crash was associated to the propsys.dll located in windows\system32 folder.

So, I managed to emulate a mini WinXP via Hiren's Boot, loaded a "health" propsys.dll from my other Windows 7 system and overwrote the corrupted one. Problem solved to me!