Windows 7: Explorer.exe crashing.. Help..!

Hey.. So I booted into safe mode today trying to reinstall drivers for my wifi, when I noticed that Windows Explorer didn't work in safe mode, yet it did in normal mode. I found this odd, and set about fixing it. In normal mode, I have done alot of desktop customization including patching the default theme with uxstyler, and changed my theme to Gaia 09, alongside changing the explorer.exe, shellstyle.dll, and explorerframe.dll. So, I tried restoring all of these to their defaults. No luck, explorer still worked in normal mode but not safe mode. I then tried changing the theme to Windows Aero. Same outcome. I then changed to "High Contrast".. Then all of a sudden, explorer no longer works in either safe mode or normal mode. Before all of this, I also uninstalled uxstyler. Didn't do any difference.



Now I'm stuck. Can't get anywhere... And I'm clueless as what I should do. Tried to system restore, but stupidly, I ran ccleaner before I went to reinstall the drivers which is how I discovered this problem, and therefore all system restore points were wiped (never got around to reinstalling the drivers either fyi). I tried pasting shortcuts to the Aero theme and Gaia theme on my desktop via XP (dual booting XP and 7 on my laptop), but they require explorer to open before the theme changes.. So no luck that way either.

Can someone please help me? My girlfriend is coming over soon and don't really want to be fixing my laptop and not giving her my attention.. Supposed to be watching a film on my TV via the laptop tonight so need to get this fixed if I can

Can anyone help? Is a Windows 7 reinstall my only option?

hi and welcome

I assume you dont have a backup to restore from, correct?

Ken J+

Nope nothing.. I also tried disabling all non-microsoft services at start up.. There was one called Unregistered Themes... Assuming this was uxstyles.. When this was disabled at startup it went into Windows classic theme and explorer crashed. When it was enabled, it went into my Gaia theme and explorer worked fine.. However now it's stuck in the High Contrast theme and explorer crashes..

Can you force it back to Aero theme atleast? Then possibly try to fix it.

Can someone please help me? My girlfriend is coming over soon and don't really want to be fixing my laptop and not giving her my attention.. Supposed to be watching a film on my TV via the laptop tonight so need to get this fixed if I can

Im probably older than you and I agree you DO NOT want to do the above.

I would do this in the folloiwng order

Wait a bit for further help, before the reinstall. We have a group of people with expertise is several areas of Windows 7, possibly some of them could give you more help. If you do not get helped after waiting, I would do the reinstall.

In and Administrators account, type cmd, in search. While in CMD type sfc /scannow. If errors are found do sfc several times.

Then, if above is not sucessful. Boot from the Windows DVD and select repair and try to repair.

If not sucessful, I would do a clean install.

Finally, do not worry about the computer while your GF visits.

Hahaa.. Any as I asked before is there a way to force the aero theme?

A quick way to get to the Aero theme is,
Press Win + R
type "control color" (without the quotes) into the run box, click OK
Select Windows Aero from the Color scheme: list, click OK

This normally works, but I do not know what you did.

I did the Win + R then control color, but it just brought up a window colour box? Doesn't actually let me change the theme itself.

So does anyone know what the problem with explorer.exe could be? It works with custom themes and Windows Aero, but not with the Windows Basic theme or any of the basic ones such as "High Contrast' It also doesn't work in safe mode, most likely because safe mode uses the windows classic theme, which is one of the basic themes that suffers from the problem..

Any Ideas?

The theme patching most likely broke Explorer and some dll's somewhere. Time for a clean install and fresh format - and stay away from these useless system cleaning apps and themes.

I only really use Driver Sweeper and Ccleaner.. Any better recommendations? Is there no way to return it to default? Avoiding an uninstall would be ideal.. Pain in the ass to get all my programs back and configured how I like them.

If not then so be it

No, and use Disk Cleanup instead off CCleaner - use the guide in my sig for a quick run through of a new windows install.