Explorer Crashes upon boot up on Win 7 64 bit setup

Hi,

You know folks, everyone says how much better Windows 7 is over Vista.. well one thing that NEVER EVER happened to me on Vista was Explorer crashing.

This is a scenario .... I go into a folder to move a file or delete a file or what ever... then Explorer crashes for some unknown reason. Every time I reenter that folder Explorer crashes. I ended up downloading CubicExplorer as it was the ONLY way I could get into the folder to see what was going on. MOST of the time the system creates some odd 'shortcut' file of the same same folder name, once that's deleted I can go back to using Explorer. It's not been a fun couple of years to say the least, I feel like I'm in a bad relationship and having to walk on egg shells so I don't upset the cart any more than necessary. Over time I've gotten pretty good at NOT upsetting the apple cart but now I have a new issue.

I recently got a new external drive, a Seagate GoFlex Home 2 Tbt USB 3.0 ... installed a new USB 3.0 card in an available PCI Express slot and installed the drivers... tested everything out and all was going well. Sometime earlier this week I was transferring files to the drive and Explorer crashed... I was like OK, now what? SO I invoked Cubic Explorer and began studying the desktop and the drive folder on the Seagate to see what file was there that needed deleting... there are none. I have my system set up to show hidden files. At my witts end.

I've run every diagnostic for Windows I can think of. I've defragged the system, done a Windows update... done it all. Checked on the Seagate drive, run diagnostics on it and it all checks out. So there must be some entry that Windows is looking at and crashing the system Explorer is all I can think of. Not sure where to look for that though. I'm sure it's an easy fix but for the life of me can't think of where else to look.

Oh and I did a total cleaning of the files... so recycle bin is empty, Temp files are gone and all that good stuff. System is chugging along fine but when I attempt to copy files over to the Seagate Explorer crashes. GRRRRRRRRRRRR

Can anyone help me with this? I REALLY don't relish the thought of a reinstall. I have an OEM version of Win 7 Home Premium and it's an upgrade so not even sure if it would allow me to do that or not? So really trying to NOT spend money on a full version of Win 7 Home Premium if I can avoid it... Money's tight.

Thanks

Richard

System info:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600
System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model EX58-UD3R
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz, 2926 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. FB, 5/4/2009
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7600.16385"
Time Zone Pacific Daylight Time
Installed Memory (RAM) 12.0 GB
Page File Space 700 MB

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I've disabled as many start up programs as I dare... some are just updaters for Adobe and other graphics, audio and video programs I have on board. I only run Windows Security Essentials. I used to run AVG but they got to big for their britches and ended up bogging down my system... reminded me of Norton too much so switched to MSSE! Like it just fine.

I'll read through the articles and see what I find.

Thanks!

After using Autoruns (I think it MIGHT have been Stardocks "Fences" app that was borked), running the fixes that I was able to find seems better now... One other question.. wanted to run Windows Defender.... won't start. Wondering since I have Security Essentials perhaps that's the reason?

You've been very helpful. My computer booted without a crash! Very pleased. Thanks for letting me know about the Windows Defender info too! OK, good to know!

Best,
Richard