Explorer.exe server execution failed

Many thanks to Gigaherz and Google as it found his following post on this forum for 9-17-09. I made the suggested change to the first location. My drive had somehow changed from "C" to "T", which is my thumb drive. The second change to the second location mentioned below wouldn't be accepted. After a restart all seems to be functioning normally, with Wind Exp and the shortcuts to Control Panel, Computer, etc fully functional. Thanks to each of that read my post and gave it your attention.

gigaherz said:

Hello people,

I just today had this same problem in my Windows 7 profile.
The solution is to go to regedit, and change 2 keys to point to valid places:

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal

and

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell  Folders\Personal

You can set back the defaults by looking at how the other entries in those keys look like.

I'm not enterely sure if the second one is necessary, but I changed both to point to valid places and it works now.

FYI reg fix worked for me. Similarly I had my "Documents" pointed to a USB drive that didnt mount as its normal letter today.

Had been in the process of changing my external drives (I use a lot of them) to use folder mount points in addition to letter, which really is the best solution for this problem long term. For example I am going to have

C:\.res\mounts\
C:\.res\mounts\drive1\
C:\.res\mounts\drive2\
C:\.res\mounts\drive3\
Etc

Then "Documents" and "Personal" wont be pointed to a letter, they will point to
C:\.res\mounts\drive1\

Thus even if the drive isnt plugged in, it will still find that directory, it will just be empty. As soon as the drive is plugged in, it wont matter what letter it gets, because it will also mount to
C:\.res\mounts\drive1\ everytime.

mountvol.exe and linkd.exe are your friends. While *nix still confuses me with /mnt/sda1/ and such, MS needs to get with the program of mounting to a universal resource location, in addition to drive letter. I have so many needs for portable use that if I could rely on a consistent mount point from computer to computer based on the drive ID or similar, live would be so much easier. Right now I have to build scripts that look for a volume label, store the drive letter as a variable, then do what I need to do with the variable. Its not consistent and doesnt always work. Being able to map physical drives similar to UNC paths is greatly needed - not just folder mounts, but a consistent way to access a drive based on its mount ID, serial, or something unique to the drive that any windows pc will recognize. Ive even seen instances of different machines giving different mount GUIDS to the same drive, which shouldnt happen.

The registry fix fixed my sis comp! Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit Dell Inspiron.

Thanks!!

Simply click start or the windows logo then right click on Documents then properties then click restore defaults. Hope it works.

Thanks much TalTech solved my problem!

What do you do it none of the previous fixes does anything to help the situation?

you get a mac

j/k

I have been having issues with explorer "winking" out on me - I have a ton of explorer files from making edits and what not. I do have the "restart explorer" option in my context menu which helps...

But I am curious as to why explorer winks out - usually occurs when copying/pasting or deleting files/icons off the desktop. I can see it being a concern.

But I am curious as to why explorer winks out - usually occurs when copying/pasting or deleting files/icons off the desktop. I can see it being a concern.

It could be totally unrelated, but most of the times I have had explorer crash/freeze/vanish it was because of unstable shell extensions (those explorer "plugins" that add varied things, from context menu items to thumbnail support or even virtual folders).
I suppose there shoudl be some applications around to let you enable/disable shell extensions so you can check if there's soemthing causing your issues.

EDIT: A quick brought up this app in the first result:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

what doesnt make sense to me is that i can change whatever i want to change when logged in as the admin. i cant change jack when i am logged into my account, which is also an admin account. this only seems to be acting this way when i am using a x64 version of 7. when i am on an x86 version, i have god access. it makes my brain hurt especially since there is no reason whatsoever as to why it is acting in such a way.

I WISH WE COULD USE MACs, but unfortunately we dont get that choice at work.

Do you have some kind of offline synchronisation activated for the account having the problems? And is the "open each folder in it's own window" explorer option enabled? Then that might help you:

Explorer.exe crashes on Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2. Message “Server Execution Failed” - ITTips

Solved my problem.