WTF is up with all these Windows Explorer crashes?

I have the RTM ver of Win 7 x64 Ultimate. (Verified the hash values so I know it's a solid ISO. Burned the disc at 2x and clicked the 'verify' button in Nero.) Me and some friends, and lots of people around the internet appearently, are having random problems where Windows Explorer will just crash. Once it starts crashing, right clicking will trigger it every time. Last night I was logged in to another PC via term. service from my Win 7 box and listening to MP3s with Winamp and Windows Explorer crashed and restarted. After it did it's little data gathering a few seconds later, crashed again. Did this 5 or 6 times in a row and to get it to finally stop, I disconnected my term. service session and it was fine the rest of the night. Other times, I'll just be surfing with IE 8 or FireFox, listening to MP3s and maybe copying some files from my USB attached drive and Windows Explorer will crash and I need to reboot to make it stop. All this happens at totally random times. It faults ntl.dll (I think). When I get home tonight, I'll post up the details from Event Viewer. Has MS acknowledged this bug or does anyone know a fix? I know my hardware is good. Did some memory tests, scanned my drive (RAID array, mirror) and no errors detected. Did the System File Checker thing and no problems detected. I don't run security software (no AV or firewall) so that can't be causing it. I never had this problem with XP Pro x64. When I installed Win7, it was a clean install.

I can go 2 or 3 days and it's fine. Another day Windows Explorer will crash, a lot. I've only been running the RTM ver. for a week or so. I installed Office 2007, Winamp and Nero. I copied all my data back over (MP3s, pics, videos) and haven't installed anything else. (No codecs, no games, no applications, nothing.)

I have an MSDN account will once it's avail. on there, I'll grab it and do a binary compare of the ISO I used and the one from MSDN. If they're the same, I'd like to avoid reinstalling. If there's any difference, I'll reinstall with the MSDN copy.

Any advice to fix this? As I said, I'm not alone. I've read that others are having the same problem. Somebody I know still using the RC has this issue as well. Two of my friends are using the same ver of Win 7 I have and are also getting random Windows Explorer crashes. Driving me up the wall. I so bad want to love/use Windows 7 but if this isn't fixed soon, I might go back to XP.

i've noticed this tendency too - just a right-click at the wrong time and instant crash.

it seems to recover soon enough and then it'll be alright for a few minutes, hours, or days - and then it'll crash again at a random right-click.

i'm a big context menu fan, so it can be aggravating when it happens.

i've wondered why it does it and first of all i thought it was because i tampered with my services, then it started happening on my as-yet-untampered-with laptop. then on pc number 3 i thought it was linked with turning windows media player off in the control panel because i was getting sick of the context menu entries. but it doesn't seem to be that either.

it's got me stumped and thanks for raising the issue.

anyone get this problem?

What version of 7 are you two running, and what is your system configuration. Might be able to help if that information is available.

I've only had a couple crashes which is normal for me with Kaspersky other than that it's rock solid and I'll never look back at Vista ever again.

two desktops are on chinese frankenbuild 16385-64, laptop is stock 7100RC/32. no nero at all.

it doesn't happen that much with me - plus it's one of those annoying intermittent unreproducable problems - i can rightclick on a certain file and explorer will crash - next time it won't.

the op seems to report that once it starts, it keeps on. this is fortunately not the case with me - just every now and then, but often enough to be noticable.

Do you have Zonealarm Anti-virus installed or did you uninstall it? I have had this problem in the past when using ZA and Zonealarm support said it was someone elses problem. I have since stopped using ZA for this reason and problems have disappeared.

When you say frankenbuild (lol, love that term), you mean that it has different files in order to make it able to install and whatnot, correct? perhaps there is a file incompatibility, or maybe something in the explorer.exe was misplaced or something along those lines when it was installed, or even perhaps when it was constructed. Have you tried reinstalling? its a longshot, but maybe try partitioning off some space and install there, just to see if the same problem keeps happening.

no nero, no zonealarm. i'm a KIS 2010 man.

frankenbuild from 3 chinese rar's and a boot iso file thingy.

Hi Gene,

Could you check you logs in computer manager?

Look for the red stopsign icons. It's tedious work but can help understanding what goes wrong.

What version of Nero are you running? I had a lot of explorer problems with Nero 8 and 9, and now I am using a simple non bloated freeware burner.

I have the 7600.16385 on three computers without any problems since install.

My studio PC is running the 7600.16385 x64 with 32gb ram, 2x 1tb disks, no problems.
Laptop with 7600.16385 with x86 1,5gb ram, no problems.
And HTPC with dualboot 7600.16385 x86 and x64, 8gb ram, 4x1tb disks, 2 tv-cards, again no problem.

I can assure you win7 explorer is not the culprit. It must be a driver or sw or hw conflict.

what are your system specs?
Motherboard? Bios version? etc.


Good luck