Windows Explorer crashes when trying to open certain file properties

Okay I've looked at the crash dumps and don't see anything else that points to a specific problem. I can see that you did indeed manage to remove IDM.

Bearing in mind that I have some experience in analyzing crash dumps - I'm by no means an expert. Maybe other members will take a look at them and spot something that I might have missed?

My thoughts are as follows:

If you can make a full system image backup it would be wise to do so. Then think about trying any of the following...

Boot into Safe Mode and see if you get the same issue. If everything works in safe mode post a reply.

Safe Mode (see Option 1)

Or try creating a new user account and use it to see if you get the same problem.

User Account - Create

Or if the account that you are currently using isn't the Administrator Account try logging in as Administrator. Enable the Administrator Account if it's hidden by following Step 2 in this tutorial:

Built-in Administrator Account - Enable or Disable

Log into the Administrator Account and see if you get the same problem.

I still think that it's a context menu handler problem but let's see if you have any luck with any of the steps listed above.

Hello Callender.

I've tried the icon cache rebuild, rebooting in safe mode, logging in as another user, and logging in as the administrator. Nothing works. I've also re-tried disabling all non-Microsoft context menu handlers.

(0) After disabling all non-Microsoft context menu handlers explorer.exe.5988.zip
(1) After the icon cache rebuild explorer.exe.1268.zip
(2) After rebooting in safe mode explorer.exe.1576.zip
(3) After logging in as another user explorer.exe.1044.zip
(4) After logging in as the administrator explorer.exe.3380.zip

I may try disabling all the context menu handlers, including the Microsoft ones, and see what happens. What do you think? Would this be harmful?

I'd leave the Microsoft Context Menu Handlers enabled as disabling them is likely to cause more problems.

Looking again at those dumps is indicating problems with the following:

IDMShellExt64.dll
IDMNetMon64.dll
KZipShell.dll

However as one of your earlier dumps confirms that the problem still exists even after removing IDM I'd be tempted to suggest the last resorts of doing a repair install (won't fix problems with third party programs - so it would seem unlikely to work) and finally a clean install of Windows.

I have to ask if you rebooted after disabling all non-Microsoft context menu handlers?

Note: I'm no expert on repair installs as my preference is to clean install windows when needed so you might need to ask for help from other members on that.

Hello Callender.

I'd like to avoid repair and clean installs too, simply because I haven't got a Windows 7 installation disk, which, from what I understand, is what you need for both.

Anyway, you mentioned this time that the crash dumps indicated problems with IDMShellExt64.dll, IDMNetMon64.dll and KZipShell.dll. Since we know that IDM is not the issue, through the process of elimination, that leaves KZip. KZip is a ZIP software that I had installed sometime last year, to unzip specific files which could not be unzipped by JZip, my main ZIP software.

So, long story cut short, I uninstalled it, rebooted, and... voila. The problem is gone. Whew!

Thank you so much for your help. Thanks for analysing the crash dumps for me. I don't know how to, although I would like to learn. I need a software to read the files though, and multiple attempts to install the Microsoft SDK program failed for me. Do you have a recommendation?

Once again, thanks a lot Callender. Really appreciated it.

Well great news! I'm glad that it's fixed. I was going to suggest removing Kzip but figured that if you'd already disabled the Kzip context menu menu handler then it couldn't be the likely cause.

I have installed Windows SDK but don't actually remember the correct procedure. I do remember that I had problems installing it. It took two attempts.

Gathering a Startup, Shutdown, Sleep, Hibernate, or Reboot Trace

The installation procedure is shown in the above link but ignore everything down the page after the line under the first two screenshots. I seem to remember having to relocate the Symbols package as there was a problem with the default location.

If you want to take a look at the dumps you can also use an online service:

Instant Online Crash Analysis

Upload the zipped dump file and wait a few seconds to see the report.

On another note you should really go through the steps that I mentioned in Post #8 of this thread to fix your registry to prevent crash dumps for explorer.exe from being written out.

As for future repairs - it's usually pretty easy to make a system image backup that you can restore.

It is also possible to download the ISO for your version of Windows 7 and burn it to USB just in case you ever need it.

Repair Install

Hello hello Callender.

I can't install Windows SDK; I've tried it multiple times. No idea why, so I've given up. But thanks for the link to the online service. And, I've followed your registry instructions in Post #8.

Once again, thanks!

This is an antique thread with current relevance. The tutorial referred to above advises getting something called ShellExView. The latest update to it appears to have been made a little over a year ago as I write this. Probably appropriate for an old topic describing a problem on an operating system that is no longer in active support. In any case, this handy little tool listed a bunch of extensions, most of which were from Microsoft, a few of which were from products I've had on my system for a long time, and one was associated with a bit of hardware (an NVidia video card) I installed just a couple of weeks ago. My symptoms were that if I tried to pop up the context menu on a drive in the left panel (tree view of drives & directories) of Windows Explorer, Windows Explorer would generate an error & close. I never got as far as seeing the context menu so I never managed to get to the drive properties, which was my destination & apparently was the point at which most other people experienced their problems. My problem occurred at an earlier step compared to what I'm seeing others were experiencing. Before I came here for help, I went to the trouble of doing a chkdsk on all of my partitions & that didn't cure the issue. Anyway, I got ShellExView. ShellExView was showing me several shell extensions associated with NVidia. I thought hmmmmmm....... I thought 1+1=2 in most number systems we like to use. I thought these things are probably not anything I'm ever going to use. I don't intend to ever download updated drivers for the card. It's working now & it's fine. Let's see what happens if I just disable the handful of extensions that are identified as coming from NVidia. Yeah, I know, not very scientific, I should have tried one at a time. But I'm lazy. And like I said, I'm not interested in fiddling with anything to do with NVidia settings beyond the video resolution, which isn't something I would set from a context menu. There's a new NVidia tool in Control Panel for that.


Guess what? There's a happy ending to this story. Disabling the NVidia extensions restored my Windows Explorer functionality. Didn't have to reboot. Didn't run SFC /SCANNOW. Didn't even log off the user. Just disabled the NVidia extension in ShellExView. Poof. Magic. Problem solved.



Thank you for the advice. Thank you for the pointer to the handy tool. May we all get many more years of use out of this non-supported operating system. It serves its purpose & as long as it continues to do so, I see no reason for getting on W10 or whatever follows on after that.

ShellExView still works great one Windows 10 too. Great tool as you said.

Glad you got it fixed. Thanks for posting it, could definitely help someone in the future.