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Thread: Random Annoying Explorer Restarts

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    Angry Random Annoying Explorer Restarts




    I recently reinstalled XP because of what i thought was a spyware problem that i couldnt clean or remove via the registry, ive reinstalled xp 3 times this week and kept the box offline and found that the problem isnt spyware related and is still occuring

    although i did find spyware with a couple of apps before the 1st format, the problems didnt stop, so i then wiped.


    I have an old P4 3.2ghz and a crappy Asrock P4VM900-Sata2 Board
    and 1GB-2x512mb ram, i have sound but its been disabled all the time because i hate onboard sound and have a sound card anyway, (creative) the onboard lan ive been using fine, ive tried today swapping both the ddr2 sticks out for a different brand and this has had no effect, i also have quite alot of usb devices so ive tried removing all but the essentials, Keyboard & Mouse obviously
    explorer still restarts randomly

    i say randomly because sometimes i get the msg after boot, and sometimes i can go for a few hours before the icons dissapear and reload and it does it yet again.

    the other very strange thing is, i have on every install i have done, got an unknown device, i have no idea what it is as im sure ive installed everything, and upon emailing asrock who werent much use i was told to remove it, i removed it and it returned, they also told me to load the drivers from the cd, which i had already done, lan, onboard gfx etc, i didnt need onboard sound as its disabled in the bios so didnt bother with drivers.

    when i tried making the wizard search the disc for a driver for the unknown device it didnt find anything.


    the last thing is, even though i have 3 internal hard drives, 2 of them, for some unknown reason are shown as removable, they are on the taskbar safely remove hardware icon!?

    I have 2 USB WD MY Book Pro's but these are unplugged, and havent been plugged in yet on this install, i have firefox, antivirus and drivers installed at this time, not much else

    The newest bits of the box are the motherboard and psu if thats of any relevance


    any help or suggestions greatly appreciated

    stavr0s


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    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    Re: Random Annoying Explorer Restarts

    On the drives, un-check the optomize this device for fast removal (ie poor performance no write cache)
    Quick USB Device Removal Video - Metacafe

    see if that stops the drives showing as removable.

    There are some quirks that force windows to treat a device as removeable often this is due to the controller their on.

    I'd have a look at the chipset drivers, make sure your on the latest version. Are you seeing Icon's corupted? Are you running explorer instances in seperate proccesses?

    Have you run a soak test of memtest86+ (generally worthwhile for every computer niggle)
    throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)

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    Question Re: Random Annoying Explorer Restarts

    Quote Originally Posted by TheAnimus View Post
    On the drives, un-check the optomize this device for fast removal (ie poor performance no write cache)
    Quick USB Device Removal Video - Metacafe

    see if that stops the drives showing as removable.

    There are some quirks that force windows to treat a device as removeable often this is due to the controller their on.

    I'd have a look at the chipset drivers, make sure your on the latest version. Are you seeing Icon's corupted? Are you running explorer instances in seperate proccesses?

    Have you run a soak test of memtest86+ (generally worthwhile for every computer niggle)


    Thanks for the quick reply, and well spotted on chipset drivers, they did need an update, and ive just done it and rebooted, and the same problem

    I did do what you said on the add remove properties page but my drives are still down there after rebooting.

    as for seperate explorer instances, no i dont, no reason to afaik, heh

    icons arent corrupted afaik, they just get reloaded often, well the whole desktop except the wallpaper really.

    soak test?, you lost me there, i didnt run memtest because the board only has 2 slots, and ive tried 2 diff types of 512mb sticks so didnt think there was much point.


    thanks again

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    YUKIKAZE arthurleung's Avatar
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    Re: Random Annoying Explorer Restarts

    Try disabling the image preview
    regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll

    Not sure if this one is going to help, disable native zip file support
    regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll

    Also, try chkdsk /f on all drives (including the external drives) to make sure its not the bad MFT crashing explorer.

    If you have klite or whatever codec pack, try uninstall all of them and install bare minimum like ffdshow.

    I would also suggest reinstalling DirectX.

    Further more, disable NView / ATI Tray tools.

    Check your installed program and see if there is something that is integrated into Windows Explorer (usually when you right click a file you can see "extra" functions like "Add to archive"). Some of these "integrations" are not very stable and could crash explorer.

    Does it just crash randomly or it crash when you open a particular folder or folder with particular type of file?
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    Re: Random Annoying Explorer Restarts

    soak test is just a long test.

    Basically run memtest86+ for as long as you can be bothered (if your going away for a weekend, 3 days is a great test) you should see no errors if you leave it overnight. If you see errors, theres a very low level problem (memory, motherboard or CPU are the useual suspects, can be PSU)
    throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)

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    Unhappy Re: Random Annoying Explorer Restarts

    Quote Originally Posted by arthurleung View Post
    Try disabling the image preview
    regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll

    Not sure if this one is going to help, disable native zip file support
    regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll

    Also, try chkdsk /f on all drives (including the external drives) to make sure its not the bad MFT crashing explorer.

    If you have klite or whatever codec pack, try uninstall all of them and install bare minimum like ffdshow.

    I would also suggest reinstalling DirectX.

    Further more, disable NView / ATI Tray tools.

    Check your installed program and see if there is something that is integrated into Windows Explorer (usually when you right click a file you can see "extra" functions like "Add to archive"). Some of these "integrations" are not very stable and could crash explorer.

    Does it just crash randomly or it crash when you open a particular folder or folder with particular type of file?
    Ok thanks for your reply, ive just checked all disks as you said, all ok no errors.

    its still a pretty clean install, so no codecs installed at all yet, thought it was best for the moment.

    directx was outdated so ive grabbed and installed the latest dx 9.0c march 2008.

    gfx is onboard so no nview or ati tools crap.


    i have few things on right click but these are things ive always used on every pc and never had a prob.
    these are:- winrar, eraser,hksfv, & Eset nod32.

    crashes pretty randomly.

    although i can probably do without built in windows zip support i wouldnt know how to re enable it or image preview after, also i cant really do without image preview, although i dont mind trying it, i could do with knowing how to get it back


    i am going to do as TheAnimus said and run memtest over night sometime and see what that shows.

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    ASRock P4VM900 SATA2 Low Performace

    I know this thread's a bit old but I have some important information for the OP (if he's still around) and anyone else who comes across this thread like I did ...


    Some valuable information for anyone who owns a ASRock P4VM900 (P4VM900-SATA2) motherboard:

    Set Thermal Throttling Temperature to Disabled.
    Your system can be very badly choked if you don't.

    - when the computer is starting up, press F2 to enter BIOS setup
    - go to the Advanced main menu
    - go to Chipset Configuration
    - set Thermal Throttling Temperature to Disabled


    I also highly recommend disabling CPU Thermal Throttling

    - go back to the Advanced main menu
    - go to CPU Configuration
    - set CPU Thermal Throttling to Disabled


    Remember to save changes before exiting BIOS setup.
    Last edited by peterb; 11-05-2010 at 05:55 PM.

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