Hi, my explorer.exe almost always crashes when I try to right-click something in 
my Start menu. The error report usually looks something like this:

AppName: explorer.exe	 AppVer: 6.0.2900.5512	 ModName: ntdll.dll
ModVer: 5.1.2600.2180	 Offset: 0002ae22

Occassionally it also crashes when right-clicking stuff outside of the Start menu, 
in which case different dlls might come up as well, such as shell32.dll or msvbvm60.dll. 
It seems pretty much random as far as I can tell.

I would greatly appreciate any help in fixing this, it's really rather annoying, 
and I don't even know where to start.

Tip: Run a free scan for common Windows errors ad

re: explorer.exe crashes on right-click in Start menu Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 7:56 pm Posted by Spexx (1951 messages posted) This type of crash is nearly always caused by a bad "shell extension" module. Think about what software might have been installed recently, particularly if it installed a new right-click context menu item. Download ShellExView which will list all the shell extensions and allow you to disable them for testing purposes. Try disabling all non-Microsoft extensions first, check that the problem has gone away (which is likely) and then start adding them back one by one, until the problem reappears. You will then have found the culprit! Hope this helps. Cheers. Spexx. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: explorer.exe crashes on right-click in Start menu Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 11:58 pm Posted by Sordid (74 messages posted) That is extremely helpful. Looks like a very interesting and useful program, and you were right, disabling the extensions fixed the problem. Now just to find the one that's causing it and give it the boot. Thank you very much for your help. :-) On Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 7:56 pm, Spexx wrote: >This type of crash is nearly always caused by a bad "shell extension" module. Think >about what software might have been installed recently, particularly if it installed >a new right-click context menu item. Download ShellExView >which will list all the shell extensions and allow you to disable them for testing >purposes. Try disabling all non-Microsoft extensions first, check that the problem >has gone away (which is likely) and then start adding them back one by one, until >the problem reappears. You will then have found the culprit! Hope this helps. Cheers. >Spexx. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: explorer.exe crashes on right-click in Start menu Monday, August 18, 2008 at 12:13 am Posted by Sordid (74 messages posted) Yeah, found it. Normally I wouldn't bump this thread just to announce that, but get this! It was the extension CmdLineContextMenu Class, the description of which says: SecuROM context menu for Explorer. From company: Sony DADC Austria AG. Well thank you very much, copy-protection crud! Not only do you have me cracking my legally purchased games so that I'm not forced to juggle CDs for no reason every time I want to run one, now you've actually damaged my system! What a bunch of assholes! D-:< On Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 11:58 pm, Sordid wrote: >That is extremely helpful. Looks like a very interesting and useful program, and >you were right, disabling the extensions fixed the problem. Now just to find the >one that's causing it and give it the boot. >Thank you very much for your help. :-) > > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: explorer.exe crashes on right-click in Start menu Monday, August 18, 2008 at 2:19 am Posted by Spexx (1951 messages posted) Flippin Sony! A few years ago their music CD copy protection used rootkit stealth technology to "infect" our PCs and now this little gem comes along. Nice bit of detective work there! Cheers. Spexx. [Reply or follow-up to this message] Tip: Use one of the [Reply or follow-up to this message] links above to add a message to this thread Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows XP Discussion Forum