explorer.exe crashes when viewing pictures

This is my last attempt for help before I break out the dreded reformat cd's. Ill start with my problem and finish with the computer details I guess. When I try to open "my pictures" it takes forever for the thumbnails to come up and when they do there scrambled, small and very pixelized. When the computer catches up I can refresh and there ok. When I scroll down to view the remaining pictures the screen gets stuck and I then have the same problem, go through the waiting and refreshing. I have to take baby steps or else I getan error report and shut down. Im getting explorer.exe and Dr. Watson reports. I moved a lot of photos and png files off the computer to cd's but it hasnt helped. It seems to be getting worse. Ive run spyware cleaners and antivirus and they come back clean, nothing out of the ordinary. Any help and guidance will be greatly appretiated. Im running Win Xp SP2 Emachine T2482, AMD Athlon X 2400+ 2.00 GHZ 736 Ram, Zone Alarm, Norton AV, Windows is up to date. Regularly run Ccleaner, Reg Scrub, SpyBot, and Spy Hunter. And it has been defraged. Most of my crashes happen when I unzip .png files. I make new folders for the files before hand, extract them, and when I go to open the folder to view them Im shut down. I can open other programs like picassa and I have no problem with the loading or viewing of png and jpg files. Any help will be so appretiated. -ladytrae

 

Try to change your thumbnail view to icon or tiles,because explorer can hang while loading images if corrupted.Also in control panel>folder option(from classical view) check do not cache thumbnails option from the view tab,it might help.

 

I tried and I cant even get in to sub folder to change them to tiles before it locks up and the error reports come up. I have to use the task mgr to end because it locks up when the error msg come up. Frustrated-ladytrae

 

Dont get into the folder then,instead right click>properties>customize>in what kind of folder menu choose document>then try.

 

When I try it this way I no longer get the error reports and it shuts down immediatly. I havnt got a clue anymore. Could this be something in windows that missing or screwd up? Ive run the windows file check to see if the original files were messed up or what ever it check for and it always finishes and disapeers. So Im to guess its all good. Thank you for the suggestion, Its appretiated. -ladytrae

 

http://netez.com/xplorer2/xplorer2.zip
Try xplorer2 trial version to remove the files that may be causing trouble,try to salvage ok files(put the files into another folder one by one).Also you said you use picasa,maybe you should just uninstall it and reinstall it again.I have used picassa and have had no problems.But it edits pictures and saves the originals in a hidden file.Maybe when you remove picassa it may restore those edits and it may become normal again.

 

http://www.explorerxp.com/explorerxpsetup.exe
Thats a freeware for non commercial use.With Tabbed interface.

 

I tried about a month ago to do something like that by installing Power Desk 6 and it was a nightmare. The crashes and error reports of explorer were easier to deal with. I dont know if this can help but I found a lot of things in the advanced system information error log? There are so many. Ive also posted a hijack this log at the "I am not a geek" site. Maybe it will help someone help me. Thanks for taking a minute to read all of this. Its very appretiated. -ladytrae


Monday, July 25, 2005 DCOM The server {F3A614DC-ABE0-11D2-A441-00C04 F795683} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

Monday, July 25, 2005 ParVdm Unable to get device object pointer for port object.

Monday, July 25, 2005 Service Control Manager The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: SMPLSCSI

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 DCOM The server {F3A614DC-ABE0-11D2-A441-00C04 F795683} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 DCOM DCOM got error "%1084" attempting to start the service EventSystem with arguments "" in order to run the server: {1BE1F766-5536-11D1-B 726-00C04FB926AF}

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 DCOM DCOM got error "%1084" attempting to start the service netman with arguments "" in order to run the server: {BA126AE5-2166-11D1-B 1D0-00805FC1270E}

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Service Control Manager The DHCP Client service depends on the NetBT service which failed to start because of the following error: A device attached to the system is not functioning.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Service Control Manager The DNS Client service depends on the TCP/IP Protocol Driver service which failed to start because of the following error: A device attached to the system is not functioning.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Service Control Manager The TrueVector Internet Monitor service depends on the vsdatant service which failed to start because of the following error: A device attached to the system is not functioning.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Service Control Manager The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: AFD AmdK7 BANTExt Fips I PSec MRxSmb NetBIOS NetBT RasAcd Rdbss SAVRTPEL SMPLS CSI SPBBCDrv SYMTDI Tcpip vsdatant

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 DCOM DCOM got error "%1084" attempting to start the service EventSystem with arguments "" in order to run the server: {1BE1F766-5536-11D1-B 726-00C04FB926AF}

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 ParVdm Unable to get device object pointer for port object.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Service Control Manager The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: SMPLSCSI

 

Do you have Photoshop installed? If so, see the thread below.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=62716&highlight=.png

Steve

 

Given all said before and the fact that your system is clean of nasties, if photoshop is your default viewer, with other programs running at the same time I think that your system memory is overstrained. Why not download and install (free) Irfan Viewer with all its plugins - then set it to open all graphics files for simple viewing. You only need photoshop or similar sophisticated graphics programs for heavy editing jobs. Irfan uses little memory and indeed allows you to do simple editing jobs.
Hope this helps
Robert

 

Another small pointer which may help.
When did you last run check disk and have you done a system file check?
Cheers
Robert

 

Ive covered it all I think as far as cleaning, defragging, disk check, Im trying to uninstall Photo to reinstall it and it isnt in add/remove and cant find an uninstaller. Thaks for the tip, let me see what I can find. -ladytrae
Oh and Ive run the file check too. Always completes and goes away so i guess that means all is good.