Explorer/MyDocuments crashing (DEP)

I have a PC here that for the most part runs fine (WinXP Home SP2). I con go into My Documents OK, but if I try to open My Pictures or My Music (or whatever) I get a Data Execution Prevention Error followed by a 'Windows Explorer has encountered an error and needs to close' error. This also happens in Safe Mode. What the heck is going on here? I've seen something similar happen once before with broken codecs and video files and in the scenario, simply uninstalling the codecs fixed the problem. But in this scenario, it happens with pretty much every folder in My Documents. If the folder contains any type of media file (music files, pictures, videos, etc) it will error out by just trying to open the folder containing the media files. If the folder contains non-media files (like Word files or Excel sheets, etc) then there is no problem. But one .jpg or .wma in folder full of .xls or .doc files is enough to crash it. I've tried sfc /scannow, Dial-A-Fix, malware scans (all clean)....
Any ideas?

THANKS!

 

Are the file associations correct for media files?

Perhaps DEP is turned on for all programs and should be cut back to Windows Kernel only .

 

As far as I can tell, the file associations are OK. They use Kodak EasyShare ofr the photos so that's associated with all jpegs; Windows Media Player is associated with .wma and some other files (.wmv). How do I turn off DEP for all programs and set it for the kernel only? How do I check it to find out?

 

Mycomputer>properties>advanced>performance settings>dataexecutionprotectiontab

Here you have the two options I described.

For more control open Boot.ini in notepad and find the line which includes

\noexecute=

Here you have 4 options

\noexecute=optin (windows only)
...............=optout (windows and all programs except those listed)
...............=alwayson
...............=alwaysoff

 

Thanks for the info. I messed around with it and couldn't find a suitable fix. So I tried a repair install and now I can't get to the desktop due to an activation issue for which I have started a new thread.