Faulting explorer.exe application

Hello all,

I am having trouble with Windows Explorer incessantly crashing, reloading my desktop and giving me the "Windows has encountered an error...needs to close...we are sorry (yeah, right!) for the inconvenience" error message. Occasionally this is followed by the Dr. Watson error message, but not usually. It is not happening all of the time, but has recently gotten more frequent. It is happening every time I open, then close My Computer. The error signature is 6.0.2900.3156. Faulting module is unknown. The Event # is 1000. Fault address is 0x01691509 (I think this may be different sometimes). When this happens, the screen flashes very quickly, the desktop reloads, and usually some or most of the programs are still running. After it happens a few times, then it starts locking everything up, and all I can do is CTL-ALT-DEL for the Task Manager. From all of the research I have done online, this appears to be a very common issue. It appears there are many causes and reasons this could be happening. I have tried system restore to no avail. Does anyone have any ideas of things I can try or other places to look for the answer to this problem? I have made sure that I am free of virus, spy ware, and ad ware. I have downloaded Process Explorer, but am not knowledgeable enough yet to know if it can help me troubleshoot this problem. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

Sorry for such a slow response!

Plodr: I don't have the Kodak software, but I have read elsewhere that is often a very common culprit for these errors. Also, I understand certain audio/video files being present in folders are rumored to be other causes, as well as spyware/malware/viruses.

I believe I have fixed the problem, or at least it appears that way so far.

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/techfiles/explorer-crashes.html

I went to this website, and downloaded the free program ShellExView. I sorted all of the shell extensions by Microsoft and non-Microsoft, then disabled ALL of the non-Microsoft ones. (The first time I tried just the context menu handlers) It seems to have worked so far. I haven't had time yet to go down the list one by one to determine which programs are not playing well together.

It was confusing troubleshooting this, because in the past few months I have made many changes to my system. I have added and removed various software, startup/registry tweaks and fixes, and added hardware (external hard drive, IPOD, DVD Burner). It seemed so random for when Windows would crash, except always upon opening "My Computer."

Anyway- thanks, and hopefully this may be the answer to someone else's frustration!