File manager crashes on my Dell Precision 470 when accessing graphics files

tviator · Sep 1, 2011

File manager crashes on my Dell Precision 470 when accessing graphics files.

Would appreciate any ideas, feedback or solutions.

Background:
Dell Precision 470
Xeon CPU 2.8GHz
1 GB of RAM
XP Professional 2002 Service Pack 3
Two hard drives

A sub folder contains 20 or so jpegs, all of which may 1-2 MBs in size. I double click on the My Computer icon, drill down into the sub folder, say 3 levels down, and the file manager window crashes. Sometimes if continue to do this the window continues to crash and eventually takes me out of Active Desktop mode. My workaround is to copy the folder to that or another drive at the root level, for example, and access the files that way. This usually happens with graphics files of moderate to large size in subfolders.

plodr · Sep 1, 2011

You might have 1 or more corrupted files.
Do this first to prevent the crash
1. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll and click OK.
2. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll and click OK.
3. Delete or move the file that is corrupted.

My suggestion is to move the 20 files to 10 different folders. You will be trying to isolate the file or files causing the crash so you can delete that file.
After you have 2 files in each folder (put them on your desktop so you can view them easily) you want to re-register what you undid in steps 1 and 2 above.
1. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 shimgvw.dll and click OK.
2. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 shmedia.dll and click OK.

Now try to open each of the 10 folders and see which one causes a crash.

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File manager crashes on my Dell Precision 470 when accessing graphics files

tviator Private E-2

plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member