Shell Explorer.exe closing

Sometimes and usually when closing an application, Explorer.exe closes and then reopens. Naturally all desktop icons disappear and reappear as do task bar icons. I get an message thus:

EXPLORER.EXE Application error.
The instruction at "0x77f57d85" referenced memory at "0x001b0000" the memory could not be written.
Click OK to terminate the program.
Click cancel to Debug the program.
OK CANCEL

This is an annoyance rather than a disaster, the only problem being that a number of programs that load at start up and have icons in the task bar are missing, necessitating logging off and on again to restore them.
Using Windows XP professional. SP1 all relevant updates applied, all drivers up to date.
V333DA Motherboard, AMD Athlon 2000XP plus, 512 Mbyte RAM. TNT2 AGP, 30Gb and 15Gb primary master and slave. CDRW and DVDRW/CDRW Secondary master and slave. Ultra ADA-100 IDE card with 80Gb primary master and CDROM secondary master. USB 2.0 PCI card. Epson C64 printer.

Posted this question to a few newsgroups but no answers forthcoming. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

Re: Shell Explorer.exe closes

Thanks for the quick reply. I had seen that item previously but as it refers to Windows not responding when trying to open or close a folder, I didn't think it really matched the problem. I have seen a number of shell problems reported but nothing that exactly matches my one. Any ideas what the relevance of the memory address might be?

 

Explorer.exe will usually crash of two things:
1. Hardware error (Though usually it will take down the entire machine with BSOD)
2. Software error (Usually caused by installling application that makes "hooks" into explorer.exe, it is normal for AntiVira applications to do this and if they have become fubar then they take down the entire system, though other 3rd party applications can also do this along with spyware)

 

Re: Explorer.exe closing

Thank you for the suggestions. Maybe pushing my luck saying this but I have never had the BSOD since going to XP. I think it's a brilliant system. The anti virus program I use now is Avast but this problem started before changing to Avast. Again I think that is such a great program if it were the cause of my problem then I would put up with it. I use SpyBot and AdAware plus to keep track of any spyware.
I do have a heck of a lot of 3rd party programs installed, any one of which could be the problem. I see so many reports of explorer.exe closing in the newsgroups and the associated remedies but none are exactly the same as my problem. Hence the decision not to install patches that Microsoft state are only for one particular problem and should only be installed if it is giving a serious problem. Invariably my situation occurs when I close an application. Usually PSP or Photoshop but it has occurred when closing Outlook Express.
Thanks for your time and if any of the foregoing gives you any furher clues, please let me know.

 

Re: Shell Explorer.exe closes

I have recently added a third hard drive (80Gbyte) which is currently almost empty, so your suggestion may well be the way to proceed. Owing to piecemeal additions in the past I have a C drive which is used purely for backups, a D drive which is a CDRW, the E drive which is a DVD RW, the F drive which is my main drive with Windows and virtually all my software. The G drive is my newest hard drive and my H drive is a CDROM drive. So as you can see it would be a good idea to do a bit of reorganisation.
Thanks for your input.

 

Re: Explorer.exe closing

Good suggestion, will do, thanks.