Win Explorer shuts down for no reason

I keep getting a problem with Windows Explorer... It will close for no apparent reason whenever it's open. This doesn't happen all the time, just sometimes, but it can happen 3-4 times a day which is annoying.

When it does shut down all by itself, the desktop refreshes itself and half the icons in the system tray disappear, although Task Manager shows the processes are still running. I tend to restart just to make sure everything is back again.

The same thing can sometimes happen when I right-click and delete a Desktop icon.

I've run all the checks for spyware etc - Ad-Aware Plus, Spybot Search & Destroy, Nortons AV, Tauscan trojan scanner, TDS3 trojan scanner, and SpywareBlaster is always on. All clear on those. I've also defragged and run sfc /scannow.

Has anyone any ideas or suggestions as to why this is happening and what I might be able to do about it?

Thanks

 

Well, it sounds like you've taken the right steps to try & fix the problem. Is it Windows Explorer, or did you mean Internet Explorer? If it's Windows Explorer, I'd try replacing 'Explorer.exe' with the one from the Windows CD & see if that helps.

 

Thanks for the reply Yes, it's Windows Explorer, not IE...

I must admit to being a bit wary of replacing explorer.exe as it's such a major exe... how might replacing it affect any present settings or add-ons etc?

 

I have this same situation...same symptons you have. I'm curious as well.

 

This is a long shot but do you run "spysweeper" and, did you by chance add it your explorer "right click" functions (whatever you call that)...

After picking up a similar lead from another forum researching my explorer problem, I removed it from my explorer 'right click' context functions and the exact same problem went away and has never come back. Before that win/explorer was crashing every time i got near a big directory. You'll find the toggle on the Spysweep "program options" menu, first question.

I like spysweeper & think it's probably one of the best, but it doesn't play well with some configurations if on the concext menu was my experience

Dave /ATL

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but nope, I don't have Spysweeper...