explorer.exe problem! Please help me!

[XxFidgetxX]

Okay guys. I really need help. I don't know much about computer software at all. Honestly, I'm not sure if this is the right forum to be posting on. I'm just extremely desperate. Okay, on to the problem.

Randomly my explorer.exe file randomly stopped working. My desktop and task bar just went away. I tried going to my taskbar and went to "start new task." I typed in explorer.exe and it suddenly started working, my desktop and start menu came back, but then it kept crashing and starting back up repeatedly. No error messages or anything. I've tried searching for spyware and such using Adaware 2007 and deleted all that came up, but no luck. I'm extremely desperate at this point guys. If somebody needs anymore information just ask, I'll do my best to give it to you. Thank you guys so much in advance.

[oddjob]

Few suggestions.

>> Did you make any changes to your system prior to this happening ... install new programs, new hardware etc?

This "explorer.exe constant crashing" can happen if newly installed programs/hardware added a "right click" option somewhere.

Uninstalling/reversing recent changes may help.

>>Have you tried invoking System Restore back to a date prior to when the trouble started? (don't worry about data; only the system settings/programs etc. will be taken back in time).

>>Try reinstalling the Internet Explorer browser. (Before anyone says anything, yes, I know we're talking about explorer.exe here but the two are linked. If you get a glitch in IE it could affect the running of the explorer.exe shell).

>>Your computer could have developed a problem with memory. You could check the performance of memory here ...

www.memtest86.com


Good luck.


Let us know how you get on.


OJ

[jldhoule]

sorry...I just had this happen before Christmas. I spent two weeks searching for an anwser and tried everything I found but nothing worked. Meanwhile, restarting explorer.exe (my taskbar and all my desktop icons would disappear) about every 5 seconds. It was a Trojan and the only fix there was for me was to reformat. I tried the AdAware, SpySweeper,SpyBot,AntiVirus scans, online antivirus scans..everything I could think of but nothing worked..even tried restore and for some reason there were 10 days of restore points but all except that morning's restore point were greyed out and useless..reformat was the only solution for me. It was a pain and I'm still re-installing stuff...I have WinXP Pro. If you do reformat take special note of your audio controller codecs, network card and/or modem drivers as these don't reinstall with WinXP for some reason and you have to find these again. Good Luck.

[oddjob]

@XxFidgetxX .... if you want to try and rule out Trojan and other malware (as was jldhoule's problem) then download, install and run each of these .....

TrojanHunter > http://www.misec.net/

Superantispyware > http://www.superantispyware.com/


Let them fix what they want to.


If none of this works post a HijackThis log to see if it reveals anything bad.


PCH