[Ville]

Hello,

when I right-click the "Computer" icon on my desktop, clicking on "Manage" usually opens the Computer Management window, but now I'm sometimes getting the "Windows Explorer has stopped working" error message. (Details below) Windows offers me to restart Windows Explorer and after that, the Computer Management window appears.

I can't really reproduce the problem. The error message pops up about every fifth time. But there are two things I have noticed:

1) When I right-click Computer and choose Manage, there is sometimes a strange visual effect on the Desktop that lasts for a split second. Looks as if all Desktop icons were selected for a split second.

2) After 1), the icons on my desktop are less opaque (or more translucent) than usual. They look as if I had selected them, right-clicked and chosen the Cut option (which I have not). All icons are affected, even those that cannot be copied, like "Computer" and "Recycle Bin". After I hit F5 to refresh the Desktop, this effect is gone and all icons look normal again.


While I don't have any evidence, I believe these problems are connected. There seems to be something wrong with my Desktop, because when I use Windows Explorer to navigate to the Desktop, right-click Computer and choose Manage, there is never any error message. It only happens when the Manage command is accessed through the Desktop's Computer icon.

Error details:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: explorer.exe
Application Version: 6.1.7600.16404
Application Timestamp: 4a765076
Fault Module Name: comctl32.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.10.7600.16385
Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bd976
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000aa6b8
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1

My OS is Windows 7 Ultimate. Any help is appreciated.

[Mumbodog]

Interesting problem, not sure how to solve it.

Check event viewer for possible clues.

[Ville]

The error event log shows entries for every time Windows Explorer stopped working. Are there any events I should be looking out for in particular? P.S. I created a new user account to see if the problem might have something to do with my main account, but I had the problem there as well.

[Ville]

Alright, I went through most of my installed applications. Uninstalling the "Unlocker" program (http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/) solved the problem. I did not suspect Unlocker to be the culprit because I had been using it under different operating systems for years, without any problems.

[Mumbodog]

Oh, I bet that program put an entry into the right click menu, a context menu handler.

Nice detective work.

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