Solved: WinXP Explorer crashes 0x80000003

My explorer has gone mad. Whenever I try to use it I get a message "Application failed to initialize properly (0x80000003). Press OK to end the aplication." I tried Spybot S&D, I scanned the comp with antivirus software ( F-secure, Ad-aware) cleanned ( CCleaner). I also extracted explorer.exe from the installation CD. I also created a new user. In safe mode the explorer is running but that is not the point. As you can expect all this to no avail.

I tried to restore system to a earlier restore point, but after that ( I mean after restart) I learned that system was not restored and I have to repeat Windows Activation. I did that and lost all restore points. Without explorer I can use my PC only by running a New Task in Task Manager.

Any suggestion ?

 

Actually it might be. If it is running fine in safe mode then the problem may not be caused by explorer.

Can you please run HJT and post a log? I suspect there may be something that is causing explorer to crash...

 

In the meantime problem changed a bit(I uninstalled a crap app - thanks for fileMon): I had explorer at the start but it crashed whenever I pasted a file (mouse right click) and restarted itself.

Here are messages:
AppName: explorer.exe AppVer: 6.0.2900.5512 ModName: ntdll.dll
ModVer: 5.1.2600.5512 Offset: 0000100b

This is from the EventViewer:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 65 78 70 ure exp
0018: 6c 6f 72 65 72 2e 65 78 lorer.ex
0020: 65 20 36 2e 30 2e 32 39 e 6.0.29
0028: 30 30 2e 35 35 31 32 20 00.5512
0030: 69 6e 20 6e 74 64 6c 6c in ntdll
0038: 2e 64 6c 6c 20 35 2e 31 .dll 5.1
0040: 2e 32 36 30 30 2e 35 35 .2600.55
0048: 31 32 20 61 74 20 6f 66 12 at of
0050: 66 73 65 74 20 30 30 30 fset 000
0058: 30 31 30 30 62 0d 0a 0100b..

My PROBLEM IS SOLVED NOW..
I used ShellExView from SysInternals and by disabling and anabling groups of items I managed to find the culprit, namely: Hex Editor 3 by HHD Software C:\Program Files\HHD Software\Hex Editor 3.x\heshell.dll
Maybe someone will search quicker ...