This is driving me batshit fucking insane. All of a sudden explorer crashed and started cycling on and off at 10 second intervals. It starts, it dies, it starts again . . . . . no reason, no logic to it. Was looking at old pictures when it happened.

I've scanned for everything imaginable, all clean. I've checked services logs/etc, nothing. In Safe Mode it does the exact same thing.


Anybody seen something like this before? The idea of having to do a full reinstall on this machine makes me feel ill, so if there's any possible alternative I'm going to take it. Everything else runs perfectly (I can start things manually from Task Manager, or click them within the 10 second window while explorer is up).

11/10/2008 2:06:19 AM

Try a linux live CD to rule out some hardware errors. I think you're looking at a reinstall because I can't really think of a hardware error that would do what you described.

11/10/2008 2:16:39 AM

Hard drives are all redundant RAID (dual 74gb 10k Raptors in Raid 1 for the OS/program files, 4x 320GB drives in RAID 5 for mass storage) so its certainly not that. I can't imagine that a memory or CPU error would cause anything like this. Everything else works perfectly, just no fucking taskbar or explorer windows for more than 10 seconds.

11/10/2008 3:22:10 AM

there's nothing in the system event log about it? usually when something as vital as explorer crashes, it leaves behind SOMETHING...

11/10/2008 5:08:41 AM

this was happening to my coworker recently. i think it had something to do with visual studio though


he says it was a program that installed context menu extensions incorrectly. he used http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html to track it down. -shrug-

[Edited on November 10, 2008 at 10:19 AM. Reason : .]

11/10/2008 9:34:02 AM

evan: Nope, all there was in the system log was "explorer.exe has encountered an error and is closing" or somethign to that effect.


In any case, I finally rooted it out. Apparently it was due to a spyware application called "vundo", which is notoriously nasty and extremely difficult to remove. It attaches itself to explorer and winlogin with randomized names, and will restore itself if removed on reboot. Symantec Corp didn't see it, Ad-aware didn't see it, only Spybot with the latest definitions even detected it . . . . . and it took 4 reboots and some manual registry muckery to get rid of the damned thing. Since I use Firefox 3, which as of yet isn't directly affected by Vundo, I wasn't getting the popups and such that would have made me suspect something spyware related. From what I've read, I probably got it by not having the very latest Java update installed.

11/10/2008 9:48:22 PM

This is why anti-spyware applications aren't worth a shit.

It's also why windows Vista's annoying little UAC is so nice, it prevents shit exactly like this from happening in the first place. No need for spybot, ad-aware or any other spyware shit

11/11/2008 12:21:23 AM

Vundo affects Vista just as badly if not worse going from the removal instructions I read, heh. Apparently its just a nasty little bastard.

11/11/2008 2:25:21 AM

Same thing happened to me recently.

Download Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and the newest version of AVG Anti-Virus. Install and update if possible.

When you start Windows immediately CTRL-ALT-DEL and kill the explorer.exe process before it crashes. This will keep it from flicking on and off.

Use the File>open in taskmanager to start avg and mwb and run scans (after updates). Remove all threats, should be done.


*****Also I am a dumbass for posting, as I now see it has already been fixed.

[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 10:45 AM. Reason : dumbass]

11/11/2008 10:44:33 AM