I had some spyware/viruses on my system about a week ago and I cleaned them ( I thought ) with a combination of hitmanpro, malwarebytes, and my norton antivirus.
I ran a scan yesterday to make sure everything was clean and the results confirmed that.

Today, I restarted my computer to install some updates and as soon as windows loads, windows explorer crashes and restarts...about 5-8 times per minute..

i don't have much time at all to click anything because as soon as i click it, windows explorer crashes and it closes out.
I finally got malwarebytes running and am scanning the system.
I did a google search already but found literally hundreds of sites with the same problem and no good explanation on how to fix it. I'm using my wife's laptop right now, which is how I can post. Internet explorer doesn't stay up long enough for me to do anything on my laptop.
Any suggestions, besides reformatting/reinstalling windows?

12/8/2010 4:45:51 PM

Install and use Google Crome. You will never go back to IE.

12/8/2010 8:36:26 PM

New question

I decided to reinstall Windows 7 on my system. When I insert the disc into the drive and restart the computer, it does not give me an option to boot from the CD.
Instead, I went into BIOS and changed CDROM to #1 on boot priority.
It booted from CD then and it went through the installation process.. The installation process has to restart my computer, but obviously it started loading the CD again and started over with the installation process.
I restarted the comp and quickly changed BIOS to hard drive boot. It boots, but then it never accesses the installation CD to complete the installation process.

How do I get the computer to boot from the CD without changing the BIOS?
I have a feeling that's my problem.

12/8/2010 9:16:14 PM

It's been a while since I've installed Windows 7, so memory is hazy, but...

Set your BIOS to boot off the cd/dvd drive.
Restart.
IIRC the computer will ask you to press a key to load off the CD/DVD. I know it did this for older Windows versions, but like I said, I can't remember with Windows 7. Press a key to start the Windows installation.
The system will reboot during a certain point in the installation.
After that reboot you will again be prompted to press a key to load off the CD. THIS TIME DON'T PRESS ANY KEYS. The message will eventually go away and the system will eventually boot off the hard drive, recognize that the installation hasn't finished yet, and continue on.

Maybe you're already doing that, just throwing it out there just in case.

As for the explorer crashes. I had the exact same infuriating problem with Windows 7 x64 ultimate. Explorer would often crash and I guessed that it crashed while trying to generate the right-click menu, sometimes it seemed more random. I knew it wasn't a virus because it would do it on a relatively fresh install - like a bare bones install with nothing more than one or two utility programs installed (install msis direct from the software distributor) and before connecting it to a network.

Part of the issue was that the problem eventually went away on its own, so I don't know if a Windows update took care of it at some point or what. When I was having the problem regularly I think I had it narrowed down to something caused by WinAmp or Daemon Tools. One of those two programs because:
1) It was a fresh Windows install and WinAmp and Daemon Tools was about the only thing on the computer at the time
2) Both those programs put crap in the right-click menus and explorer crashed, more often than not, when right-clicking.

Obviously a fresh install didn't fix my explorer crashes. It just went away with time. So either MS finally fixed it in an update (IIRC the research this was a constant issue with Vista for many users) or WinAmp, Daemon Tools, etc. finally fixed their stuff in later releases.



[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:16 PM. Reason : last edit]

12/8/2010 11:04:06 PM

Quote :

"Install and use Google Crome. You will never go back to IE."

You replaced Windows Explorer with Google Chrome????

12/9/2010 7:29:54 AM

Quote :

"hitmanpro, malwarebytes, and my norton antivirus."

malewarebytes and norton miss Rootkits all the fucking time. I just cleaned up a computer for a buddy last week. He had a really bad rootkit on it. Only program that could get rid of it was combofix.

http://www.combofix.org/

12/9/2010 8:10:04 AM

Quote :

"You replaced Windows Explorer with Google Chrome????"

haha. I was thinking the same thing.

12/9/2010 10:18:12 AM

Every single time I try to do a clean install of Windows 7, it restarts and goes the part about "completing installation" and then I get an error message that says, "Windows could not configure one or more system components". error error error

I tried do a factory recovery instead. It loads up the factory recovery from the hard drive partition and begins running it.
5 minutes later, it has an error and says it can't complete.
Now every time I try to turn on the computer, I get a black screen that says boot error.

i don't understand why a clean install of windows, or a factory recovery will not work. That doesn't even make sense.
If I'm trying to start from scratch, how are there still errors?

12/9/2010 4:15:20 PM

could be bad hard drive.

find the manf. and run their diagnostics iso boot up cd on it.

12/9/2010 4:27:25 PM

Well, the Windows 7 installation FINALLY worked and now I'm good to go.

I'm kind of glad I did a clean install bc I got rid of a bunch of junk that I didn't need hogging resources.

12/9/2010 5:49:13 PM

maybe u has bad shell extension: try shexview and start turning them off one by one starting with the most recent ones.

12/19/2010 6:45:23 AM

Also consider using ShellMenuView (also from NirSoft)

and Autoruns (from Microsoft Sysinternals) to keep some components from getting loaded at startup

12/19/2010 1:10:58 PM