Explorer crashes on right click of any file folder

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Annoying problem. Tried to debug for several hours now but finally had to uninstall Avast. Searched the boards and tested past solutions with no luck.

Vista Home with all updates, US version

Disabled all but MS under services, including Avast
Restarted and no crash on right clicks
Enabled Avast services only and restarted to confirm it was an Avast issue.
Ran Norton removal tools to confirm no remnants were remaining from the version that came with this computer months ago
No recent application installed
Avast ran normal for several months
Tried every trick that I could find on the boards and some from other forums, many people are having this issue.
I don’t have the two known conflict programs installed or ever installed as shown in a couple of posts

2

if you don’t mind, I’d have some additional questions:

  1. Did it happen even if you right click on taskbar? Since avast registers only right-click handler only for file with LNK/EXE extensions. If you right click on something else (e.g. desktop/recycle bin/clock), avast extension shouldn’t be invoked at all.
  2. Did you get a msg that explorer.exe crashed? If yes, you should be informed where the crash dump is stored (.mdmp) and we’d like to look at it.
    Thanks.
3

What you probably haven’t checked is what other explorer context menu hooks are on your system as this used to happen to me intermittently and that was down to an explorer shell extension conflicting with avast.

The strange thing is that this wasn’t a security program but SnagIt’s shell extension, why it needs it I haven’t the slightest idea, but once removed in the programs settings, end of problem.

The program I used to track this down was Shell Explorer View, from http://www.nirsoft.net/

4

Yep, as DavidR noticed, when you right-click on something in windows, some shell DLL libraries are executed.
You should try ShellExView and disable one after another…

5

I’ve had this bug on XP, Seven and Vista…always happens after a new software install that implements something conflicting in the context menu…had this with Eraser. As David said, look at the other programs that can be called from the explorer menu, I don’t think that’s Avast causing the problem.

6

The error messages was as follows

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.0.6002.18005
Application Timestamp: 49e01da5
Hang Signature: d572
Hang Type: 517
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: d6dc307cf1370efd737372821660db89
Additional Hang Signature 2: 5de2
Additional Hang Signature 3: 8cbd0f5b0445c6bd0ca33a1951077b41
Additional Hang Signature 4: d572
Additional Hang Signature 5: d6dc307cf1370efd737372821660db89
Additional Hang Signature 6: 5de2
Additional Hang Signature 7: 8cbd0f5b0445c6bd0ca33a1951077b41

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On right click of taskbar and desktop the error was not repeated. On right click of the recycle bin the error was repeated.

Snagit or Eraser were not installed. However FileLocator Pro was installed and was the conflict program.

Problem solved. Three know programs that conflict with Avast are FileLocator, Snagit, and Eraser. Not sure why this error didn’t appear before as both programs have been installed for several months and never conflicted.

A note to the developers. It maybe a good idea to add a message to the Avast installer. On install if any of these three programs are found on the computer display an error message saying something to the effect of “known conflicts”.

I am also confident this issue can be resolved within Avast itself as these three programs seem to work fine without Avast installed. A work around exists somewhere, check the source code.

Thanks again for the help. Problem solved.

7

The two programs, SnagIt and Eraser mentioned were for example purposes, just to show that the most unlikely of shell extensions can cause conflict.

In my case this took ages to find, but I had been using SnagIt for years without problem. This although I didn’t attribute it to this after a SnagIt update to version 9.1, so it may not be a problem in a future or older version. So it is difficult to put a blanket notification up (not that I’m a developer, but an avast user) for all installations of these programs.

Thanks though for the info on FileLocator Pro though.

8

Since avast shell library is not invoked on Recycle Bin, it’s FileLocator who crashed and we were not involved in it. We don’t fix bugs/make workarounds for other apps, or warn users.

9

Very typical response from an assembler.

I am not trying to manage your company but i have to put my two cents in as i have developed more than 300 programs in the past 10 years. I deal with the blame game all day long between assemblers, artists, operating systems.

I can tell you if these three programs work fine on a computer system then suddenly fail when Avast is installed its very unlikely its the three programs. If i right click on the recycle bin without Avast installed it doesn’t crash, end of story. Same goes for the other crashes.

I am sure you are professional enough to understand this can be controlled at some level. At the very least making a warning message so thousands of users don’t spend the day trying to fix it. It is in fact a conflict and the chance of it not being cause by Avast if very slim. Keeping up with the different versions is not a hard task for a good assembler, certain id’s are placed for every program that are version independent that can be monitored by Avast.

Anyway, i am sure you understand how your product can improve, its frankly none of my business. I am just trying to help. It always has room for improvement especially when it happens to so many. Take that suggestion, as you will. Ignoring it or passing the buck will only slow the growth of your product

good luck sir

10

FWIW, I have Eraser installed, (and quite a few other programs that invoke the context menu) and do not have this problem.

11

I had a similar problem with Explorer crashing on my XP SP3 desktop. The suggestion about using ShellExView was very helpful. The problem seems to be solved. I haven’t seen any errors for a few days! (Yay!) I will do this for all my systems!

Here’s some of what I disabled: 7-zip drag + drop, all izarc entries, Agent Ransack (shows as CFLL), A-squared Free, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (MBAM), Super AntiSpyware (shows as SAB) & TuneUp Shredder, Themes, + Disk Explorer. (The security apps I disabled are used as on-demand scanners for emergencies any way.)

I left Spybot IE Protection, Keyscrambler, & of course, avast. The system seems happy now. Keyscrambler also hasn’t crashed lately either; it would crash after explorer crashed sometimes

… just figured I’d drop a note in here about the good results I had.

12

Thanks for the feedback, though I would have taken a little longer over it, by just disabling one or two shell extensions at a time and try to pin it down to one or two extensions. This however does take more time to identify the actual culprit, but if many of those extensions you weren’t using a little housekeeping isn’t a bad thing.

13

I wanted to know exactly what was causing the error, too, but I wasn’t able to reproduce the problem enough times (& also the problem is slightly different than the original poster’s).

It was really very random. I’d just click on My Computer to open it, look around & when I hit the X to close, bam explorer would crash…

Sometimes I was looking around on an external HDD or a pen drive & explorer would crash when I’ve used the same drives with the desktop for a while now…

Or I’d have a web browser open & an explorer window open, go to close & explorer would crash… & I didn’t know what caused explorer to crash because it would say that it is unknown… I’m going to look to see if I saved a screenshot of it. (I should have one some place…!)

I just know since I disabled some of the shells I don’t really use I haven’t seen any errors.

Usually, I would stick with just one zipping utility, but there have been a few times where unzipping a file failed, so that’s how I ended up with 2 programs. With the security apps, I only have that many because it took scans from different programs to catch malware from the last infection I had (about a week ago).

In the end, I reformatted, but it was an interesting test to see which programs would catch it… I hadn’t had a malware infection in such a LONG time, so it was very fascinating to me.

Edit: I got the error again with the latest AIS, (on a computer I haven’t used Shellexview)… The offset is probably different than the last time.

The good news is that I wasn’t doing much on the computer when it happened. I had left the tablet to look at the progress of the reinstall for the desktop.

When I turned back, the explorer error was there. The only program I was running was HFSLIP. Right, but AIS was DISABLED! I had used the disable until next restart option.

The internet connection was also disabled. HFSLIP was processing files in a cmd window to slipstream one of my sources. I had opened a few windows with AIS disabled prior to the crash, like at least 5 or so minutes prior to it…

My computer is set to restart explorer when there is a crash, so the taskbar just went away for a while & then returned.

Edit 2: Okay. I saw this error today again. AIS was enabled this time. I had Firefox open, a USB thumb drive attached, & an explorer window open. I was copying some files over to the thumb drive, so the copying prompt was on the screen too. Now… I closed Firefox & the explorer window. The copying prompt left, since the copying finished. I safely remove the thumb drive &… well… there was the error.