Solved Windows explorer.exe crashes multiple times a day

[geneiusxie]

Ok the batch file you sent me is done. Looks like it didn't find any corruptions

 

[geneiusxie]

...and explorer crashed twice today. Thanks for the help, but do you have any other ideas?

 

[MasterChief]

Autoruns

 

[Coke Robot]

Can you post a screenshot of some warnings of explorer.exe crashes in Event Viewer?

Also, can you list what programs you typically have installed?

I had an issue like this recently and the resolution was something so completely not obvious...

 

[geneiusxie]

No, the uninstaller won't actually let me remove McAfee because I have anti-theft. I think I only installed the anti-theft part and declined their anti-virus anyway.

Is McAfee that bad? I don't think that's the cause because I don't have McAfee anti-theft or anything McAfee related on my desktop (for obvious reasons) and it crashes as well, so I think it might have to do with the programs I always install on all my computers like VLC, notepad ++, or Ditto

A screenshot of one of the errors in event viewer is attached

 

[MasterChief]

and it crashes as well

Just saying - if this was happening to me, I'd go to any length under the sun necessary to remove it from the system. There would not be any valid obstacles.

 

[geneiusxie]

Alright I've been using this program called BestPractice for a while but today it won't start up. Reinstalling, restarting, etc. didn't work. I'm thinking maybe one of the things you guys told me to try might have caused it, but not sure since it looks like only autoruns and stuff such were changed.

It says "bp.exe - Application Error" on the bar at the top and
"The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142). Click OK to
close the application."

Download link:
BestPractice | Free Home & Education software downloads at SourceForge.net

 

[Coke Robot]

No, the uninstaller won't actually let me remove McAfee because I have anti-theft. I think I only installed the anti-theft part and declined their anti-virus anyway.

Is McAfee that bad? I don't think that's the cause because I don't have McAfee anti-theft or anything McAfee related on my desktop (for obvious reasons) and it crashes as well, so I think it might have to do with the programs I always install on all my computers like VLC, notepad ++, or Ditto

A screenshot of one of the errors in event viewer is attached

The ntdll.dll module failure generally points to malware infection and/or registry damage.

I vote for using a tool like Kaspersky anti-virus scanner, just the standalone quick scanner, to see a non-partisan third party opinion of any STDs on your system. If that checks out as clean, we'd need to check a bit further to see what EXACTLY, program wise, is causing that error. Start up Interwebs Explorer, VLC player, like EVERY program you have installed and see one by one what causes explorer.exe to crash. Even better would be to go back and remember WHEN things started to go wrong and revert back to that state either through System Restore or removing said programs. If all those programs are checking out as fine...

We need to go deeper.

It could be a program file that runs in the background. For me, I had explorer.exe crashes daily and it was SUCH a pain the crotch because moving about 17 gigs of music onto your Windows Phone 8 with GRD3 and Nokia Black firmware updates would cease to transfer when explorer.exe crashes about every 20ish minutes. The fault I had was from AutoCAD 2014, specifically Autodesk 360, which is like a SkyDrive for AutoCAD in a sense. That hooks into the system and keeps things in sync, but I don't use it and it was actually causing explorer to crash. Removing that fixed it.

If EVERYTHING has failed, we may need to do a refresh.

 

[geneiusxie]

Yeah I have AutoCAD 2013 installed. I already uninstalled AutoDesk 360 with the "Add or Remove Programs" a week or two ago. Maybe it's Dropbox or Google Drive? Is there a way to completely disable them from starting, i.e. on startup and other triggers that might cause them to start?

 

[Coke Robot]

Yeah I have AutoCAD 2013 installed. I already uninstalled AutoDesk 360 with the "Add or Remove Programs" a week or two ago. Maybe it's Dropbox or Google Drive? Is there a way to completely disable them from starting, i.e. on startup and other triggers that might cause them to start?

You've ran all your programs to see if one of them triggers a crash?

I wouldn't think either google drive or dropbox would do such a thing as if they did, it would be more known of an issue.

 

[geneiusxie]

Ok so after giving up on it and spending another month of using my computer like I normally do, I realized that whenever I play a video with VLC, the crash happens a lot more often, sometimes as often as once every video (usually about 12 minutes long)
Using the windows media player doesn't trigger the crash.

I'm thinking it has to do with VLC. A google search only lead me to people who had trouble with video codecs/thumbnails, but that isn't the case with me since windows media player doesn't trigger the crash.

Unfortunately, windows media player can't play .mkv files. The codec I'm trying to play is H.264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1) according to VLC

But of course, this would be a lazy fix anyway to just use quicktime instead because since most people don't have this problem, there much be a conflict with something else

 

[geneiusxie]

I know this is a pretty old thread by now, but I think I may have found the problem:

FoxitPDF reader

Apparently the company behind it has turned evil and has started injecting malicious software in the app. For example, some users have reported it turned their homepage to that search.conduit thing

Seconded by:
foxitpdfinfo.dll crashes programs/explorer.exe - Foxit Corporation Forums

I will try to install it on my 15" macbook (considered disposable since I wiped the hard drive and am planning on selling it) and see if it leads to the same crash.

 

[JohnBurns]

I don't have FoxitPDF Reader, or VLC, but I have the problem of explorer.exe crashing.....wish we could find an answer.