Puzzling explorer.exe crash

I solved it using FileMon! I was looking through the system calls to see what happened before the fault occured, and apparently the last thing it did before the failure was look at conf.exe in C:/Program Files/NetMeeting (!?!?!?)

Earlier I had been shrinking some executables that I didn't use using UPX... and apparently that was one of them I had shrunk.

And for some obscure reason, explorer.exe is reading from Netmeeting when I right click.

But whatever the problem was, I ran upx -d conf.exe and the problem is gone.

 

Nice going! I can imagine how much data you had to sort through to reach that conclusion! Wow, that's quite an accomplishment!

Often when we find the enemy, he is us. (all due apologies to Walt Kelly & Pogo)

 

It was actually not very difficult; I found where it referenced faultrep.dll or whatever it was that started recording the crash. Right before that was, of course, the cause of the crash

And yes, usually the problem with our computers, even if in the end it is due to a bug caused by someone or something else, the trigger is our own mistake