Windows Vista Windows Exlorer not responding.

I currently have VISTA 64BIT and I have been noticing that when I open windows exlorer, the mouse icon changes from an arrow to a circle that goes around... and then window explorer window displays "Not Responding ". I am not able to close window... If I attempt to close... and either select close or restart, my PC does not come back... from not responding... I have to hard reset PC... Maybe if I waited long enough... It will come back...

When I go to safe mode... I don't notice this problem... I wanted to see what software was causing this and it appeared at least to me that when I did not start my trial version of Bitdefender problem went away... I unistalled bitdefender... and it appeared to be resolved... so I attempted to install another anti virus... Avira (AntiVir)... and it appears i have same problem... where windows explorer is not responding...

Has anyone experienced this problem ? I'm starting to think it's some other software.. that is causing this problem.

Note: I previously had Norton360 and uninstalled using their "Norton_Removal_Tool" software... I was thinking back in time of when I started noticing this Windows Explorer not responding... I'm starting to wondering what this removal tool actually removed... Possibly some necessary data ?

Any suggestions, would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi Arie,

Thanks for the suggestion... This article suggests 2 things... 1 - Errors caused by 3rd party shell extensions that are not working. 2 - Errors caused by virus/spyware.

I'm just noticing your reply this morning... Last night I got frustrated with this problem and reluctantly re-installed VISTA. So I won't be able to check 3rd party shell extensions unless the problem re-occurs.... I will definitely keep this in mind... But I wanted to mention a couple of things...

1. Within 2 months (my PC is about 3 months old), I have tried several antivirus programs in order: Kapersky, Norton 360, bitdefender & Avira AntiVir. Except for Norton 360... when opening windows explorer I would get Windows explorer not responding... When windows explorer opens... window is split in 2. On the left you have "Folders" and on right you see drives/folders/files. I was never able to see the right side where drives/folder/files is displayed. After uninstalling security suites, Windows explorer opens fine.

2. I did not find any viruses with any security suites expect for Avira AntiVir. It found 2 trojans with same name. According to Avira these were low threat. After removing trojans, I was still getting "Not Responding" with Windows explorer.

3. Ran Norton Removal Tool when uninstalling N360

Installing security suites... I would expect them to install shell extensions in Windows explorer but I'm suspicious why most would not work properly... Leading me to believe this is caused by some virus/spyware... But after deleting trojans with Avira AntiVir, I was still getting errors in Windows explorer. I was also concerned about Norton Removal Tool... possibly deleting more that it needs to. Installing Avira AntiVir, I had to add 2 registry entries (provided by Avira reps) that was deleted by Norton_Removal_Tool in order to get automatic virus definitions to download properly... I wonder what else it may have deleted...

In any case, I will keep this in mind if windows explorer acts up again.

Thanks.

 

Hi PeteC,

Thanks for the article... The article mentions the below:

Unfortunately, neither Symantec's bundled uninstaller — nor a little-known, special utility from the company — removes every single thing.

guru Dave Taylor warns that "the presence of uninstalled security software in the Registry can conflict with newly installed security software and cause system freezes. "

I was trying to remember when I initially started having problems with my windows explorer... and it was after running Norton_Removal_Tool. One of the things I did not mention.. was that N360 was the first suite I attempted to install first... For some reason I was not able to install the first time... according to Symantec... possible file corruption... so I ran Norton_Removal_Tool and Kaspersky was the first security suite to properly install. One of the reason I have installed/tried so many security suites is because either security suite or windows explorer are not responding or seem to have compability issues... and from this it is possible that running Norton_Removal_Tool may not have removed all of Norton Components.... causing system freezes !!

Thanks, this better explains my issues with windows explorer and why security suites seem to have compability issues and seem to be stuck too.

Thanks !!

 

Hi Arie,

Thanks for the suggestion. I usually prefer all in one security suites with good reviews... I'm not saying that AVAST is not good... but checking some reviews I normally don't see AVAST in the top performers .... so after re-installing VISTA I installed trial version of Kasperksy. If no issues... then I'll keep it. Previously, I had installed Kaspersky but removed it because when Windows started... Most of the time, my PC would freeze... At the time I thought it was due to compability issues.... and from previous post... I believe running Norton_Removal_Tool may have not completely removed Norton360 and hence was getting system freezes when I had Kaspersky...

Although, I need a couple of days to test Kaspersky... I'm confident that after doing a complete re-install of VISTA 64BIT, I won't have any issues now...

Thanks !!

 

Update,

After re-installing vista, it appears I'm still having issues with windows explorer and hence my problem is not related to Norton_Removal_Tool.

As suggested by article "Troubleshooting Windows Explorer Errors ", I disabled shell extensions from Kaspersky and it made no difference. Although I formatted and re-installed VISTA I checked anyways for viruses/spyware and found none...

So it appears this is related to Kaspersky... The problem was that before re-installing VISTA, i had same issues with Kaspersky, bitdefender & AVIRA... The only one that I had no issues was with Norton 360. The only reason I unistalled N360 was that after running for 1 month fine... It encountered an error and said that N360 needed to be uninstalled and re-installed.... After uninstalling, I was unable to install N360 (i guess due to some file corruption) hence I moved on to the next security suite.

Since I thought I was going to be fine... I went ahead in purchasing Kaspersky
and was going to enter key after the 1 month trial version... argh !!

Since I've had this problem with other security suites it seems likely that this will occur with other security suites too...

I guess I'll have to go to Microsoft Support Services and open a support request....

 

Only a maybe and I don't know if it has been suggested. Boot into Safe Mode and try working with Windows Explorer there.

 

Yes, it works when I go into Safe Mode... It also works when I uninstall Kaspersky... The problem is that I have encountered this problem with most of the security suites I have tried... The only security suite I had no issues, was with Norton360 but I'm trying to avoid N360.

 

OK... Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Two things I would suggest:

Run Error Checking on the drive/s

Put a check in both boxes.

Look for updated chipset drivers for your motherboard. If your drive/s are SATA, also check for separate SATA Controller drivers.

Matt

 

I had already checked a couple of weeks ago for check disk errors and it was fine...

I'm in the process of attempting to upgrade my BIOS with ASUS... but I will look into updating chipset drivers too.

My harddrives are Western Digital Rapter 10K RPM SATA150. Where would I check for SATA Control drivers ?

 

Assuming the drives do not run from an add-in card, they will be found at Asus as well. Look through the driver downloads. If they are not listed, they may be bundled with the chipset drivers. Do you have RAID? Check for those and say, IDE Controller drivers (nVidia may not recommend installing those if it is an nVidia chipset).

Investigate if software has been added for things like flash/micro drives. What programs may be running at startup that will have any influence on the drive/file system. Look at the startup programs listed in msconfig.

Matt

 

Chacking ASUS downloads... SATA drivers was released on 2007/1/29 & Chipset was released on 2006/11/21 for VISTA 64BIT. Since my PC is about 4 months old, I assume that I have latest drivers...

No, I don't have RAID. I have 1 hard drive and 1 USB external hard drive that I use to back up data. I misspoke when I said "harddrives" it should have been singular

I currently have few programs in startup programs in msconfig... besides microsoft... there is NVIDIA, Logitech, CreativeLabs & Kaspersky...

Normally when I open explorer, I hit keys: "windows key" & E. Afraid of getting "Not Responding ", I'm starting to open explorer by selecting "Start" button and then selecting "My Documents or My Pictures or My Computer ". So far it is opening fine... but I have not open explorer that many times to say that it's resolved.

I'm going to try to get "Not Responding" from explorer by opening explorer frequently from the "Start" button instead... It'll probably take me a couple of days to determine if it opens fine or not... I'll get back.

 

Update:

I attempted to open windows explorer many times last night and it opened with no issues... Initially by selecting the "Start" button and then selecting "My Documents" or "My Pictures "... Then I attempted to open explorer the usual way by hitting keys "windows" & E and it opened fine too.

The only thing I can think of that has changed.... Recently there have been many windows updates lately that I have installed... Some of them were related to updates required before SP1 is ready for the general public... Maybe one of these updates made a difference... not sure...

This seems to be resolved... But I'd like to wait a couple more days before I feel confident that this is resolved... From past experience with other issues... I see issues fixed only to have issue re-occur a couple of days later... Lets see