Windows Explorer (Incl. Control Panel, Internet Explorer, My Docs, etc)

About a week ago, my computer stopped letting me open up anything that uses Windows Explorer. This includes things like the Control Panel, My Network Places, My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures, etc. When I try to open up one of these I get an error message that says the following:

Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost.

The data contained in the error report contains the following:

AppName: iexplore.exe AppVer: 6.0.2600.0 ModName: vx2.dll
ModVer: 0.3.1.6 Offset: 00010446

In addition, I'm receiving Internet Explorer Script Errors roughly every minute containing the following:

An error has occurred in the script on this page.
Line: 5
Char: 2
Error: Server execution failed
Code: 0
URL: file://C:\DOCUME~1\KELLYM~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\mads.tmp
Would you like to continue running scripts on this page? Yes/No

I'm incredibly frustrated, especially since I cannot open the Control Panel or view My Documents. I've been using the Opera Browser for the internet in the meantime, but I'm confused as to why this is all of a sudden happening when everything was fine before. I'm running Windows XP Pro and have never experienced problems before. Please advise as to what I should do to use Windows Explorer tools again! Thanks so much!


Kelly McDaniel
kellymmcdaniel@msn.com
AIM: nsyncer600

 

You need to run adaware or spybot cause you been caught:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-menuext&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=vx2.dll

Links to the programs are pinned up in security forum:
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33

See adaware/spyware category in the above link^.

 

Have you tried a system restore back to a date prior to the problem? This thread might be relevant, also.

Because of your description of the problem, you might want to download CWShredder and run it. Post back and let us know how you are doing.

Johanna

 

Sorry Johanna,
Look through the first few google links describing this vx*.dll problem and symptoms. This is adaware and causes explorer.exe failure. This is what needs to be gotten rid of.

==========
Hi Kelly,

While you probably need to run adaware or spybot, because these are "great things ", often recommended, to run as regular maintenance as well as web survival......the manual cleanup of this also looks pretty easy to accomplish:

See:
http://www.cexx.org/vx2.htm#vx2

 

Good catch, Ann!

Kelly, if you can't fix it, post back and we'll walk you through a clean install.

Best of luck!

Johanna

 

i was having a lot of problems with explorer to. when i opened programs explorer would freeze. i would get a lot of error messages and the icons on the desktop along with the task bar and start button would disappear. i just downloaded and installed this patch Q329692
about an hour ago and so far so good but i guess only more time will tell. here is the link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ae-2f93-48dc-a39a-c9d98dada7a5&DisplayLang=en