Windows 2000 Server - Flashing Desktop

paulgrogan.eu

Hi Guys,

Hopefully someone on here may be able to help us. We have just got a server back from a company which we took over last year. Its a Windows 2000 server on a Compaq Prolient ML370 box. When we turn on the machine and login, after a couple of minutes the desktop keeps flashing. Its like explorer.exe is continually crashing and relaunching as when we open an application (EG. Adobe Reader) that stays open, but the start bar and anything behind just keeps flashing, or relaunching.

So, has anyone on here experienced this issue before? If so, how did you cure it? Is it curable? Is it serious!?

Any help guidence would be very much appreciated.

Rgds

Paul

PS: Update, just added a picture from the event log.

ressem

There is probably a shell extension that is causing windows explorer to crash.

I'd guess that the same does not happen if you start the server in safe mode.

You can use sysinternals suite of tools. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx)
There's a tool called autoruns which lists the programs and components that start when explorer starts.
Start the program with administrator privilege.
First save the current setup as an ".arn" file.
Look at the explorer tab.

There are only a handful of entries that are not published by Microsoft.
In particular you will probably look at ShellExtensions and ContextMenuHandlers
You can deselect the checkbox in front of an entry to stop it from running at next explorer startup.

paulgrogan.eu

ressem wrote: »

There is probably a shell extension that is causing windows explorer to crash.

I'd guess that the same does not happen if you start the server in safe mode.

You can use sysinternals suite of tools. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx)
There's a tool called autoruns which lists the programs and components that start when explorer starts.
Start the program with administrator privilege.
First save the current setup as an ".arn" file.
Look at the explorer tab.

There are only a handful of entries that are not published by Microsoft.
In particular you will probably look at ShellExtensions and ContextMenuHandlers
You can deselect the checkbox in front of an entry to stop it from running at next explorer startup.

Hi there,

Thanks a million for replying to this thread.

We dont indeed have any trouble with the machine if we launch in safe mode.

Were going to try this later today and will let you know how we get on.

Many thanks

Paul

Standard Toaster

Also check out shexview. It will let you enable/disable any shell extensions if it does indeed turn out to be that.

www.nirsoft.net

Cluster

paulgrogan.eu wrote: »

Hi Guys,

Hopefully someone on here may be able to help us. We have just got a server back from a company which we took over last year. Its a Windows 2000 server on a Compaq Prolient ML370 box. When we turn on the machine and login, after a couple of minutes the desktop keeps flashing. Its like explorer.exe is continually crashing and relaunching as when we open an application (EG. Adobe Reader) that stays open, but the start bar and anything behind just keeps flashing, or relaunching.

So, has anyone on here experienced this issue before? If so, how did you cure it? Is it curable? Is it serious!?

Any help guidence would be very much appreciated.

Rgds

Paul

PS: Update, just added a picture from the event log.

Have a read of this

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=1002&eventno=826&source=Winlogon&phase=1

good luck