Explorer windows closing randomly and explorer.exe restarting

IrishKnight

When using my exHDD's, often the windows will close randomly, the start bar will disappear, and then reappear, as if explorer.exe is being restarted, without warning. Programmes, such as Chrome and VLC don't close but any windows like My Documents etc will be close.

Anyone else have this happen to them? Any body know a fix for it or what the problem is?

Using XP SP3 by the by...

Digitaljunkie

Thats a strange one !! First I would update your SP2 then update your virus software and restart. Se if that helps.

Ohh just spotted your using an ex drive so not sure maybe someone will come along with more info.

Fysh

Any filesystem windows you have open will close when explorer.exe terminates and restarts, so that part of it at least makes sense. Without any further info, I'd guess that there might be a flaky connection to one of your external drives, causing it to be disconnected and remounted at random, which is in turn causing explorer.exe to fall over...

There are a few questions you should answer to help narrow down the possible problem sources:

• Do you have more than one external drive connected when the problem happens? If so, have you attempted to reproduce the problem with only one drive connected at a time?
• Do you have more than one USB port on your computer? If so, have you checked whether the problem occurs with all ports?
• How many other USB devices do you have connected to your machine? Have you tried disconnecting all other USB devices and attempting to reproduce the problem with only one external hard drive connected?
• Have you tried using different USB cables (preferably known good cables) to test if they affect occurence of the problem?
• Are there any messages in the Event Viewer around the times when the problem occurs?

If you're still not sure what's causing the problem after answering those questions, I'd suggestin going to the Sysinternals utilities page, downloading Process Explorer and Process Monitor, and using them to try and pinpoint the cause of the problem. It's time-consuming but worthwhile for otherwise intractable problems.

IrishKnight

It appears to be happening to my Downloads folder on my internal HDD too, which would suggest that the exHDD aren't the problem.

I checked the event viewer and the following was recorded

Event Type:	Information
Event Source:	Winlogon
Event Category:	None
Event ID:	1002
Date:		09/01/2011
Time:		00:13:42
User:		N/A
Computer:	<snip>

Description:
The shell stopped unexpectedly and Explorer.exe was restarted.

So I was right about explorer.exe restarting...pitty it is not telling us why? Perhaps there is a nasty file lurking somewhere...

Odaise Gaelach

I'd be willing to bet that it's a virus. It could be triggered by some autoplay program that executes when you plug in the drives and copies itself to another drive when you plug another one into an infected computer.

I'd download Process Explorer as Fysh linked to and go through it for processes that look suspicious.