Windows 7 - folder crashes windows explorer

cloonymee

Hi there, I have a floder in my C drive with 10 movie files. Lately I can't open or even highlight this folder in windows explorer without it crashing explorer. I can't even make a copy of the folder. Has anyone ever had this problem or anyway to fix it?
thanks!

ressem

You might want to consider making a copy of the other stuff on the disk, just in case.

How old is the machine (it's hard drive in particular)? Is the hard drive sounding noisier than usual?
Are there any red errors under Event Viewer \ windows log \ system \ with 'disk' in the 'source' column?

If it's newish, a couple of years old, and hasn't been dropped, it may just be a corrupted file/directory index...

Right click on the C: drive.
In the menu click Properties \ Tools tab\ under error checking ,Check Now

Click both of "Automatically Fix file system errors" and "scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors"

Click start. You'll be prompted to scan after restart, click OK. Restart the computer. It'll run for a few hours.

Ideally look at it every now and again to see if it's getting stuck anywhere or posting errors during the check.

When done, and windows has restarted, check the event log for any entries in Event Viewer \ windows log \ Applications with a source of 'chkdsk'. (either sort or right-click + find on the application folder.)

cloonymee

Hi ressem, thanks for that I tried that scan but no problems showed up. its a windows 7 machine less than 2 years old. bizarrely when I start the computer in SAfe mode theres no problem accessing the folder!

Zith

Have you installed anything recently that adds an entry to the right click menu? For example something like 7zip or a media viewer that kind of thing. Sometimes they don't install correctly and then when you select a file windows goes off asking the applications that have registered against that file type have they any context menu stuff to add.

Solution is to uninstall whatever it was you added or use a tool like shexview (shell extension viewer).

Capt'n Midnight

is the folder set to dispay large icons /preview ?

change the view / default app ?

Overheal

Try navigating to the folder using your web browser (Not Internet Explorer, preferably) or, download a 3rd party file explorer program to see if it's not a corrupted filename or something.

Fysh

Zith wrote: »

Have you installed anything recently that adds an entry to the right click menu? For example something like 7zip or a media viewer that kind of thing. Sometimes they don't install correctly and then when you select a file windows goes off asking the applications that have registered against that file type have they any context menu stuff to add.

Solution is to uninstall whatever it was you added or use a tool like shexview (shell extension viewer).

I've found Nero to be an absolute little git for stuff like that - for months I had an issue whereby bringing up the context menu for any image was so slow that eg I could rename an image faster by opening a command prompt, navigate to the folder, and use RENAME in less time than I would spend waiting for the damn menu. Turned out to be some crappy Nero "DVD cover image editor" piece of garbage that was causing the problem.