Windows 2000 explorer.exe problem - solved?

Many if not all Windows 2000 users in CHFA over the last two months have experienced an occassional problem when they first login to a workstation. After loading your 'personal setings' an error message appears that "Explorer.exe has caused an error and will be shut down." The only user selection on this error window is 'OK' - but if you click this, you are left with a blank blue-green screen.

Explorer.exe is the "desktop shell" for all versions of Microsoft Windows. This is the program that controls all the icons, start menu, wallpaper, etc. It loads when a user first logs into a computer - and in the case of Windows 2000 and XP, it is designed to restart itself in the unlikely event that it crashes.

CHFA|TECH first experienced this problem last December, but it has been reported frequently to us over the last few weeks. It obviously involved something that occurs when a user first logs into Windows 2000. From that point on, we were unsure what event or events led to this crash.

What we have found that can be reproduced in a controlled setting is that Windows 2000 with all the current service packs, plus Norton AntiVirus (especially if this is the first login after a full hard disk scan was performed - as we schedule automatically every Saturday morning), plus our license management software (KeyServer Client) destabilize explorer.exe. Even with this combination of events that everyone should have on their Win2000 machine - some people were immune to this problem. And, even with our "solution" there was one incident Thursday of a user (Chris Conklin) still having explorer.exe crash after login.

For obvious reasons we cannot rollback security and other updates to the Operating System. We cannot remove Anti-Virus software, but we can reduce the frequency of scheduled scans. Norton Anti Virus finds viruses both through a manual or scheduled scan and by its "Real Time" component that checks files as they are accessed and changed. Finally, for legal reasons we cannot remove the licnese manager. Remove any one of these and the problem seems to go away.
Our solution therefore is 1) delay the start of our license manager program until a managed program is started. Instead of KeyServer client starting when you login to a computer, it will now start automatically with the first application you start. 2) In cases this doesn't rectify the problem (please call us!) - we will re-examine our scheduled weekly scans of computers.

As many of you have determined, restarting the computer solves this problem also. We again ask you don't turn the computer off except through the Windows software "shut down" feature - and we ask you log off your account, but leave the computer turned on at the "Welcome to Windows 2000 - hit ctrl-alt-del to login" screen when you are away from your office.

All computers that were powered on at 12:00AM today have the 'fix' applied to them.
If you encounter any problems with explorer.exe crashing: 1) hit ctrl-alt-delete, and you will have a menu of six choices, choose log off, answer yes, then login a second time. 2) Call or write us, tell us your Windows login name, and what computer you were using at the time this happened. Our phone is 3-7349, or mailto:chfaTECH@uni.edu


Information posted by Chris Conklin, 3/1/2002 10:16:33 AM.