Second-cup-of-coffee

Fixed Vista Windows Explorer crashing problem

I was recently having a strange problem with Windows Explorer on my install of Vista. For some reason, Explorer would hang and require a restart the first time after boot after right-clicking. After some investigation, I think that the problem must have been an errant right-click entry by a program. When you install Windows programs, many of them add things to the right-click menu in Windows Explorer so that you can perform and action on that file in your newly-installed program. For example, iTunes will add the ability to “Play in iTunes” when right-clicking on an audio file. Apparently, one or more of these additions to my right-click menu must have been causing Explorer to hang. I am not sure why a restart of Explorer fixed it.

To fix this, I downloaded the free application, ShellExView from http://www.nirsoft.net. I then turned off all extensions except those provided by Microsoft (there were a ton and turning them off individually to find the culprit would have taken forever). After reboot, I right-clicked and… no crash! Now I can turn on extensions that I would find useful. It not only fixed an annoying problem for me but it also will allow me to customize and streamline my Explorer’s UI.