having trouble with windows half-crashing
 

my computer is built by me (in maybe 2001), and here are the stats:
OS: windows XP corporate edition (I lost my XP home disk and found a friend with XP corporate)
RAM: 512mb not sure what speed (probably 2100 if that exists) one stick
Processor: AMD athlon XP 1900 plus
HD: 40 gig with about 19gigs of free space.
Graphics card: Nvidia G force 2 MX 400

basically when I open a large directory (pictures, videos, whatever) windows explorer will randomly crash, closing all windows, and return me to a blank background (no taskbar, no icons). after about a second, everything on the desktop returns to normal. and it seems to be just media files that give me problems.

I dont remember it always doing this, as I used to have huge directories with downloaded files, and I dont remember it happening in the past...it seems to have showed up in the last say...5 months...nothing has really changed on the machine either.

could it be caused by an update from windows?

old hard drive (2001)?

I've seen someone else's computer (also running XP) do it as well...

any insight on this? I've found my XP home edition, so I could switch operating systems if you guys think it would help.

Thanks

When explorer crashes, it usually launches another instance of it; that is why, explorer goes away, and after a sec, it comes back. it sounds like something is screwed up with the core of the operating system. You could try to track it down, or, it would be easier to back up your stuff and reinstall windows, if your OS is 5 years old, I would definitely recommend it.

Stupid question: People frequently talk about reinstalling Windows. Does that mean you start fresh with the CD, and wipe out every installed program? There would be a massive amount of program reinstallation if I did that.

Is there some way of reinstalling Windows (XP Home in my case) without wiping out every program on the computer?

Thanks in advance.

The whole point of reinstalling windows is to get rid of your problem. So you WANT to reinstall those programs. With that many files, there could be tons of things screwing up your machine.

Reformatting without wiping clean your hard drive kind of defeats the purpose.

I recall having a problem with a work PC.

Apparently (check MS Technet, I don't recall the bug ID) there is a flaw where AVI files in the open directory can cause Explorer to crash - and I had some AVIs from a colleague in "My Documents", a directory I frequently have open.

I created a special subdirectory for them and the problem disappeared. Try putting all your media and photos into a seperate location (or locations) - places which you don't browse often. This may help.

[On reinstalls - I don't do these. This is something that first level support do when they don't understand the problem or cannot be bothered trying to tackle it. Nobody ever learnt anything new from a reinstall, and we cannot do that on critical servers. Ditto with reboots]

What's the folder view style?

If thumbnails, set to List and see if the problem still happens.

If that clears it up you probably have a currupted thumbs cache.

Use Tools->Folder Options->View to:
- Show hidden files
- Unhide protected operating system files

Then delete Thumbs.db for that folder.

Restore your view settings and try again.

If it only happens when you click on certain media files, what file suffixes? Verify you have the necessary codecs installed or just disable preview for those types.

Not an option. I use Windows, Linux and Unix at work. Computer setup is often dictated by corporate or project policy.

Unix and linux are stable on servers. Ditto Windows. The main reason that windows servers are restarted though, is because many Windows support staff adopt this lazy habit early. It's something that arose in Win95 days. Anyways... the restart thing has a place, eg it's ok when supporting the desktops in the marketing department.

In terms of Apple, well I like and respect them. They don't really do server hardware though (which is more my area). Not the sort of stuff available from IBM, Sun, HP and the Linux HPC crowd.

lol, I dont know if I'll ever own an apple desktop because they're so easy to build yourself.

however, if I ever need a laptop, I'd probably buy a mac

edit: it may indeed be just avi files that are causing the problem. I will try isolating them and see what happens