Windows Win 2k explorer.exe not responding...

Hi all,

Have had this problem for some time now....

When I come to exit windows (2k pro with sp3) I always get a message saying that explorer.exe is not responing and I have to hit the button to end the process to exit windows. I have resinstalled so many times now it's getting stupid (at least every week - sometimes more often)....

Yesterday, I did a fresh install, put all drivers back on, Loaded a couple of progs and all was ok. Put the PC back on to check e-mail and it happened again! Seriously a matter of hours! I'm using Zonealarm as a firewall on my cable connection, don't think I have any probs with other files (MP3's etc)...

Can anybody help? Please!

I may have to buy XP in the vain hope that it stops it.....

 

I can't say for sure, but part of the problem could be the service pack 3 that you have installed. Don't install any SPs, that might help. Otherwise perhaps you may need to get another copy of Windows 2k. I really don't think you need to switch to XP to solve this.

 

When you say fresh install, did you format the partition, THEN install Windows 2000 ? If not, then you would have just installed over the old one, which would **** up anyone's hat.

 

No this was an install after formatting the old partition. Also, have tried without the service pack and still get the same problem. Is there a way to unpack the explorer.exe file form the CD and put it in place of the old one? I have tried, but of course Windows is using the explorer file and therefor won't let me replace it.....

Anybody else ever had the same problem? I have seen it one on my girlfirends laptop but never since......

Just thought that since I can get the XP Pro upgrade for under £50 (academic licence - son in school) it might be worth while trying it?

 

Upagrades are a bad idea. They tend to **** up.

Also if you ever have to re-install, you'll have to install Windows 2000, then run the upagrade to XP CD to.

/me gives up on typing.

I'd try a virus scanner, ZoneAlarm I find to be as useful as a dead fish. Actually that's more useful since you cna eat it . . . . .

Sounds like maybe a virus got in.

This might sound weird, like why didn't I say this in my first post kinda thing, but I kinda just read your post, when I read it before, I didn't really read it mainly cuz I was at a LAN and hadn't slept for a long time. ALso I'm slightly more clear headed now

ALso I usually ahve to re-install Windows once a week about as well, not from virii or anything, it jsut ****ing dies on me.

 

I thought about a virus too, so I ran PC-cillin (came free with my mobo) but it didn't find anything. Maybe it's a confilct with some hardware, but it's run ok before. It'll sometimes run for a week and then it'll start doing it again.... I thought that maybe it was my TV card (PCTV rave) so didn't bother installing the drivers for it still had the same problem. It got so that I installed Madrake Linux instead of Windows all together (only missed the games!) but then I lost the GUI on that and went back to Micro$oft....

Is it all really worth it.....maybe I'll get an abacus instead - I hear that they don't have any activation codes......

 

Well personally I'd staple your feet to the floor to keep you from buying XP, mainly cuz it's horrible and sucks. Although maybe teh fact that it's I go tatacked by 8 virii and 2 trojans within TEN ****ING MINUTES OF CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET. And those were the ones that my outdated virus scanner caught, as I was int eh process of downlaoding and updating it. The lack of stability, the uglyness, oh the list goes on.


Anyways, make sure the virus scanner is updated though. Maybe a newer virus.

Mayhap I have a twin in the world, and your like me, go within five inches of a PC, or even dare to use it for anything, and give it a week, and ka-****ing-boom it goes out the window.

 

perhaps

you could try fdisk /mbr but it may cause problems so only try the command if your going to wipe and reload again.

Heres a website explaining what the command will do.

http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/vtfdiskmbr.htm

As you can see from the site some virii do very mean things. I had a virus once where i had to write a new auto exec file to do five or so commands in a row to remove that virus on a boot. wiping the mbr was one of them.

Your problem maybe a virus inside the master boot record and a format c: will not clear that out. I hope updating your virus scanner would detect virii in the mbr as i dont know PC-chillin that well. I use norton. With zonealarm and a router so i have only had a few virii on my machine and they have only lasted like 5 min tops.
Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the reply's guys.

I too thoguht that it could have been the MBR, which is why I always delete that partition every time I do a fresh install of Windows.

Instead of using Zone Alarm, I'll be using a hardware firewall soon. I'll either be using Smoothwall or IP Cop (it all depends if my old P200 can boot from CD)......

Maybe that'll sort things out...... I get those goddam awful pop up's aswell, you know, advertising janitta or whatever...... At least Zone Alarm stops them, until I log off! Then explorer.exe stops responding and it lets the pop ups through!!!! Arghhh!

If I can't get Smoothwall working I'll get a £50 router with NAT and see if it does anything....

 

Those messenger pop ups are because Windows is a buttpope. Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services then look through the list, and make sure you stop Alerter and Messenger if they are running, then go into each of their properties, and select disabled for startup type.

Messenger is the one causing teh pop ups, but Alerter can start Messenger and hence cause the problem to recur. Note that disabling Messenger will NOT affect how MSN Messenger works, they are completely different and separate, something most people don't realize.

Also deleting your partitions doesn't remove the MBR, you must manuaully wipe the MBR, or get soemthing that will wipe it. Most OS installs simply write new data to teh MBR, which can have other traces left in place, such as virii, or old data (which cna be as harmful as a virus).

Also I've only ever had a firewall once (tried Zone Alarm, found it to not do **** all, removed it) otherwise I've never had a firewall, and I've never had a problem with virii outside of XP, I have McAfee installed, and it works good. Under Linux I never had anything, although I never ran anything critical, so security beyind the basic security was not really needed, and any sensitive data is usually lost every week when I must format and re-install my OS.

Cheers mate.

 

I have seen spyware, bad sticks of ram, and a bad harddrive all cause similiar problems with explorer.exe

You might have some hardware problems. you could try to find some mobo/ram/video test to check the condition of your hardware.

Heres one that will test your RAM. I have not tried this software. It should dedect any errors with your RAM.

http://www.memtest86.com/

Have you completed a scandisk? perhaps a bad sector is causing problems.

 

Cheers for the info again guys.

Didn't know about the messanger thing Kargin - Ta!!!

I'm gonna try a re-install again. Possibly back to 98 if still no joy then god knows what!!!!!

I thought that I had deleted the MBR. When I format under 2k it asked what partitions you want to delete, so I delte the main one and also a much smaller one (about 8meg) then it does it's stuff.......

I wonder if Micro$haft employee have to wipe their business systems every day!

 

That 8 meg section is for file syttem and partition information storing. The MBR itself is only a few bytes, I believe somewhere around 64-80 , although I forget now. If you really want to know, just google for MBR size

Good luck with the re-install. Make sure when your re-installing, you go:


- OS
- OS updates (this requires an internet connection, so obviously you must have that up)
- Chipset drivers
- Graphics drivers
- All your other driver, codecs, programs etc. In that order.

Cheers mate.

 

i had a problem similar to this on an old k6 machine with win2k. after a day or two the whole thing locked up and refused to do anything.

after running powermax it turned out that the hard drive was faulty and none of its attempts to repair it did anything.

i then tried reinstalling with a different hard drive and everything was ok.

hope it helps.

 

Thanks a lot for this info. There are a number of things I want to ask though. One, what is messenger? If it is different from msn then what kind of messenger is it and when/where can we use it? Two, it seems to be an integral part of the OS. If we disable it, then as the warning says would we not lose some functionality of the OS? Three, how do we manually delete the MBR?

I suppose I'm asking too many questions now.

Thanks again for the info!

 

fdisk /mbr is the simplist command i know. Im sure partition magic has something similiar but i not sure.

messenger is not a chat messenger in the sence that msn is.
Messenger is a part of windows that displays key information and annoying msgs. Some programs may send key information through that service but most ignore it. I have my messenger turned off and i have no problems. Its really an optional service many of the ones that win2k come with started really are not needed for the average user. Best bet would be to turn it off as some virii/jokes can use that service to flood your machine or at the very least annoy you by kicking you out of a game you were playing.

 

Just thought that I'd let you know.........

I think that maybe the MBR has a bit to do with the problems I was having. I wiped the drive today and installed Red Hat 9 (which is quite good!). When I log into Red Hat, it trys to look for 'spoon'. Sppon? Yeah, sppon was the name of my PC under Windows. So obviously it's still on the hard drive somewhere.....

I tried to use an old win 98 boot disk, but it didn't like the hard drive as it was NTFS.

If I get it all sorted out, I think I'll keep Red Hat and dual boot again.

 

FNG is correct, except the only things that use Messenger are Alerter, and netsend. Alerter is OCMPLETELY useless to everybody unless your a system admin, and even then, it may be used maybe once in teh entire life of the company. It's basicall yone of those, hey cool idea, but not really practical things. netsend on teh other hand is the to use messenger to make messeages to people, those annoying new pop up versions, use it. netsend is used by two people : Those spam advertisers, and peope trying to piss you off.

Okay, you other questions :

1/ well . . . . . I think that's been coverd
2/ it isn't an integral poart of the OS, it is an optional service DLL. Disabling, as previously described, wil only stop spam, nothing else. The OS will function without any sort of problem, Hell, Windows will never notice, or care.
3/ deleting teh MBR itself is a funny trick, unless other programs do it (partition magic, etc) the only real way to remove it, is to do teh fdisk /mbr trick, which will wipe your entire MBR, and rebuild a new default one, this was originally used in order to salvage an install, as it would loosely be able to boot you up, but now a days, with all the new OSes, and technology, it rarely works, nonetheless, it is a good one to try, as it just might, and since your MBR is already totaled, there's no risk of damaging anything. Otherwise installing Linux is a good way to wipe your MBR, as GRUB will destroy EVERYTHING in it, and rebuild it according to Unix spec.

About teh spoon bit (or is it sppon ?), it's possible that yoiur system drive was not teh primary partition, which would really piss it off, and it's grabbing at thin air, but clutching the odd bit. Or perhaps the format failed, and did not remove everything.

Cheers duder, good luck.

 

Hey thanks a ton guys! That was great info.
I had been told so often that windows messenger is the same as msn messenger that it was quite a shock to figure out it was not!

 

Although both completely irratating and useless !