W2K - strange Explorer behavior (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

For some reason, in Windows 2000, I boot up, and open up Explorer (not IE) once, it works fine. Then I close Explorer, and then re-open it. That's when I get this

"The instruction at "0x01e3acd0" referenced memory at "0x01e3acd0". The memory could not be "read".

Click on OK to terminate the program
click on CANCEL to debug the program"

The memory address changes each time I reboot and open Explorer a second time.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on, and how to fix it?

 

[Steven K]

You're getting an Access Violation (known as General Protection Faults in 98)

Try this:
Shell to DOS, now type "drwtsn32 -i" ... this will install Dr Watson as the default debugger on your system. Now, make the Access Violation happen again. It will generate a Dr Watson log. It is located inside of your Documents folder (do a search for drwtsn32.log). Then you can give that Dr Watson log to someone with some programming experience, and they'll be able to tell you a little more (but, just for the record, Dr Watson logs can be a pain in the ass to read. Basically it justs gives you a stack trace and dump of the system.)

 

[Patrick Sun]

Thanks, I just did this. It looks very ugly.

Just some more details:

This is part of a dual-boot system on a Toshiba Tecra 8200 laptop:

NT 4.0 was installed first on the C: partition, and Win2K is installed on the F: partition.

On the W2K partition, W2K OS has SP2 loaded, and all of the Windows Updates for W2K from the website.

On a single boot W2K install (different laptop, same model), the explorer works fine.

Just bizarre behavior.

 

[Kevin P]

Sounds like something is corrupt. Try running scandisk to rule out something fishy in the partition. If that doesn't help, try doing a system repair or reinstall W2K over itself. Reinstalling Service Pack 2 or running Windows Update might do the trick too.

KJP

 

[Patrick Sun]

For some reason, the behavior doesn't exhibit itself when I log in as a different user (both with same rights - admin/power user level). So...just to be expedient, told the user to use the "good" login profile. Still puzzled, but I did try applying SP2 and the updates for Win2K as well to no avail.
I'm just going to let sleeping dogs lie on this one until I hear back from the user...

 

[Mark Larson]

Am i missing something here, but Explorer is as intrinsic to Windows as the Finder is to Macs - meaning you can't just close it and expect Windows to work. There is a shortcut you can use to restart Explorer from the desktop, but i don't remember what it is. This restarts Explorer - for those pesky software installations and display settings changes.
Of course, i might be talking out of my ass - you seem like an admin of some sort.

 

[James Zubb]

Since it does not happen with another user you probably have some program running on startup for the user that is crashing. Maybe some spyware.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I wish I knew, but the account that was created was new, and nothing was really "loaded" up using that account besides SP2 and updated after the behavior manifested itself, and it just kept on crashing everytime Explorer was started the second time, and it would crash when I opened up the "My Computer" icon and click on "Folder" in the icon bar in that window. Really bizarre stuff. Oh well, I won't be losing sleep over it this weekend.