Problem with explorer in XP MCE

Here's one for you,

on my girlfriends laptop she has XP MCE installed. The problem she is having with it is that explorer keeps on crashing. It keeps doing it every five minutes and is a pain in the arse. One time it crashed and the problem box came up and said that Dr Watson Post Mortem debugger had to be closed as well. I don't know what this is, have browsed on the net and found all of the different explanations.

Its still bugging me though, have done anti-virus and anti-spyware checks but still comes up with nothing!!

Help

 

Which antispyware have you tried?

Is it a crash from Internet Explorer (when browsing websites) or from Explorer (the windows shell...when browsing directories or the desktop for example)?

 

have used avg the free one and windows defender. It was when using explorer when browsing directories

 

First, try to separate the windows folder process. Go to my computer or any other folder and navigate to "tools"-"folder options"-"view"-check "launch folder process in a separate windows". This should make is so when you open up a folder, a second "explorer.exe" will open and when it crashes, it will only crash the folder(s) and not the desktop etc.

Also is it an specific folder that caused Windows explorer to crash or is it all of them?

Make sure you scan(you might want to try another spyware scanner) in safe mode(tap F8 when your computer boots up) and also run Hijackthis. Do a scan and save the text file and upload it to a online hijackthis analyzer like this site(take there recommendation into consideration before deleting a file).

 

I would also try other scanners first (Ad-aware 2007 and Spybot S&D)