explorer.exe crashes when I exit games

[zephyrprime]

Sometimes when I exit a game or alt-tab out of a game, it will cause explorer.exe to crash. This happens only at the time or exit or alt-tab switching. This has happened to me on multiple video cards and games. However, it doesn't happen with 3dmark 2001. I checked out usenet but this problem is apparently pretty rare.

I'm currently running XP.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[HermDogg]

If you've tried it with multiple cards, did you make sure to nuke the old drivers and re-install the very latest? Other than that, it sounds more like an OS issue rather than anything else, though it could be the games (Some games absolutely hate to be alt-tabbed, but doing it on exit is really odd). Perhaps do a system files check or hard drive check to make sure everything is a-okay?

 

[zephyrprime]

I've never used a driver nuking program so I'll maybe take a look at that.

As far as file checking goes - I've done an in place re-install of windows before and that should have taken care of possible file problems.

 

[Paperlantern]

i think "nuke" was a figure of speech, he just meant to make sure its gone and removed fully by manually deleting all the files after youve removed the adpater from the system

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: Paperlantern
i think "nuke" was a figure of speech, he just meant to make sure its gone and removed fully by manually deleting all the files after youve removed the adpater from the system

No, there are actually programs for automating driver removal beyond what Windows itself does. And i'ts kinda hard to know which files are the driver files.

 

[Jeff7]

I know Alt-Tab, or the Win95 key in some games can just crash the game outright, or else make it unstable. Hitting the Win95 key once in Giants: Citizen Kabuto would usually make the game run very slow; doing it again would usually crash the game, and possibly need a reboot to clear the memory. Some games just disable the key entirely; and some handle it fairly well.
But why the games would crash explorer.exe just from exiting, I don't know.

 

[Paperlantern]

i realize this, but i think in HIS context he wasnt referring to those programs, but i could be wrong

 

[McMadman]

I have seen cases where key directx files get overwritten and cause funny issues like that.

9.0c is the latest version, I'd grab the redistributable and just install over what you currently have. In my experience if you need to update anything it forces a reboot, if everything is up to date no reboot required. (the final dialog box will say if a reboot is required)