What exactly does explorer.exe do?

[grrl]

Occasionally explorer.exe crashes in Win 2k but I'm able to continue working. The only thing that seems to change is the window sizing is no longer remembered and my shortcut bar disappears.

What exactly does this exe do?

 

[Scarpozzi]

Explorer.exe is your desktop GUI.

 

[bsobel]

Explorer is the shell.
Bill

 

[Scarpozzi]

One thing. If explorer.exe is crashing, there is most likely a driver problem or program conflict causing the crash. If this problem just started and you recently installed a program that would have something to do with the display or the way programs are executed, you may want to try uninstalling it. Otherwise, you could find some error detecting software to solve the problem, but that would be costly. (you could always download a demo of Alexander SPK) www.alexander.com This application catches blue-screens and analyzes the core dump to pinpoint the problem. I doubt that this would be within your means though....so if you can't identify the problem and it occurs often, you may need to reinstall the OS.

-Ryan

 

[grrl]

Then why does everything except for the window size seem okay after it crashes?

 

[Scarpozzi]

What do you mean by 'window size'? Are you referring to any particular window?

 

[grrl]

thanks for the info, scarpozzi, but explorer doesn't crash too often now with 2k. It just happened to this morning and that reminded me of when I was running 98 when explorer crashed often.

 

[grrl]

by window size I mean the currently open window. The three buttons in the upper right hand corner would disappear under the shortcut bar on the occasions when that didn't disappear (or maybe it rebooted, I can't remember at this point all that happened with 98)

 

[Scarpozzi]

Originally posted by: grrl
thanks for the info, scarpozzi, but explorer doesn't crash too often now with 2k. It just happened to this morning and that reminded me of when I was running 98 when explorer crashed often.

Windows ME was the worst for crashes that I've seen. 98 can be buggy at times, but I run it on a system here at home all the time and it only crashes about once a month. (it's up 24/7) 2000 is more stable than XP an is the best OS Microsoft has ever put out....no matter what anyone else says.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Originally posted by: grrl
by window size I mean the currently open window. The three buttons in the upper right hand corner would disappear under the shortcut bar on the occasions when that didn't disappear (or maybe it rebooted, I can't remember at this point all that happened with 98)

Explorer is the interface....meaning it controls the windows sizes, menus, etc. When it crashes or gets restarted even, many of the settings get reset. I can't say what they get reset too, but it's like your GUI gets a labotamy because your actually running a different instance of the desktop when it restarts.

Currently on this Windows2000 PC that I've got, I'm not even running explorer anymore. There's a GUI program called Talisman that replaces it and makes the desktop more interactive... It's pretty nice, but I miss a lot of things about explorer... Sorry I ramble so much...