Windows Explorer Locking Up

[Draggon]

Hey ya'll...

Windows PC veteran looking for advice on a tricky one...

System Specs:

My Rig

AMD Athlon 1.4G
512Mb DDR PC2100
Win98SE

I've got a recent development that I can't figure out. Windows Explorer (WE) is locking up on me rather frequently. On a new reboot, it works fine, but after the system is on for awhile, or I've been cruising through my apps, it suddenly locks up. When I open it, I get a list in the left pane of:

Desktop
+My Computer
+Network Neighborhood
Recycle Bin

In the right pane I get a list of my drives and network connections, and I can do absolutely nothing with it. Mouse cursor still functions, but no clicks are recognized in WE and keyboard navigation fails. After a few seconds I get the (Not Responding) message in the task list.

I can close WE via the task list, but the system is done at that point as far as stability. Every time it happens, I have to hit the reset button in order to reboot, as the "Restart" function simply hangs.

No other application is giving me trouble at any time. I can use the machine for hours at a time with no trouble until I open WE. Of course, this is a little inconvenient as WE goes hand in hand with most applications you use, right? ;-) What's really weird, if I bring up WE when I first reboot, and leave it open, it gives me no problems. But, if I close it and try to bring it up again (after it's been on awhile) it locks up. Also, upon reboot, I can open and close WE numerous times in succession without any problem.

At first, I thought it might be temperature related due to the time delay, but two reasons suggest otherwise:

1. No problems with any other apps
2. Rebooting with reset button gives operable WE again (system temps are same)

I've never heard of this problem and am having a tough time solving it. If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Please keep in mind my opening statement, though. It's not a "spiff up your system" kind of problem (i.e. Scandisk, Defrag, Temp Files, etc., etc.).

The only things running in memory are Explorer and Systray.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Draggon :disgust:

 

[TechMasterChen]

What about network protocols running? Have you disabled or removed any network services and still had the same problem?

 

[Draggon]

Greetings Tech-Master-Chen,

The only network proto's I'm running are the same ones that have been running for over a year.

TCP/IP over the NIC and Dial-UP
IPX over the NIC

I've not made any changes to these settings in months.

One thing I forgot to mention; I did d/l a DOS-based memory checker and my memory did pass all it's tests.

This is a really frustrating problem.

 

[TechMasterChen]

Even though nothing is showing up in the task list it sounds like some background process is hanging after failing to start, that's my guess since rebooting gets the PC working for a while.

I guess my steps to trying to fix this would be to disable network neighborhood, remove the network from the equation. I know you haven't done anything for the last year but if the problem still exists after disabling the network it's one less thing you can cross off your list of possible culprits. The other thing to try is disabling any DOS-mode or real-mode drivers loading in the autoexec.bat file, just REM them out and give it a shot.

What happens if you startup in "safe" mode and run for awhile?