Windows Explorere has stopped working... Vista Bugs and Problems Discuss Windows Explorere has stopped working... in the Windows Vista forums; This is a problem that has come and gone. I have Vista Premium on a recently bought HP laptop. When I open the Program Files folder I now always get ...

[dream7184]

This is a problem that has come and gone. I have Vista Premium on a recently bought HP laptop.

When I open the Program Files folder I now always get this error and Explorer shuts down and restarts. I can not view my programs in this folder. No other folders appear to be affected.

I have so many problems and have gotten little help at all from HP and none from Microsoft. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[felix8406]

How long has it been since you bought the PC and did the issue began as soon as you bought it? It's difficult to troubleshoot a PC through a forum, but there are a few things you can do that might solve your problems.

The first way is to try using System Restore to restore your system to a previous good working state. Please keep in mind that you'll loose any programs installed after the restoration date you've chosen. Click Start > Type System Restore in the Start Search box > Hit Enter

Another way is to use the Recovery Partition that came with the system. You must keep in ind that this action will restore your system as it was when you first received it, so you must backup your data before proceeding. The instruction to run the Recovery software should be included with with the system.

Use a registry cleaner. Although not guarantee that it'll solved your issues, it could help. You can check this site to learn about them: http://www.informationweek.com/story...1203805&pgno=2

Use AntiSpyware software. Although Vista comes with Windows Defender, from my own experience, it's not as effective as other commercial programs. You can check this link: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3688_7-6721518-1.html

[Snuffy]

When I open the Program Files folder I now always get this error and Explorer shuts down and restarts. I can not view my programs in this folder. No other folders appear to be affected.

I have had the same problem at different times.. this might help and might not.
1. use right click and check properties for this folder.... look and see if it actually point to the correct location... if not correct then change. many times i found shutdown & restart is caused by a BAD LINK/shortcut..
manually changing fixes the problem.
2. after you change the location manually to correct, then right click and use explore, if that works then you should be able to
3. double click the folder and have it open...
(any sub folder in the main folder if it is corrupt/bad link it can cause IE to stop/restart.) I have found that by running Vista Manager it cleans the bad links and I have very few of these problems. Any 3d party program that checks and removes bad links/shortcuts will usually solve this problem.

[dream7184]

It wasn't exactly what you said, but on your suggestion I looked at "Properties" and decided to deselect the "Read Only" attribute. It took about 5 minutes to make this change to all the subfolders. Now for some reason I can get in without Windows Explorer restarting. It seems the attributes of all the folders are still "Read Only" but for some reason it straightened out the problem for now. ?? Maybe it straightened out some sort of indexing problem? Thanks