Stop Windows Explorer crashing

raphjd

Are video files crashing Windows Explorer on your computer?! Well the fix is in the quote below.

NOTE: There are 2 other ways to fix this, but they involve messing the Registry and that is extremely dangerous, so I will not include those.

"Windows XP Explorer has a 'feature' to provide a preview in the Details box on the left of the file you have selected, if it's supported. Image files, HTML pages, video clips, MP3s, etc are all previewed (even with the folder view open).
If you have a large movie clip and it either is corrupt (ie. no index from a partial download) or it uses an unsupported codec, then Explorer tries to load the whole file. This can slow your computer a lot and prevent deleting/renaming/moving/etc the file until it's finished.

Simply do the following steps:

Open a command window (Start->Run, type in 'cmd' hit enter)

To remove image preview, type and hit enter
regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll

To readd image preview, type and hit enter
regsvr32 shimgvw.dll

To remove media preview, type and hit enter
regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll

To readd media preview, type and hit enter
regsvr32 shmedia.dll

Another way is also to remove the bad file{s}, but the trick is to know which one{s} caused the problem.

NOTE: The fix for this means that you can not use Windows picture previewer. So you will either have to use Windows Paint or get an outside picture software program.

EDIT: After doing some testing, I found that most of you will not have to remove the "image previewer" part in order for this fix to work. So just remove the "media previewer" part first and see if that works, if not then also do the "image previewer".

roto13

Oh shi-

I just went back and looked in the topic I made about this problem and realized that you were posting this HERE and not in that topic. O_o' Sorry.

Anyway, I fixed my problem a different way. I uninstalled the codec pack I was using (k-lite) and reinstalled it. Everything is fine now….

raphjd

Yes, you can also uninstall all codecs and video/sound programs and reinstall them. 90% of the time this will fix the issue.

alfa66

Simply use Firefox + either codec pack light or mega and you will avoid any problem.

raphjd

Using Firefox will not help unless the problem is viewing media directly from the internet and have the the proper codecs and it's all set up properly.

While having the right codec helps, if the stuff you already has is corrupted, then it won't help.

Also, too many codec is a bad thing, just get what you need. Many times people go crazy and get conflicting codec and that causes the problem.