Folders lose File toolbar; system won't open other folders

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G

Guest

After opening and closing a lot of folder windows using View Details and/or
View Thumbnails, eventually the system gets to where it won't open new
windows, or it opens them and they are missing the file toolbar. Usually the
file toolbar space is there, but it is almost totally black, as if the
windows icon from the right side is stretched all the way across. In
addition, once this happens, the right mouse button also stops working.
Usually the system will not open any new windows of any application.
Double-clicking on folder icons or application (executable) icons seem to be
ignored - the system isn't frozen. Sometimes if I close other windows (any
kind, application or system) then I can open a folder, but this doesn't
always work. The only way to get things working again is to reboot the system.

I thought maybe it was running out of memory, but I added more memory so I
now have 1 GB, and it made no difference. I use Windows classic desktop,
Windows classic folders and "Open each folder in its own window". Changing
the folder options like "Launch folder windows in a separate process" does
not seem to make any difference.

As long as I do not use View Details (or perhaps View Thumbnails), the
problem does not happen even when I have numerous windows open and
applications running.

My system is a Windows 2000 Pro, version 5.0.2195 with Service Pack 4. It
has a Pentium 4 1300 MHz CPU and a Nvidia Riva TNT2 Model 64 graphics and a
60 GB hard drive that runs about 80% - 90% full. Since it was new I have
added a USB 2.0 card, a Sony DRU-510A DVD R/W drive and extra memory.
Everything else is a peripheral device (scanner, etc).

It's getting really frustrating because I need to use View Details more
often in my work lately. I have tried to search the knowledge base but
couldn't find anything similar.

Has anyone else seen this problem or have any suggestions how to deal with it?
Any help is appreciated
 
I thought maybe it was running out of memory, but I added more memory so I
now have 1 GB, and it made no difference. I use Windows classic desktop,
Windows classic folders and "Open each folder in its own window". Changing
the folder options like "Launch folder windows in a separate process" does
not seem to make any difference.
Click to expand...

This also happened to me because of a bad graphics diver. Usually fixed it
by restarting Explorer (Just kill it on Task Manager, it will restart). See
if that fixes it. System can run out of graphic resources before it runs out
of memory due to various software bugs. It used to happen on the TNT model,
too. Better performance now, but too many variables have changed to isolate
the issue.

Try to see if your drivers are up to date (patches, video drivers, DX, etc)
 
Thanks Andrei, I will check if the graphics drivers are up to date.

I did some more testing and found that when I have the view options set to
have folders open in the same window instead of opening a new window, the
problem doesn't happen.

If that doesn't fix the problem, I'll surely be back... :-)

Diane
 
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