How to Troubleshooting Explorer crashes?

[Geoff]

I have standalone PC running Win XP Pro. I'm getting an increasing number of
system crashes and Event Viewer shows that about 90% of the crashes are due
to Explorer, message as follows:

Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2800.1221, faulting module
ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.1217, fault address 0x000085c0.

Can anyone please advise how I might go about troubleshooting this. Is an
on-line guide available for this sort of problem ?

Thnx

Geoff

 

[Geoff]

I have standalone PC running Win XP Pro. I'm getting an increasing number of
system crashes and Event Viewer shows that about 90% of the crashes are due
to Explorer, message as follows:

Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2800.1221, faulting module
ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.1217, fault address 0x000085c0.

Can anyone please advise how I might go about troubleshooting this. Is an
on-line guide available for this sort of problem ?

Thnx

Geoff

PS: I have all Windows updates and regularly scan with both Spybot and
Ad-aware, plus I have NAV and NIS 2003 updated too.

 

[Malke]

PS: I have all Windows updates and regularly scan with both Spybot and
Ad-aware, plus I have NAV and NIS 2003 updated too.

Thanks for adding that last bit of info; that makes a difference. If you
are quite sure that the machine has no viruses or spyware and the
crashes are random (i.e., they don't happen at the same place same
time), then the problem may be hardware-related. First open the
computer and run it open, observing all fans (overheating will cause
freezing). Then do a RAM test - I like Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com
- and if necessary, continue on to test the hard drive and motherboard.
If you can't do this yourself, take the machine to a good local
computer shop (not a CompUSA or Best Buy store).

Malke