Windows Explorer Exception (Shell crashing) as promised

  • Thread starter Thread starter George Hester
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George Hester

A while ago I mentioned in this group that if I ever found out the reason for my crashing shell, I would let this newsgroup know about it. I had a support account on this at Microsoft for almost 4 months. I went through about 5 different people to track down this issue and all were very helpful and believe me I was getting to think it would never be solved.

I wish to point out that I could duplicate the crashing shell on demand. And this duplication was the ONLY time where the crash of the shell would occur. So this solution is not a panacea but its implementation will do no harm and in fact can be used to rule out one cause of this issue crashin shell (Windows Explorer Exception C00000005 usually).

I asked if I could release this information and was told there was no problem in doing it. But please this is your sole responsibility. I am not affiliated in any way with Microsoft other then Yes, I am a MVP now.

There is the ability in Windows Explorer to see a thumbnail view of various file types. This in Web View. Selecting jpg's; html's; eml's;... in Windows Explorer you will see a thumbnail rendition of that file. But there is one that has been set to show a thumbnail view which does not work. And that is the .xml file type. You can verify this by going into the registry (Start | Run | regedit | OK) and go to this key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\ShellEx

In here you will see a default value that is set to a CLSID. Verify by going to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.eml or HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.html for example. That is for thumbvw.dll. What should happen as in the other file types is that a thumbnail view ought to appear when selecting an xml file in Windows Explorer with Web View enabled.. But that does not happen. In other words it doesn't work.

In my case selecting an XML file repeatedly in Windows Explorer and opening the file, my shell would crash after a while. This is the only time the shell would crash. The way this was fixed was by removing the default value for this key above. Just double-click the (default) value on the right, select all the Value data, and hit delete then OK. Since it doesn't work the change will not be noticable other then maybe no more Windows Explorer crashing hopefully.

If you try this please back up the key before you implement this. To do that you select the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml then from the Menu, Registry | Export Registry File... | (your name for the file) | Save. You will get a .reg file by that name you chose that can be double-clicked to restore the entries here.

You may notice that I am not being specific to Windows 2000. This because the non-thumbnail issue is true in all versions of Windows. But note if you ever regsvr32 thumbvw.dll either through installation of software or manually as I just pointed out, the registry entries will return. HTH someone.
 
[snip]
In my case selecting an XML file repeatedly in Windows Explorer and
opening the file, my shell would crash after a while. This is the only
time the shell would crash. The way this was fixed was by removing the
default value for this key above. Just double-click the (default) value
on the right, select all the Value data, and hit delete then OK. Since
it doesn't work the change will not be noticable other then maybe no
more Windows Explorer crashing hopefully.

If you try this please back up the key before you implement this. To do
that you select the key HKEY CLASSES ROOT\.xml then from the Menu,
Registry | Export Registry File... | (your name for the file) | Save.
You will get a .reg file by that name you chose that can be
double-clicked to restore the entries here.

You may notice that I am not being specific to Windows 2000. This
because the non-thumbnail issue is true in all versions of Windows. But
note if you ever regsvr32 thumbvw.dll either through installation of
software or manually as I just pointed out, the registry entries will
return. HTH someone.

George,

Thank you very much for this info. I've been seeing quite a lot of
explorer exceptions and I work with a lot of xml files too. This may
be the answer ...

vr

akmal
 
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