How can i stop my explorer from crashing?

June 23, 2006 10:06 PM

Divx seems to make my computer crash, has this happened to anyone else?

I recently downloaded a video and had to install the divx codec. Whenever i try to open a video file now, my explorer crashes. Does anyone know why this is happening? Ive been told it isnt divx, but it seems to only happen when trying to view a movie using the divx codec.

posted by Rlocurto to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I always use the XVID codec on Windows and Linux and it seems to work well.
posted by cowmix at 10:20 PM on June 23, 2006

Rather than the divx codec, try xvid or my own favorite, 3ivx. Both are far less crashy than the actual divx.com codec.
posted by majick at 10:29 PM on June 23, 2006

Oh, you know what it might be? I used to have a problem where when I'd browse to the video (an .avi, usually) in an Explorer window and then click on it once in an attempt to view any information about it, Explorer would crash. Sometimes even just opening the folder would be enough to make it crash. This happens specifically when you have that folder set to display thumbnails, because Explorer tries to display the first frame of the .avi as its thumbnail image—but then it doesn't know what codec to use to "decode" the .avi format, so it freaks out, times out, and crashes Explorer.

So there are several possible solutions:

1. Make sure that the codec you installed didn't also install tons of other codecs, 'cause if it did, Explorer will try to choose between a ton of codecs and timeout/crash.

2. Turn off thumbnail previews for .avi files. You can easily Google how to do this.

3. Read up on the problem and use any of the known solutions out there. Start here and here.

Hope that helps!
posted by limeonaire at 10:59 PM on June 23, 2006

I had the same problem - I uninstalled the Google desktop and toolbar that it loaded with it and haven't had any problems yet (of course, this was last night, so it may be too early to tell).
posted by blackkar at 6:06 AM on June 24, 2006