Explorer constantly crashing on video file thumbnails, can't take it anymore!

May 11, 2007 9:33 AM

Windows XP / Explorer: MPG and WMV file thumbnails constantly crash Explorer, sometimes taking the entire OS with it. How can I fix this?

I have a folder of small clips, mostly MPEG files, some WMV. When I leave this folder open in thumbnail view while I work with the clips, Explorer constantly crashes. Usually it just hangs and I have to kill the explorer process and rerun it. Sometimes everything locks up and I have to hit the restart button. If I keep it in List view, this doesn't seem to happen, but I need thumbnail view to identify the clips easily.
Help?

posted by bradn to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Sounds like a bad explorer extension. Before you do anything else you should go get a copy of crap cleaner and make sure you don't have the system trying to load some bad or non-existant extension. Use it with the "issues" button on the left hand side.
posted by phearlez at 9:57 AM on May 11, 2007

I've seen this on two computers. One time it was an Adobe Photoshop Explorer thumbnail plugin (disabled inside Photoshop somewhere). The second time it was a dodgy video codec pack.
posted by frenetic at 10:41 AM on May 11, 2007