Which beta build were you using?

I get the same issue. Anything after 4.96[b].003 causes major instability with explorer. I could not get it working again with a restore of my c drive. system restore did not work. Please fix this.

Please install SmartException (free part of SDC) and see if it catches any info on the crash.

If you set WB to use no skin (classic), does the problem still happen?

I posed the SAME issue in other threads with NO reasonable response from anyone from Stardock that appears interested in this issue.  Started occuring with me beginning two iterations before the formal v5 release.  Am afraid to try the final at this point because I do NOT want another 3-4 hour reload XP session.

Maybe somebody from Stardock will take an interest in this issue before version 6 arrives...

Gypsy1962,

FYI - Neil is from Stardock and is obviously trying to sort it......

I am having the same problem.  I think it may have something to do with Stardock Central because it only happens when I have it installed.  When I installed Stardock Central and updated some of the software the explorer taskbar disappeared for a few seconds then reappeared and some of the icons were missing in the taskbar tray.  Then explorer locked up and the only way to fix was to turn the computer off with the shutdown button on the tower and reboot my computer.  Then I uninstalled Stardock Central and rebooted and the problem went away. The icons that were missing were the Object Dock Icon and the Microsoft Anti-spyware icons when explorer locked up.

Neil - I unloaded WB, so naturally it switched to classic, but it still crashed continuously. I wasn't using a beta build; I was using the WB 5 final.

Make sure none of you have SDMCP running in Taskmgr processes

Why do you advise to kill SDMCP, yrag? SDMCP runs even when the skins aren't and seems to have no connection with shell stability


FYI to all; as one experiencing the regular explorer.exe crashes with the latest DL of WB5, I tried logging in as a user which uses no themes (or the classic windows look) and explorer didn't crash once. As long as explorer wasn't skinned, there were no crashes. I'm really quite surprised to find something this buggy from SD. I've been using WB since their pre-version 1 betas and never had it act this bad before. I've thought about going back to WB4, but surely SD has something in the works. After all folks, this sort of thing could cost them a lot of money if unaddressed.

Btw: here are the details about those crashes:
Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2900.2180, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.2180, fault address 0x000111de.

Same module every time.

If explorer is still crashing when you have unloaded WB then its not WB at fault.

If you have SDMCP running please remove it and see if it helps.

Please install Smart Exception because we need a crash stack.

Neil, please note above that SDMCP is not causing the instability in my case. However, the istability of explorer.exe has been directly linked to whether the shell is skinned or not.

Also, when smart exception is running during an explorer crash, it disappears from the systray and is inaccessible unless you kill it and restart it.

Smart Exception should have written a log though.

On my system, I updated a whole slew of things at the same time I put RC3 on, started getting incessant explorer.exe crashes, blaming ntdll.dll. After much hairpulling, I discovered the source of the crashes to be related to IconPackger, which I updated at the same time, not WB... If I don't load IconPackager, then things are just spiffy. Load IconPackager, and it goes crasherific.

I have a radeon x300 video card

The only way i have found to fix the problem is to open task manager and log off user the log back on. The problem fixes itself after i relog on. I have tried restaring with the classic xp skin and with icon packager off, get the same explorer hang everytime. I have a memory widget that i have opened and checked on memory useage, even when i get explorer to run stable i still get 100% page file useage with 4 gig of virtual memory.

Like Dragonkiss, I find I have to log off using task manager then log back on to fix the explorer crash. I haven't played with icon packager as the cause but rolling back to WB 4.6 fixes the problem even using the latest IP.

When I was running WB 5, the problem occurs with all admin accounts but not with limited user accounts - of course that's probably because WB 5 wouldn't run on limited user accounts.