Icon cannot be found after crash of explorer.exe

roman2 · Post by **roman2** » 14 Dec 2007, 18:59

After explorer.exe crashes, OS relaunches it, and some programs restore their system tray icons, but Salamander doesn't. It happened this way on Windows XP and still does on Vista. The only current solution is to restart the computer. I would like to see this fixed.

SelfMan · Post by **SelfMan** » 14 Dec 2007, 22:23

First of all fix the reason why Explorer crashes...
Update to the latest explorer.exe http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en, download the latest VGA drivers and use windows update.

Anyway... you dont have to restart the computer.
CTRL+SHIFT+ESC opens task manager, where you can locate the salanader.exe and kill it. Then you can restart Salamander using your favorite shortcut.

roman2 · Post by **roman2** » 15 Dec 2007, 07:50

When Salamander is killed, it loses latest history. You right, a reboot isn't necessary, but I'd like this fixed anyway. Other programs manage to reestablish their icons in the system tray after explorer.exe is relaunched, and so could Salamander.

My system is up-to-date.

SelfMan · Post by **SelfMan** » 16 Dec 2007, 02:22

roman2 wrote:My system is up-to-date.

The Explorer update mentioned above is not available via Windows Update. So you can download it and check if it helps with the crashes.

I've made a test...
- minimized Salamander - so it was in tray only
- invoked task manager
- killed explorer.exe process
- started explorer.exe via task manager's File > New Task (Run...)

and the slamander icon was back in tray.
So IMO there must be some other reason why you have such problems.
Do you have any shell modifying application running? What graphic card do you have with which driver version?

Post by **Jan Rysavy** » 16 Dec 2007, 08:06

Salamander is waiting for "TaskbarCreated" message.

I found following problem: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPo ... 7&SiteID=1

We will look at it, thank you for the information!

roman2 · Post by **roman2** » 16 Dec 2007, 20:17

SelfMan, thank you. I will probably update my XP system with this, but my current system is Vista, and the update you referred is said to apply to XP systems only. It is the Vista system on which explorer crashes often. I don't have any shell modifying programs as far as I can tell.

My laptop is dv6405us. Video Chipset: GeForce Go 6150 . Driver version: 7.15.10.9759.

P.S. Reading the forum thread on MS site caused me to doubt if this problem happened with Salamander on XP. I don't feel like booting the computer to test this. But it surely happens on Vista, and that's what I am concerned with now.

roman2 · Post by **roman2** » 16 Dec 2007, 20:25

Jan, Salamander runs on my Vista as admin.

SelfMan · Post by **SelfMan** » 19 Dec 2007, 00:48

roman2 well, I have several companies as customers where i do the admin/maintenance job. In my opinion VISTA is still not ready for the general use in the corporate segment. The upgrade would cost too much.

On your side, it would be necessery to discover the reasons why explorer crashes. The most reasons why this happens are:
- buggy VGA drivers
- buggy LCD/CRT sonfiguration tools (I had a PC freeze while running older MagicTune from Samsung )
- dust&moisture in computer
- bad VGA or Memmory modules (remember - shared VGA memory)

Just for test you can try to lower the acceleration of the gfx adapter and see what happens.

roman2 · Post by **roman2** » 19 Dec 2007, 06:39

Not only is Vista not ready for corporate use, but it's not needed, in my opinion. They should wait until the next version comes out to see if they need to upgrade.

Most of the time explorer crashes on my laptop, it seems to me, when I try to use its search functionality to launch an app or when I use IE.

My laptop also freezes, and I don't know if it's related to explorer crashes. It seems that a firewall I use (Vista Firewall Control) is at fault; although, I am not sure. After installing a newer version, I experience less of this problem. I've also seen Skype's RAM usage go to an insane amount once, which lead to a frozen state.

SelfMan · Post by **SelfMan** » 19 Dec 2007, 12:37

You can allways use Sysinternal's ProcessExplorer and ProcessMonitor and watch whats going on. Most problems are caused by memmory leaks.

What you should do in first place is to run a memmory diagnosic tool over night. (not just one loop)
Check out http://www.memtest.org/

roman2 · Post by **roman2** » 19 Dec 2007, 19:07

Thanks for the memory diagnosic tool. I will run it. But I don't know how to use ProcessExplorer and ProcessMonitor to detect a problem that happens intermittently. I have important things to do, you know

And ProcessMonitor is very resource intensive and slows down my system dramatically -- I wouldn't be able to use the computer.