Windows Explorer crashes whenever opening a USB or network drive

Question

This applies to Windows 7, 64-bit, all Service Packs have been installed.

Since ~3 months, Windows Exlorer always crashes when I'm connecting to a network drive, or when I'm opening an USB drive. After the crash, it takes ~30 seconds to recover, and then it is stable.

I did some research, and many people say the problem might be connected to shell extension DLLs which automatically are scanning the files on the drive.

But how to detect the faulty DLL and how to disable it?

I found something like regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll, but this works only on XP, not on Windows 7.

Answer 1

Ok, the Google Drive Tool is the cause:

APPLICATION_VERIFIER_HEAPS_DOUBLE_FREE (7)
Heap block already freed.
This situation happens if the block is freed twice. Freed blocks are marked in a
special way and are kept around for a while in a delayed free queue. If a buggy
program tries to free the block again this will be caught assuming the block was not
dequeued from delayed free queue and its memory reused for other allocations.
The depth of the delay free queue is in the order of thousands of blocks therefore
there are good chances that most double frees will be caught. 

ntdll!NtWaitForSingleObject
ntdll!RtlReportExceptionEx
ntdll!RtlReportException
verifier!AVrfpVectoredExceptionHandler
ntdll!RtlpCallVectoredHandlers
ntdll!RtlDispatchException
ntdll!KiUserExceptionDispatch
verifier!VerifierStopMessage
verifier!AVrfpDphReportCorruptedBlock
verifier!AVrfpDphCheckNormalHeapBlock
verifier!AVrfpDphNormalHeapFree
verifier!AVrfDebugPageHeapFree
ntdll!RtlDebugFreeHeap
ntdll! ?? ::FNODOBFM::`string'
ntdll!RtlFreeHeap
verifier!AVrfpRtlFreeHeap
kernel32!HeapFree
verifier!AVrfpHeapFree
msvcr90!free
googledrivesync64!DllCanUnloadNow
shell32!CFSIconOverlayManager::_GetFileOverlayInfo
shell32!CFSIconOverlayManager::GetFileOverlayInfo
shell32!CFSFolder::_GetOverlayInfo
shell32!CFSFolder::GetOverlayIndex
EXPLORERFRAME!CNscOverlayTask::_Extract
EXPLORERFRAME!CNscOverlayTask::InternalResumeRT
EXPLORERFRAME!CRunnableTask::Run
shell32!CShellTask::TT_Run
shell32!CShellTaskThread::ThreadProc
shell32!CShellTaskThread::s_ThreadProc
shlwapi!ExecuteWorkItemThreadProc
ntdll!RtlpTpWorkCallback
ntdll!TppWorkerThread
kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk
ntdll!RtlUserThreadStart


Loaded symbol image file: googledrivesync64.dll
Image path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Drive\googledrivesync64.dll
Image name: googledrivesync64.dll
Timestamp:        Fri Nov 09 01:56:26 2012 (509C54BA)
CheckSum:         000BED93
ImageSize:        000BB000
File version:     1.6.3837.2778
Product version:  1.6.3837.2778
File flags:       0 (Mask 3F)
File OS:          4 Unknown Win32
File type:        2.0 Dll
File date:        00000000.00000000
Translations:     0409.04b0
CompanyName:      Google
ProductName:      Google Drive
ProductVersion:   1.6.3837.2778
FileVersion:      1.6.3837.2778
FileDescription:  Google Drive shell extension
LegalCopyright:   Google

It has issues to display the overlay icons.

Solution: In the Google Drive options, disable the sync overlay icons. This should fix the issue.

If the issue is resolved, run regedit.exe again, go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options.

Now delete the Explroer.exe key in both keys and reboot. This disables the dump creation and application verifier.