Desktop stops working in Windows 7

I'm having an odd problem on one of my Windows 7 machines. At machine startup, explorer.exe is working properly - I can use the Start menu, click on desktop icons, etc. At some later point, though, I lose the ability to interact with desktop icons. I can't double-click to open files on the desktop, and I can't right-click to see the properties window.

Oddly enough the Start menu still works properly, and I can still open an Explorer window into my desktop and access everything. I can get around the problem by killing explorer.exe and restarting it using Task Manager, but it's annoying to have to do this over and over.

Does anyone have any ideas? I took a look at startup files with msconfig and didn't see any obvious problems. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Roger

Posted 2010-08-19T14:04:23.407

Reputation: 1 407

1Have you done a virus scan? – Robert Harvey – 2010-08-19T14:24:03.883

Virus scan turns up nothing - I'm running Microsoft Security Essentials. – Roger – 2010-08-19T20:46:49.000

4It sounds like a bad shell-extension. Have you installed any “desktop-enhancement” software? – Synetech – 2012-07-29T15:43:44.113

I second @Synetech there, use something like ShellExView to find out

– jay – 2012-09-29T23:34:27.517

Answers

Look in your event log for errors around the time of the explorer.exe failure.

Also are you running a particular piece of software when the error happens?

jer.salamon

Posted 2010-08-19T14:04:23.407

Reputation: 758

This is really frustrating, but after happening every day for weeks, it hasn't happened again since I posted the question. I'll check these things the next time explorer freezes. – Roger – 2010-08-21T15:33:31.100

OK, it happened again. No errors in the System log. The only error in the Application log is this one: Activation context generation failed for "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\ia64\msvsmon.exe". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls,language="*",processorArchitecture="ia64",publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df",type="win32",version="6.0.0.0" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis. I'm not sure why the .NET remote debugger was called, or if it could have any bearing on my problem. – Roger – 2010-08-21T18:46:18.690

I think it loads on startup – Sylvester the Cat – 2012-10-30T04:57:28.623

I believe but am not positive that developed applications might call the debugger. So it could be something else causing the debugger to crash. – jer.salamon – 2012-10-31T01:39:10.730