Explorer.exe crash, immediately followed by crash of DrWatson Postmortem debugger (they named it???)

Question

While unzipping files on a computer running windows xp, about half the time the above error in the title will occur, in which case I have to restart the computer to resume interaction.

Why is this happening while unzipping, why doesnt it always happen, how can I stop it, and finally, why did they name their debugger?

The last question is the least serious of all of these, but the others are dead serious.

I cannot unzip without saving all of my work and backing it up to an external drive now. Must I always be fearful of the crash?

Answer 1

1. Uninstall Winzip, restart, reinstall the latest version - do you get the same problem?
2. Run an sfc /scannow to check for and try to fix any problematic system files.
   • Click Start
   • Click Run
   • Type sfc /scannow and click OK
   • Restart
     
3. Re-register the shell32.dll which can cause funny problems like this with Explorer.
   • Click Start
   • Click Run
   • Type regsvr32 /i shell32.dll
   • Restart
4. Try using 7-zip instead. A lot of people rave about it over Winzip, and it is freeware. Probably doesn't help if you have the paid version of Winzip.

Answer 2

This could be expanding a file that has a preview feature built in to Explorer, however it has become currupt and when you extract a certain file type, it causes Explorer to crash.

I had a similar thing years ago with .pdf files, and also with media files when I had a corrupt codec.

For custom file types, there is no way of knowing in advance, but if it is video, you can try clicking this link which will tell you how to remove picture and movie previews. For other extensions, unless you know what they are, the quickest thing to do is to look at the .zip/.rar/.other file and try to repair/remove the programs you have that are associated with that extension.