Windows Explorer crashing

[Drakhon]

Hopefully this tool is still in vista.

It is, but it looks like he went ahead and reinstalled. That can be a good thing on its own anyway, though not as good as a format.

[Jalec]

Personally fixing an issue in ntdll.dll is a lost cause. Last ditch on it is generally to do an in-place upgrade(some call it a repair install) from your origional media. This should maintain all applications currently installed(since the registry is not corrupt) but you will lose all Hotfixes and service packs back to what your installation media has.

[Greenmind]

If you haven't done so yet, try booting into safe mode and disabling all the addons for IE7. I had a user experiencing the same problem and it ended up being an addon that wasn't compatible with a recent security update.

[Gisli]

Thanks for the help, everyone!

I think I did a repair install (I can't remember anymore) in the middle of all this, but it didn't work.

So I did a full re-install of Windows from the original disk. Its a pain in the neck because I have to reinstall all the user software. But the user data are not lost, at least.

In the midst of all the research I did on this, I came across some comments about how Vista (and windows in general) has a "half life" and every time you touch it there's a risk that the entire thing will collapse. I've got to agree that this is a valid way to look at it. Every time Microsoft pushes an automatic update, you take a risk that the update process will ruin your system (never mind what the update itself might do). I so wish Windows would go away entirely, to be replaced by Linux. If it weren't that games pretty much only run in Windows, I'd be there already on my home machines. There is no "real" software that I use anymore that doesn't have a better Linux implementation. End of blowing off steam.

[Drakhon]

Ah, but then you have to wonder which distribution to use...

There are a lot of things I like about it, but Linux isn't without its problems (other than the smaller user/gaming base). I'm having a problem with our cluster at work right now, in fact, where some nodes hard lock with no error messages or other indication of cause of any kind.

[Cillbo]

At the risk of turning this into the Linux thread, I just need to toss my two cents in. I started using Linux shorty after I purchased a copy of Windows ME. Linux is just plain better than windows in many areas. Now, if only the game developers would switch to OpenGL.

Ah, but then you have to wonder which distribution to use...

That's half the fun!

[Greenmind]

If Windows went away Linux would become the target of hackers and such and would suffer for just as many problems. The reason Linux is seemingly free of this stuff isn't necessarily because it's not succeptible to them but because there just aren't enough "home" users running Linux to make hacking it an effective use of time. Also, linux users tend to know more about computers and overall avoiding this stuff.

That being said, I've been managing ~200 Windows machines for over 8 years and I have had very few problems with NT, 2000, XP, and Vista that weren't caused by poorly written software. (ME was an abomination that should never have existed). My current work machine is a Windows Vista machine and it's over a year old, full of software I've bought and downloaded, it gets automatic updates, and has given me very few problems.

I'm not a pro-windows/anti-linux guy. I just hate to see a good operating system which is built around the needs of literally millions of users wanting to do nearly everything be compared to an equally good operating system which caters to a select few power users in an unfair way...