Troubleshoot Windows Explorer has stopped working error in Vista

If you’re working on Windows Vista, you probably have seen your fair share of error messages already. It’s definitely many more than on Windows XP SP2. One that I came across recently on a client computer was the following:

Windows Explorer has stopped working. Windows is searching for a solution. Windows Explorer is restarting.

This error is very annoying because you cannot open Task Manger, open My Computer, or open the Start Menu. It basically renders your computer useless! There could be a few ways to solve this problem, depending on the source of it. I’ll try to go through several methods that I have come across to fix this problem.

Method 1 – Turn off User Account Control (UAC)

First, let’s try the simple stuff. If you are not getting this error every second, you should try to turn off UAC by going to User Accounts from the Control Panel.

From there you can click Turn User Account Control on or off. You may be prompted for the administrator password.

Uncheck the Use UAC to help protect your computer check box. If you can’t do this, you can check out another post I wrote on how to use a third party program to turn off UAC in Vista.

Method 2 – Uninstall spyware software

The main culprit behind this error and the source of the error on the client computer I was working on was spyware! There are several ways you can try to get rid of this software.

If you are getting the error messages in a loop, over and over again, then you probably have Spylock installed, which is a pain in the butt spyware program. You basically have to find a way to get into the Control Panel and uninstall all the software that you do not recognize or that was installed around the time you starting getting the errors.

I’ll go though that in a second, but first you can try to restore your system to a previous state using System Restore. Read my post here on how to use System Restore.

Once you have restored your computer to a point before the problem was happening, make sure to run a full spyware and virus scan on your computer. If you cannot access System Restore because of the error, try restarting in Safe Mode and then running System Restore.

If the System Restore does not work, you can try to uninstall the spyware app from the Control Panel. You can get access to the Control Panel by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and opening the Task Manager.

Now click File and then New Task (Run…) and type in “C:\Program Files” and press Enter.

You should now be able to access Explorer without it restarting over and over. Now click on Folders in the left hand pane. Click on Control Panel and click on Programs and Features.

Now sort the installed apps by date by clicking on the Installed On header.

Find any programs with the current day’s date and uninstall all of those programs. If you are asked to restart the computer after uninstalling a program, make sure to click NO. If the uninstall fails, click on Uninstall Using Recommended Settings.

Keep uninstalling apps by date until Explorer stops restarting. Once you do this, your problem should go away! Keep your eyes out for a program called WINDOWS WARNING, it’s spyware and causes this error.

Hopefully, one of these two methods fixed your issue. Just to recap, you can disable UAC, try system restore by using the Windows Vista DVD, or go into the Control Panel via the Task Manager and uninstall programs starting from the most recently installed! If that didn’t fix your issue, post a comment here and I’ll try to help! Enjoy!