Explorer crashes all the time. If I, right now, CTRL+ALT+DEL, then select explorer as what I want to close, then CANCEL, I will get the dialog/error box popup says that program isnt responding. I then restart or cancel and go on about my business.

What is causing it to not respond. I have removed all errors and extra entrys I could find in the registry, tried selective startup with differnet stuff turned off, nothing helps. 5 Gig free space. WinMe, HP6353 with 256 MB SDRAM.
All hard drives recently defragged which didnt help either...
Anyone know whats going on here. Everything but the EXPLORER is responding.

First, did you try running adaware from http://www.lavasoft.de to keep trojans away from your PC and every few days completely clean out your internet files using the method suggested here
http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/63127.html response number 44, plus delete everything in your C:\Windows\Temp folder after ensuring that hidden files are showing (if you don’t know how, go to Windows help index and search for “hidden files and folders, showing”).

Also, I suggest trying to repair Internet Explorer by going to Start, Settings, Control panel, Add/Remove programs, MS Internet Explorer 6, click add/remove, select Repair Internet Explorer

Hope this all helps. Post back how you get on as other people might have better ideas too. :)

Yes temp directorys are all clean. And, EXPLORER is what is crashing, not to be confused with Internet Explorer, which 5.5 is what I am using. Not having any prob with 5.5, but tried the repair utility you described, which didnt help any. EXPLORER is still crashed at startup. Desktop comes up, shows icons, icons diasppear and reappear a few times and then it quits. Also sometimes it does this if I start a program or close one.
I believe when the icons appear/disappear is when it is a sign that explorer is crashing, then it automatically rrestrts (due to registry telling it to)

I have checked system for viruses "trojans" and cant find any with Norton AntiVirus, with all up to date definitions. Dont see how that affects this though, but guess it could.

Oops, sorry....I didn't read your post properly and the answer as you correctly spotted was for Internet Explorer :)

There are a million and one reasons why the shell "Explorer" could be crashing, though it obviously shouldn't, and Msgsrv.exe should be restarting it for you when it does crash.

The short route might be to reinstall/repair Windows over itself using your CD and see if that helps. You shouldn't lose your settings and programs by doing this.

Are you not getting any more detailed messages when Explorer crashes? Does it mention any dll files for example? Like msvcrt.dll for example? If dll files are mentioned they may be damaged or have been replaced with another version and could be re-extracted.

If you get it fixed and haven't seen this post already, have a look there too
http://www.computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/14062.html

Okay, I reinstalled winme, which someone had suggested. Can someone verify for me, that if you CTRL+ALT+DEL, get close dialog box, highlight EXPLORER, then attempt to close it, it will come back with that program is not responding, can someone verify that theire computer does this as well, or not please!!!

This is for WinME user only, as I need to know whether I have solved EXPLORER problem or not, I suspect not...

Why would you want to do that? If you try to close Explorer you are asking the shell to close down. If everything is working OK now, leave it all alone!

Hey Trev and Anthony (or anyone), I am also running Win ME and I also get Explorer (not responding) in my task manager list.

I get it when I am booting up my computer sometimes. When this happens I have to reboot. I reboot till finally I comes up (which usually takes 1 - 6 times). This is not the case everytime I boot up my computer, but it sure is a pain when it does happen.

Sometimes when my computer is up, my Task Bar and Start button freeze. When I check my Task Manager list... Explorer is not responding again. I used to be able to End Task Explorer and it would restart, but now it doesn't seem to come back anymore. At this point, I would normally have to do a hard shutdown to turn the computer off and then turn it back on again. Then I'll get Explorer not responding again while booting up. After reboots, I'm back to having fun again.

I have a Compaq Presario 5000 with lots of space on my hard drives (2), over 256 SDRAM, and I don't have the Win ME Disc for my computer.

Please advise.

Thanks,
dave