I had some anime on my HD and everytime I opened a certain directory containing a series, windows explorer would crash. It would always close all open windows but leave all my applications running. It also removed the quick launch bar everytime. I narrowed it down to a specific .avi file by moving files from the directory via DOS. Everytime I opened the directory containing that specific .avi file windows explorer would crash. The file name did not contain any strange characters. If I played the .avi file via DOS the video played just fine in WMP. Strange..... I ran full virus scan from Panda, Avast, and Trend Micro. I ran full registery, windows, scandisk, defrag, and hardware diagnostic test and got nada. Today, I was doing a simple conversion from a digital camcorder and ran into the same problem. I used Virtual Dub to compress an .avi file and with a cinepak video codec and mpeg layer 3 audio codec. When I proceeded to open the directory containing my compressed .avi, windows explorer crashed. Everytime I tried it kept crashing. When I used virtual dub to open the directory it worked fine. I was even able to play the video in WMP just fine. Again, the file name had no strange characters. It was named sc1.avi. I have no idea what is going on but if someone has an idea I'd greatly appreciate it.

Sounds strange see if there is a way to have that avi file re-built without running it. You know sort of like re-building a registry you know. Just an idea cause maybe that avi file is corrupted someplace and causes wierd things to happen. Also, if that avi is not important I would remove it and re-download another version of it if possible.

I forgot to mention that I downloaded that .avi file 3 times from 3 different sources. It was essentially the same file but it kept happening with all 3. I had some more problems with "capturing" from my DV Camcorder. The .avi's kept causing explorer to crash. When I redid the files differently they seemed to run fine in windows. Really Bizarre.