Replies

Thank you to both who posted in reply.

I looked around Scheduled Tasks, nothing had crept in without my say-so. No Amazon apps on either of the PCs in question. I do scan quite regularly, with MBAM and MSE.

And, would you believe it, almost as if it knew I was watching (!), nothing happened this morning. Is it a false positive from MBAM?

Close the thread! Thanks.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Fred – many, many thanks for staying with me on this one.

I think that I have the answer. Searching in another forum found others with the same problem, who had solved it by deleting two empty registry keys, HKCR*ShellExContextMenuHandlers{C539A15A-3AF9-4c92-B771-50CB78F5C751} and HKCRFolderShellExContextMenuHandlers{C539A15A-3AF9-4c92-B771-50CB78F5C751}. This solved it. All the old functionality restored.

Naturally, I was interested to find what owned {C539A15A-3AF9-4c92-B771-50CB78F5C751} in the registry; it appears that this key was put there by the Acronis True Image installer.

So, no reinstall, praise be, and, again, Fred, many thanks. Acronis, no thanks!

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Fred – here also, HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPolicies has no key “Explorer”.

Also, I have checked with MalwareBytes Pro, a full system scan, returned no problems.

I am becoming resigned to doing a full reinstall.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Fred – again, thanks for your support.

I added the registry key as suggested, thanks for the caution, but still find that Explorer crashes as before.

Perhaps I should have posted the problem details, see below:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.1.7601.17567
Application Timestamp: 4d6727a7
Fault Module Name: KERNELBASE.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7601.18015
Fault Module Timestamp: 50b83b16
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000086d8
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Does this help at all?

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Fred – thanks for your continued willingness to help.

My registry branch – HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPolicies has no key “Explorer”.

Could that be the root of the problem? What should I put in there?

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Fred – many thanks. SFC /scannow does not return anything out of the ordinary.

I am working away at jwitalka’s suggestion of using ShellExView, but nothing seems to be turning up there either.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

This looks very similar to a situation that I encountered, where I had activated a paid-for licence of Office 2010, Home and Business. Microsoft do not make it at all clear, and it looked as if my activation had failed. The “failed activation” was for Office Professional, which, at the time, I did not need or want. I installed and uninstalled three times before the penny dropped.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Georgelee – a good idea, thanks

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Windows Easy Transfer is quite remarkably easy to use, over a USB cable, or over a simple network, and deals with all Microsoft settings, Outlook, MS Office templates, spelling dictionaries, autocorrect lists. Firefox was not so easy, but I have found that it can be a good idea to re-create my user profile from time to time.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

I did encounter spontaneous shutdowns of Excel (version 2003, when I was still at work, around six years ago). I traced it to my use of an unusual, and unofficial, Excel formatting trick, the one where you can give a conditional format to cells containing formulas. It worked fine in the cells where I had installed it, but whenever I cut-and-pasted cells with this format, bang, down it went. The formatting trick was very useful, but I became very wary about copying and moving cells thus formatted.

This may have nothing to do with your situation. Good luck with finding a solution, because I do remember finding this very frustrating.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

I think that I may have made some progress. There are many reports, going back over many years (5+), and many versions of both Adobe Reader and of Firefox, of PDF printing problems, uniquely, in Firefox. More fingers point at Adobe than at Firefox as the cause of this problem, though I have noted that this behaviour is unique to FF amongst the five major browsers. Pressing on the print toolbar button, or on the FF Start button (orange, top left) > Print does nothing, and Start > Print Preview shows a blank page. Ctrl-P brings up a print window (as it does in all five major browsers), as does the ghostly grey floating toolbar in Adobe Reader, but these are Adobe, not FF, print windows. I note some comment that Firefox MAY fix this in FF 18, but I’m not holding my breath.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Perhaps I should have been more specific, my system is Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, and I think that Win 7 Home Premium might not cut it. I do not recall having to jump through all the hoops that serifall outlined in his post. Are Intuit aware of their loyal following in the UK, not that they have done anything to deserve such loyalty?

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

FileHippo was a pain when I had it running on startup, but it is still well worth the trouble to run on demand. WS also suggested another update checker, CNet’s TechTracker, but I threw this one out as it gave too many false positives and irrelevant returns. Too much noise for the signal. Secunia PSI is great, but I remain on version 2, after a brief outing to version 3’s minimalist interface.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Thanks, I was worried that there was something in the site that I did not know about!

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

Interesting to discover other users of “legacy” versions of Quicken in the UK! Readers might be interested to know that I am using Quicken 2002 deluxe on Windows 7 64-bit, without any problem. I know that I am exposed (no support, etc.) should anything go wrong, and keep looking for a replacement, but have not found the answer yet. It looks as if I am not alone!

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro