Windows Explorer has stopped working: Vista Error

I have a laptop with vista and I bought it in the late spring of 2008. I have been getting these errors were the toolbar/windows explorer stops working and I have to restart it.

Furthermore, my volume control will disappear and I cannot adjust my volume. I go to the toolbar properties to check to see if it is available but that and my network check boxes are grayed out to where I can't check them.

The only way that I get these to work again is by rebooting my computer.

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

I found this

http//www.mininova.org/tor/878757

this happens to me multple times a day, and it sucks so hard.. normally if I hover the cursor over the time, it'll say "windows has stopped working" and fix itself by restarting.

Sometimes I have to hit control alt delete and end Explorer and restart it again... but I don't usually reboot..

Vista just sucks ass.

I'd say either your hardware is flaky, or more likely, a driver or some system files are hosed. It might be time to reinstall the OS.

[quote79f404c772="LucaBella"]Vista just sucks ass.[/quote79f404c772]
It's not a Vista problem, per se. I have several Vista machines, both laptop and desktop, and never have this on any of them. OTOH it seems like nearly every XP laptop I've had, including this new one at work, do similar things, especially when trying to shutdown. Vista has been so much more pleasant than XP for me, I lihateli having to work on XP now. Thankfully, all the family computers are now either Vista or Linux, no more XP for me at home.

Hey dmorris68, I have a question for ya. I've not used Vista on any of my systems yet, since I don't have many problems with XP and I've been warned off of Vista but everyone but....well, you. I'm a web developer and I'd like to be able to check how my sites look in Vista, and I have a spare computer which I use as my "download crap from the internet" system. Do you think it's worth putting Vista on there just for learning the OS and checking my CSS, or should I just stick to using browser compatability tools? Are there any issues with file sharing between Vista, XP, and 2000? (my bf has a 2000 system which he refuses to upgrade, and he needs to access my files).

No real issues with sharing files, although Vista's increased security settings can sometimes be a PITA to get file sharing working when you're new to it. One example, if you're accustomed to accessing admin shares (C$, D$, etc.) across the network with XP and earlier, Vista disables this by default. You have to edit the registry or use a GP tool to enable it. Speaking of GPE, Microsoft only includes it with Vista Ultimate and Business, not on Home Premium. But there are some 3rd party tools that will substitute.

I would NOT recommend Vista for an old spare computer. A primary reason for the Vista hate that many people still can't get over was that MS "certified" Vista on a lot of underpowered computers. It ran like a dog on those systems. But throw it on a beefy machine with lots of RAM, and it screams even with the Aero eye-candy turned on.

Regarding websites, they won't look any different on Vista -- it's a function of the browser. Vista ships with IE7, so if you run IE7 on XP it will behave the same as it would on Vista. Now if you are writing actual software to run outside of a browser, then yeah I'd recommend a Vista machine in the mix for validation purposes. You could also run Vista in a VM if you have a beefy machine, but again the performance would likely suck. If you had such a beefy primary PC, you'd be better off running Vista on it, then running XP inside a VM for testing.

K, thanks for the input. It's weird, I'm developing a site for a friend and he's using IE7 on Vista and getting layout issues, but it looks fine on my IE7 on XP, must be a screen resolution thing.

[quotef124ae3109="JennyWren"]K, thanks for the input. It's weird, I'm developing a site for a friend and he's using IE7 on Vista and getting layout issues, but it looks fine on my IE7 on XP, must be a screen resolution thing.[/quotef124ae3109]
Yeah, I could think of a few reasons why things might look different between the PC's
[listf124ae3109][lif124ae3109]Different resolutions
[lif124ae3109]Different system font DPI
[lif124ae3109]Different browser font settings (size & typeface) unless you're using CSS to fix font sizes (generally a bad design idea for accessibility reasons), which the user can still override.
[lif124ae3109]I think the default Aero theme window decorations are different sizes by a few pixels than the default XP decorations. So if your browser body is losing a few pixels of width on one or the other, and your design is right on the edge of the wider display, it could cause things to reposition on the narrower one. Maximizing both windows would eliminate the window borders, have you tested that way and seen the same results?[/listuf124ae3109]
Personally I've yet to recall seeing anything that renders differently between XP and Vista using the same browser. Of course if the problem is limited to IE then I seldom use it, so I just might not have noticed.

[quote43838a1b6a="dmorris68"]I'd say either your hardware is flaky, or more likely, a driver or some system files are hosed. It might be time to reinstall the OS.

[quote43838a1b6a="LucaBella"]Vista just sucks ass.[/quote43838a1b6a]
It's not a Vista problem, per se. I have several Vista machines, both laptop and desktop, and never have this on any of them. OTOH it seems like nearly every XP laptop I've had, including this new one at work, do similar things, especially when trying to shutdown. Vista has been so much more pleasant than XP for me, I lihateli having to work on XP now. Thankfully, all the family computers are now either Vista or Linux, no more XP for me at home.[/quote43838a1b6a]

I've never had this happen with XP, and I've read online that it's some driver, or some shell, but I have no idea how to figure out which it is, and I really don't want to reinstall anything... It seems like it's getting worse, i just bought more ram as perhaps it has something to do with the comp running out of memory, and it is a little slow... Dunno really.. I just wish I still had XP, but not enough to format and install it...