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Faulting Application: Windows Explorer BrowseUI Corruption RRS feed

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    I'm running Vista Business on a Sony VAIO laptop.  Windows Explorer (not IE) has become unstable and aborts with that nice "... has stopped responding ... will be restarted" message whenever it is started. It typically aborts at the first click within the Explorer window or if the mouse is rolled over the window. 

     

    The following message appears in the event log after Windows Explorer aborts:

    Faulting application Explorer.EXE, version 6.0.6000.16549, time stamp 0x46d230c5, faulting module BROWSEUI.dll, version 6.0.6000.16386, time stamp 0x4549bcde, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x00015a8f, process id 0xda8, application start time 0x01c8bacba08928d0.

     

    Anything else that uses the file browser interface, such as Control Panel, Windows Update or any file open or save attempts within Office products also abort as soon as the file browser window is displayed.

     

    I've tried a System Restore to a restore point before the problem occurred (three times) and while the restore completes successfully each time, this does not resolve the problem.

     

    I'm at a loss as to how to fix this problem and pretty hampered without a file browsing capability.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

     

    Thanks,

    Rich

    Tuesday, May 20, 2008 11:31 PM

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    Well, I broke down and paid the $60 to open a Microsoft incident and was able to find a resolution to the problem which I figured I would share.  BTW, the support provided by the Microsoft tech that I talked to was excellent.  Kudos to Microsoft Support for staffing knowledgeable, competent and extremely polite techs.

     

    Now the solution:  after eliminating numerous potential conflicts, the problem was pinpointed to a network driver and the solution was a simple as an uninstall / reinstall of the network driver (the latter of which occurs automatically).  How the tech was able to associate a crashing Windows Explorer and specifically the BrowseUI.dll to a driver issue is somewhat of a mystery to me but we definitely confirmed that it was the problem and a refreshed install of the same driver definitely resolved the problem. 

     

    It is something to try if you are seeing a similar issue.  Just disable suspected drivers, reboot and see if Explorer starts working again.  To pinpoint the specific driver, we disabled all, video, sound, DVD/CD and network drivers, confirmed that the problem was no longer occurring and then enabled the drivers one at a time until the offender was identified.  Once identified, the offending driver was uninstalled and allowed to reinstall itself via the new hardware detection.  

     

    Hope it helps,

    Rich

     

     

     

    Wednesday, May 21, 2008 3:39 PM