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Explorer.exe crashes, Fault Module SHELL32.dll, no problem in other User Account

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Sunday, January 12, 2020 6:25 PM

My normal user account on my Windows 10 64-bit laptop started having a major error yesterday morning.  I'm not sure if it was due to the lightning storm the night before, or the fact that I had to hard-reboot it a couple times to get it to come up.  Regardless, explorer.exe is crashing every second or two.

Following advice on various forums I have determined (using both WinDBG and Nirsoft's AppCrashView) that the faulting module is SHELL32.dll.  It crashes in Safe Mode also, though it is a more controlled "System detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer in this application" error.

A number of troubleshooting tactics did NOT work in Safe Mode.  But when I created a temporary Local Administrator User Profile, not only did all of the troubleshooting tactics work, but the crash does not occur in that user profile at all.  I was able to run Malwarebytes, Windows Defender Offline Scan, and Windows Update, as well as "sfc /scannow" and "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth" don't reveal anything.  None have given any clues or solutions to the problem, but it seems to be limited to my normal user account.

So I think I have dodged having to do a clean install of Windows.  I see some recommendations to create a new normal user account and transfer all of my files over to it.  That will be a huge pain for this machine.  Does anyone have any other ideas first?

All replies (6)

Monday, January 13, 2020 6:16 PM âś…Answered

looking at your callstack, the crash is in "shell32!Microsoft::Windows::FileExplorer::Banners::BannerData::GetFolderScope", so the same as here:
Corrupt profile after interrupted hibernation
so you could try what worked for them:
delete the BannerSettings and BannerStore located under        HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
and reboot


Sunday, January 12, 2020 9:12 PM

Can you share a dump file of the explorer process crash?


Sunday, January 12, 2020 10:29 PM

The actual dump file is taking a long time to upload, but here's a link to the windbg analysis.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkGtpvlK01W6n3Hn96BHbdNGjOxj?e=yTM4zH

Thank you!


Monday, January 13, 2020 12:59 AM

And at last, the full crash dump is uploaded!  Sorry about my horrible upload speed...
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkGtpvlK01W6n3BOm7Lqu4NHURRi?e=dMBbf1


Monday, January 13, 2020 6:11 PM

what were your "troubleshooting tactics"?
There are 3rd party dlls loaded in the process, you should disable the shell extensions:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\AcSignCore16.dll Tue Jan 30 03:24:46 2018
C:\Windows\System32\AcSignIcon.dll Tue Jan 30 04:42:51 2018
C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\DropboxExt64.27.0.dll Tue Jul 16 22:54:01 2019
C:\Program Files (x86)\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\Resources\HPSFMessenger\HPSFTaskbar.dll Mon Dec 10 09:24:58 2018
C:\Users\nscot\AppData\Local\SynologyDrive\SynologyDrive.app\icon-overlay\22\x64\iconOverlay.dll Fri Sep 20 08:51:39 2019
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\igdlh64.inf_amd64_862bac15d0efb48d\igc64.dll Wed Sep 25 23:51:35 2019
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\igdlh64.inf_amd64_862bac15d0efb48d\igd10iumd64.dll Wed Sep 25 23:45:38 2019
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\igdlh64.inf_amd64_862bac15d0efb48d\igdgmm64.dll Wed Sep 25 23:25:38 2019


Tuesday, January 14, 2020 11:27 PM

Amazing!  Thank you so much EckiS!  That appears to be exactly the issue and solution.  It took me a while to attempt it (been troubleshooting a data center outage at the same time as troubleshooting my laptop!), but it was a much easier fix than moving everything over to a new User account.

Looks like the BannerStore issue is related to OneDrive, which I only recently started using...

Now I have to go reverse all my troubleshooting tactics that you asked about:

  • Re-enable all non-Microsoft services in MSConfig (turns out it was a Microsoft service all along!)
  • Restore the normal items to Startup in Task Manager
  • Delete my temporary user accounts

From reading the thread you referenced, I'm glad I didn't attempt an in-place upgrade install!  That was on the list...
Thanks again!