I had this problem bugging me for days. Whenever I tried opening my movies folder which had about 150 movies, I got a Windows Explorer error hence restarting explorer.exe. First I tried deleting old movies assuming the folder is probably overloaded beyond Windows limits. I was wrong nothing changed, now I started using the taskbar’s desktop toolbar for navigation. But found some problems with that. This was unbearable, I would have reinstalled Windows to rectify this. I had to do something.

Figured out the solution for an explorer error after a long Googling session. All I had to do is unload a dll assuming it comes bundled with video codecs and is apparently responsible for drawing thumbnails of the videos not natively supported by Windows. The dll had some bug probably.

To unload the dll:

1. open Run from the start menu or press ctrl+r.

2. type in regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll and enter.

You are done with the unloading. This will result in no thumbnails for the videos and probably other insignificant side-effects. But then now can browse through folders faster (because the dll no longer has to draw the thumbnails) and without errors.

Tags: error, explorer, folders, photos, pictures, shmedia.dll, thumbnails, tip, trick, video, windows xp

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 16:16 and is filed under For You, Softwares, Tips n Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.