Win2K: Can't start new applications

[HankdeWit]

I have a machine which has Win2K/SP1 and a number of
applications installed including: MS Office 2000, McAfee VirusScan 4.5.496.0, IE 5.0.2920.0, Pc Anywhere 9.2.1.258, and WinFaxPro 10.0.2000.214.

It was running fine until about a week ago. Now after a few hours you cannot start new applications by using the start menu or running shortcuts on the desktop. No error message appears and I'm sure that no attempt has been made to start them.

Note that existing applications continue to run OK. Memory usage seems Ok and no processes are using too much CPU time.

I have also noticed that the occasionally the graphics on the desktop doesn't refresh. I'm sure that it is explorer.exe that is not functioning correctly.

A logoff/logon clears the problem for another few hours.

Can anyone give me some guidance on how to proceed in correcting this fault.

Hank de Wit

 

[maddogtech]

I kinda have the same problem... When right-clicking a link in IE and selecting Open in New Window... nothing happens. I was messing with many lower level Windows functions though. If you should figure out your problem from some other avenue... please post.

P.S. Re-install of 5.5 IE and upgrade to 6.0 IE does nothing. I suspect registry misconfig. or misdirection.

 

[Jroenick]

I know this is a little late, but youre getting a memory leak from most likely the svchost.exe. Download service pack 2 and it will fix this. To determine which process is causing the memory leak specifically, when you aren't able to run anything, do a CTRL-ALT-DEL and chose task manager. Click processes. Tak a look at CPU usage and MEM usage of each process, if anything is extrordiarily high, that is most likely the memory leak.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks J,

Unfortunately I couldn't resolve the problem and in the end went back to factory defaults and started again. The problem has not re-occurred.

Interestingly while I couldn't start new program from Start/Run or the Start menu I could start the Task Manager's File/New Task option.

It appeared to me that somehow Explorer.exe itself was at fault, affecting the desktop and Start menus. I never noticed anything odd when examining the task manager.

Thanks for your suggestion. If the problem re-occurs I will try SP2.

Cheers
Hank

 

[Guest_imported]

Hi,
I'm having exactly the same problem. Has any one determined a fix for this yet?

 

[zephyran]

I have experienced the same problem myself, but am running Service Pack 2. I will try re-applying it. I did notice that, when the applications wouldn't start, explorer.exe was taking up about 5% of the CPU time in Task Manager, where normally it only takes up 1% or less.

I noticed that stopping and restarting explorer.exe fixed the problem, so I know it's at least connected to the problem. Anybody found a reason for this yet?

 

[ShadowOne]

I had a user with this problem. After a few hours of use, they would be able to work fine, but they couldn't start anything new. Not from icons, menus or Run. Everything would run fine until you ended that program, then you couldn't start it again. Rebooting fixed the problem.

Working on the problem being explorer.exe, I proved that if you used task manager to end the explorer.exe task and started a new explorer.exe, things would be ok again.

The following proved the solution - I found a registry change that causes run explorer in multiple threads rather one thread. I can only guess that this prevents some task from blocking explorer...

The following is the hack :

Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Create or modify the following key:
Name: DesktopProcess
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1 separate process for Explorer