Windows Photo Gallery Crashes Explorer.exe

Hi. I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit, and a problem's cropped up in the last week that I've never had before.

I run a screencap/image gallery site, and use Windows Photo Gallery to sort through the images for blurries or bad quality files. I've done so for the life of my computer, which is just over a year.

I had a bad virus infect my computer a month ago and had to completely wipe my computer with a fresh install to fix the issue. (Yay.) I used Photo Gallery successfully after the format. I used it as recently as this time last week to sort through images from the latest Tuesday night episode of my favorite show.

However, a couple of days ago, I noticed any time I tried to use Photo Gallery, it just wouldn't open. It wouldn't do anything. I looked at my computer funny, ran a Malware scan and a chkdsk to ensure there wasn't anything wrong; I got clear reports from both.

Then yesterday, I tried to open an image with Photo Gallery and I started getting an error that it caused Explorer.exe to crash with the following information:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.0.6001.18164
Application Timestamp: 4907e791
Fault Module Name: StackHash_1fc9
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6001.18000
Fault Module Timestamp: 4791adec
Exception Code: c0000374
Exception Offset: 00000000000a6e97
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 1fc9
Additional Information 2: 36c049244cd686b50c8f2d3baca82752
Additional Information 3: 910e
Additional Information 4: 4d2588d2d90bdb8669440aaed083e51d

I looked it up online and found information in an old thread here suggesting that I got into my Appdata folder and rename the index to see if that was corrupt. I did that, and when I opened Photo Gallery afterward, it didn't crash explorer and a new index showed up, but the program itself never opened. I tried to open an image and explorer.exe crashed again.

Is there anything else I can try? Having just formatted my computer, I really really don't want to do it again if I can keep from that.

Hoping you guys can help me out. =\

-Cherrii

hallo cherrii, Have a look at these two tutorials and see if it helps any they may be able to repair any corrupted system files;

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67612-check-disk-chkdsk.html

I had already run a chkdsk, but didn't know about the SFC. Ran that and the output file didn't show any errors. I did run another chkdsk just to be sure, but again had no errors.

Now I'm really wondering what's going on. I don't want to have to format again when I've just done so, but if that seems to be the only option I have, I guess I'll do it. *sigh*

Do you know of anything else I might try? =\

Cherrii said:

I had already run a chkdsk, but didn't know about the SFC. Ran that and the output file didn't show any errors. I did run another chkdsk just to be sure, but again had no errors.

Now I'm really wondering what's going on. I don't want to have to format again when I've just done so, but if that seems to be the only option I have, I guess I'll do it. *sigh*

Do you know of anything else I might try? =\

Click to expand...

You could try a repair install Cherrii ;

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/88236-repair-install-vista.html

although rather drastic measure, or wait & see if someone else replies to this thread. I have not really had much to do with Windows Photo gallery so someone might respond that has run into this before.

The other option is to use an alternative there are some in this free software list;

http://www.vistax64.com/software/115872-free-software-list-vista.html

Sorry i cant be of more help