PCTech Forums

Hi. I have a problem with Vista Home Edition.

When I boot my computer, it get's to the desktop. However, it tells me the RUNDLL32 has crashed and my EXPLORER.EXE has to be restarted. My Desktop flashes, closes all browser windows. And this happens over and over indefinately.

I'm pretty sure it started when I was using SUPER to convert a movie and it failed. It started spamming me after that. I uninstalled Super and still have the problem. I think it was a coincidence.

What i've done...

~I've scanned for viruses.
~Scanned for Spyware.
~Tried System Restore SEVERAL times. It's now rolled back to last week.
~In order to browse files and try to fix it, i installed Vista on another partition. It runs fine, but I'd rather just fix my current install since all of my stuff is on it and in the registry. I really would rather not wipe it and start clean.

Any help? This makes that install of Windows amazingly hard to use.

Thanks in advance.

Hello bkral, and welcome to our forum.

rundll32.exe is a process which executes DLL's and places their libraries into the memory
So chances are that it's a .dll file that is actually causing the problem.

See if you still get the error when in safe mode.

Reboot into Safe mode:
Restart the system after you see the BIOS screen and before Windows starts to load.
Start tapping the F8 key. The Windows Advanced Options Menu appears.
Use the Arrow key to ensure that the Safe Mode option is selected.
Press Enter. The computer then begins to start in Safe mode.

If explorer loads ok then we know it a registry call for the .dll file and not the rundll32.exe file itself.
The trick will be in finding the registry call and/or the actual .dll file

Go to Start > Control panel > Administrative tools > Event viewer > look in the System section.

You are looking for any red or yellow icons, double click on the icon.
Click inside the 'Description' section then highlight the text and copy and paste it into notepad.
At the bottom of the event window check 'words' and then copy and paste that text also
Then past it all into your reply to this thread.

You could also run the System file checker to repair any damaged system files.

Open an elevated command prompt. To do this, click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Allow.
Type the following command, and then press ENTER:
sfc /scannow

Whenever I booted it in safe mode, it always just flashed the explorer.

I seem to have made it "sort of" go away for the time being while I fix exactly what is wrong.

I disabled thumbnail previews in folders and i'm pretty sure that's what fixed it. It seemed to always happen when I was looking at the desktop (which has a few jpg's and avi files.) And when I was browsing folders with thumbnail previews in them. Also there was a random Windows Update that happened right before I rebooted the last time.

I will turn the preview back on and see if it's indeed what was causing it.

However, it will have to wait. I have work in an hour and I work overnight then school. So i'll get back to this tomorrow.

I'll do the system scan and everything right now as I leave for work.

And thanks for the welcome.