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I have Vista 32bit (just updated to SP2) and i have a major problem that seems to be getting worse.

Basically whenever i open the file browser in an application (such as to save or to open a file or to browse for a file to upload) the program crashes, it just immediatley closes, no warning, nothing. Explorer doesnt crash, just the program.

In some programs it only happens when you navigate to the documents folder. It started a few days ago in Firefox when i clicked the browse button of a file uploading site i was working on and now it seems Chrome, Photoshop and recently Opera (and i am sure many more) have been affected.

I have tried everything i can think of including uninstalling and changing anti virus, updating everything i could including updateing to SP2 and trying every piece of Vodo magic i could find on the internet.

If anyone has any tips or ideas that might work please share them as am willing to try just about anything.

Ps. If anyone has any suggestions for good Vista support forums that would also be appreciated.

Do you have any programs that add stuff to any of the Windows Explorer windows (maybe a shortcut app or something?) or context-menus? If so, try removing them.

Could you go to Start > in the search box type "regedit" > In the Registry Editor window expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT > * > shellex > ContextMenuHandlers and then post a screenshot of it like this:

http://localhostr.com/files/066852/regedit.jpg

Also, download autoruns from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysin...63902.aspx then extract it, right click it > Click "Run As Administrator" > once it opens click the "Explorer" tab and let it scan, once it has finished the Options menu will become active from that menu click "Hide Microsoft and Windows Entries" > now click the refresh icon in the toolbar and wait for it to complete the scan. Do you notice any entries from programs that you don't need/use? If so, try un-checking some of them and then going to File > Save, then reboot and see if the problem still occurs.

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This sounds exactly like what happened to me... try this, instead of going to the Documents folder, go via Computer > Users etc, to get to the same place... I don't know why but that always worked fine for me, but going direct to Documents would cause the entire system to freeze and I'd have no choice other than a hard shutdown.

As for fixing it, I defragged it, and a couple of the other various disk cleanup things that you can choose on the recovery manager thing you can get after a hard shutdown (can't remember the exact name) and then it went... don't think I ever did track down the exact cause.

@Chris, already tried that.

@Matt, i'll try that now.

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@Matt, thank you so much! I just tried going from computer to documents and it didn't crash (at least not in photoshop) so thats more progress than i have made all day on the problem.

Can anyone suggest a good defrag program so i can run it overnight? Is the windows one ok?

My problem now though is that a lot of my programs are stuck in documents so whenever i open the browser it crashes, can anyone suggest how to fix that?

The Windows Vista de-fragmentation tool should do the job fine.

However, if you were looking for a 3rd party app I would recommend Defraggler - http://www.defraggler.com/ which is made by the same people that created the popular CCleaner app.