Hello, recently I have been having a strange problem with explorer.exe... When explorer.exe is running, I cannot run msconfig, mspaint, defrag, or GenuineCheck.exe from Microsoft.com for downloads, and who knows what else (windows update seems to be freezing too). I formatted the drive for this reason along with others, but I cannot figure out why this is happening. If I run one of these programs that don't work, they do appear in the Processes tab, but no window ever appears, and if I don't 'end task' them, I receive a Memory Instruction error at logoff/shutdown. Once I end explorer.exe through Task Manager, I can run all of those programs from Task Manager perfectly.
At first I thought it may have to do with policies, but could find absolutely nothing in the registry (winxp home) supporting that. I'm pretty certain it isn't a virus but you can never be too sure, although looking through my HJT logs, running processes, and running AV scans, I could find nothing suspicious. Renaming these files did nothing also. Running these programs in safe mode however was successful. I found Windows Firewall was supposedly blocking MMC.exe since it popped up, and I turned it off but with no success. Now I might be leaning toward software I installed may be causing this, but I don't see any reason how because I wasn't having this problem before.
I'm really stumped because I have no idea what is causing this... I've been trying to fix this for quite some time now and I would REALLY appreciate any help.
I'm running Windows XP Home SP2 on an administrator account.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
At first I thought it may have to do with policies, but could find absolutely nothing in the registry (winxp home) supporting that. I'm pretty certain it isn't a virus but you can never be too sure, although looking through my HJT logs, running processes, and running AV scans, I could find nothing suspicious. Renaming these files did nothing also. Running these programs in safe mode however was successful. I found Windows Firewall was supposedly blocking MMC.exe since it popped up, and I turned it off but with no success. Now I might be leaning toward software I installed may be causing this, but I don't see any reason how because I wasn't having this problem before.
I'm really stumped because I have no idea what is causing this... I've been trying to fix this for quite some time now and I would REALLY appreciate any help.
I'm running Windows XP Home SP2 on an administrator account.
Thanks for taking the time to read.