Windows 7 Windows Explorer crashing with MPG files

[bleron]

Hello everyone! Since recently, this really annoying bug started to pop up. Every time I open a folder except my Desktop with an MPG ( or MPEG) file, Windows Explorer crashes. Even on my Desktop, when I drag my mouse on the file (and even not clicking it!) Windows Explorer crashes. At first, this problem started out by Windows Media Player crashing when playing MPG files, but now it has worsened. I used CCleaner, and even installed the Win7 Codec pack and removed broken codecs, and still, I am having the same problem. Anyone help please?

 

[Chip Whitley]

Hello everyone! Since recently, this really annoying bug started to pop up. Every time I open a folder except my Desktop with an MPG ( or MPEG) file, Windows Explorer crashes. Even on my Desktop, when I drag my mouse on the file (and even not clicking it!) Windows Explorer crashes. At first, this problem started out by Windows Media Player crashing when playing MPG files, but now it has worsened. I used CCleaner, and even installed the Win7 Codec pack and removed broken codecs, and still, I am having the same problem. Anyone help please?

I also have similar problem with mpg files. Explorer does not crash like in your case but it won't let me do anything with mpg files. I can't copy, rename, move or delete mpg files. It's like they don't exist on the drive and yet I can clearly see them listed in the directory. Surprisingly, I can play them. In order to delete .mpg file I have to manually kill explorer process, and manually run it again from New task dialog and then I can do all those things (copy, rename...). I have noticed this bug in build 7000, 7048, 7057 (current build). This is in no way related to indexing because I have disabled that feature.

On a good day, lets say after you have just booted into windows 7 chances are that I will be able to delete, copy, reanme... mpg files but its not 100% sure thing. If I open an mpg file in an mpg editor, do some editing and create new mpg files (not doing anything to the original mpg file i.e. using the Save As... dialog) and then close the editor then it's 100% sure thing that I wont be able to do anything with that original mpg file until I manually kill explorer. At first it seems like the mpg editor process is keeping the mpg file to itself and denying access to other processes (like explorer) to access the file but I have ruled that theory out because I made sure that editor process IS killed and, more importanty, the problem occurs even when mpeg editor process hasn't been running that day at all.

Since I have been fighting this problem for more than a month now, I think the root of the problem lies in incompatibility of mpg file headers with the current windows 7 explorer. If we were to treat mpg files as something else (e.g. treat it like an unknown file type: rename *.mpg into *.anything) then all this fuss with explorer magically disappears because explorer doesn't try to scan the file for headers and therefore it doesn't experience the incompatibility.

The only reason I have already tried three different builds is because of this bug and yet every time it's the same old story. I can't believe there is so little info about this problem because its a huge bug for anyone dealing with mpg files.

 

[bleron]

I already found the solution. I uninstalled I bunch of software on my computer... And that solved the problem. It seemed to me that the software that I uninstalled seemed to be incompatible and Windows 7 did not warn me when I installed. And besides, CCleaner might have also helped. Hope you fix your problem soon!

 

[Chip Whitley]

Okay, thanks! I dont use software which tends to install its own codec packs but I do have ffdshow and Haali media splitter. I'll try uninstalling them and see what happens.

 

[badassllama]

Hopefully helpful

I have had this issue repeatedly 3 times now. The problem seems to be associated with a Windows 7 update. Not sure which one though. After a clean OS install, everything functions fine. To test, I installed no other applications, simply turned Windows Updates to automatically install all, even recommended updates and BAM! MPEGs start causing issues. They won't play correctly as they take way too long to load, even small files. The status bar / address bar at the top of the explorer bar starts to show a progress as if it's refreshing the window or reading the file, and WMP12 hangs up severely. I tested this with other video players as well and noted the problem was constant. The issue seems to be the windows explorer, as you said, trying to read something in the background and pegging out the processors. As I still haven't found the culprit windows update, I now disable them all just so I don't have this headache again.

Hope this was helpful. If anyone has any further information on this, PLEASE let me know. Perhaps some sort of registry editing problem during an update? Just a thought....

EDIT: I was able to remove this problem twice by removing recent windows updates. However, this most recent time, some updates were unable to be removed and I was left without a restore point prior to their installation. Back to the re-format.... :/ Just a tip for anyone who wants to try and single out the faulty update. If you do, please post.

 

[ede63]

@badassllama

Just one question:
Did you have the problems with NTFS or did you use a FAT32 partition ?

 

[wishwlou]

Hello everyone! Since recently, this really annoying bug started to pop up. Every time I open a folder except my Desktop with an MPG ( or MPEG) file, Windows Explorer crashes. Even on my Desktop, when I drag my mouse on the file (and even not clicking it!) Windows Explorer crashes. At first, this problem started out by Windows Media Player crashing when playing MPG files, but now it has worsened. I used CCleaner, and even installed the Win7 Codec pack and removed broken codecs, and still, I am having the same problem. Anyone help please?

I had the same problem, I removed Nero 7 and that stopped the error and stopped the crashing.

 

[Pauli]

One basic thing is, not necessarily related here all the way, one shouldn't have several [independent] codec packs. I had problems with Windows Media Player not playing standard DVDs, I uninstalled codec pack(s) I had, now running comfortably with the codecs that came with Windows 7.