Explorer 'crashes' when trying to delete a file

[jnichel]

Hi, I'm a *nix guy who hasn't used Windows since Win95, but being the 'tech' guy in the family, I'm called upon to fix problems (I'm sure we all know how that goes ;), so please bear with me on this.

My sister's computer (custom built, specs can be provided if needed) has recently run into some problems, and all my Googling, virius / spyware removing has done nothing to fix the issue. The machine is running Windows 2000 (5.00.2195 Service Pack 4). Recently, whenever she tries to delete a file (either by right clicking and choosing delete, or pressing the delete key on the keyboard), Explorer will shutdown and restart without deleting the file. This only affects files though, as she can delete directories. The only information logged in the Event Viewer when this happens is, "The shell stopped unexpectedly and Explorer.exe was restarted." with the source of that event being 'Winlogon'. She claims that the only thing that she has installed in the past few months are Windows updates from Microsoft.com. Checking her log for this shows the last update to be on 13 Oct 04, which she says is about when the problem started. Does anyone have an idea of what I can do to fix this problem? TIA.

[eddie5659]

Hiya

Found this, though its for Copy/paste only:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q275599

But it may be related.

Also, on a more detailed search, it seems to be due to third-party programs being installed. Apart from the Microsoft Updates, what else has she updated/installed at the same time?

Regards

eddie

[jnichel]

Thanks for the info. I looked into that, but my sister didn't have either of the dll's listed there. I went thru, one by one, removing the Windows updates that she had done, in reverse install order, and when I removed this one, "Security Update for Windows 2000 (KB840987)", the problem went away.