Member Avatar for rproffitt

Let me share how I began to understand Microsoft: A long time back when I went to Microsoft Redmond's campus for a seminar. I had two things I wanted to share since I thought Microsoft would want to look into this.

  1. A CD that when put into the PC would cause the PC to lock up. I didn't know why, I just thought it showed a bug.
  2. A jpeg file that when copied to the desktop would render that user's account dead. Even in safe mode until the file was deleted.

I waited my turn to meet with a couple of Microsoft engineers (lucky me!) and their response told me all I needed to know about Microsoft. maybe you can figure it out too. The engineers answer to these issues was "Don't do that."

Microsoft didn't consider things that we do or see as a bug. It's user error.

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What you both hit is classic: untrusted input triggering code paths in Explorer (thumbnail/preview handlers) or storage drivers. When that happens on the desktop, Explorer crashes at logon, looks like the account is dead, and it keeps looping. When it is removable media (your CD or @MickeyD’s SD card), the OS may hang while the stack tries to mount or index it.

If a single file on Desktop bricks a profile, aim to neutralize previews first, then remove the file. From Safe Mode with Command Prompt (or WinRE), flip these switches for the affected user, restart Explorer, then delete or rename the offender:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /v IconsOnly /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /v ShowPreviewHandlers /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe & start explorer.exe
dir /x C:\Users\Alice\Desktop
del /f "\\?\C:\Users\Alice\Desktop\bad.jpg"

Tip: if the name has weird characters, use the 8.3 name from dir /x, or just ren bad.jpg bad.bad. Creating a new local user first helps confirm it is profile-scoped.

For media that locks the box, disable AutoPlay before inserting, try a different reader/USB adapter, and test in a VM. To prevent auto-mount during triage:

diskpart
automount disable
exit

Re-enable after testing with automount enable. Then check Event Viewer for the first failure (Application and System): note the faulting module or disk/controller errors. If you want Microsoft to act, share a minimal repro: OS build (winver), the exact file or image, steps to trigger, and the first crash/event entry. That moves the convo from “don’t do that” to a fixable bug.

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Member Avatar for Member #1162018

If you find an answer, do let us all know. I had a 4 gig SD card that locked up my entire system every time I inserted it into the slot.

commented: I bet the Microsoft engineer's answer will be "don't do that." +15
Member Avatar for Bllistic

Haha wow savage. Didn't expect this, but I guess thinking of many usage scenarios all the time can get annoying and they can't think of every single thing an user would do.

commented: I didn't tell all. Later the JPEG issue turned out to be exploitable. +15
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