Windows 10 Explorer.exe crashes, Fault Module SHELL32.dll, no problem in other User Account

  • Thread starter Thread starter diakonos1984
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diakonos1984

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My normal user account on my Windows 10 64-bit laptop started having a major error yesterday morning. I'm not sure if it was due to the lightning storm the night before, or the fact that I had to hard-reboot it a couple times to get it to come up. Regardless, explorer.exe is crashing every second or two.

Following advice on various forums I have determined (using both WinDBG and Nirsoft's AppCrashView) that the faulting module is SHELL32.dll. It crashes in Safe Mode also, though it is a more controlled "System detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer in this application" error.

A number of troubleshooting tactics did NOT work in Safe Mode. But when I created a temporary Local Administrator User Profile, not only did all of the troubleshooting tactics work, but the crash does not occur in that user profile at all. I was able to run Malwarebytes, Windows Defender Offline Scan, and Windows Update, as well as "sfc /scannow" and "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth" don't reveal anything. None have given any clues or solutions to the problem, but it seems to be limited to my normal user account.

So I think I have dodged having to do a clean install of Windows. I see some recommendations to create a new normal user account and transfer all of my files over to it. That will be a huge pain for this machine. Does anyone have any other ideas first?

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