[Captain Chaos]

This whole problem started Thursday night. Every time I click on a desktop Icon, (I'm not sure about every single one of them, but every one I've used since it started happening) or when Directory Opus opens at startup, and a few other things, I receive this error message: "Explorer.exe - Application Error - The instruction at "0x66006041" rreferenced memory at "0x66006041". The memory could not be "read". (Quotation marks included in error message.) Then It gives me 2 options: Click OK to terminate; Click Cancel to Debug. If I click Cancel to Debug, a few seconds later I get an error message to the effect of Dr. Watson Postmortem Dedugger has encounted a problem and needs to shut down... and so on. Then of course I'm asked if I want to report the problem, which is neither here nor there. Whatever I click, my taskbar, and desktop icons disappear. Basically, Windows Explorer shuts down, then a minute or so later it restarts. The same thing happens if I click OK to terminate it. Anything I have running at the time stays running, but basically freezes up until Explorer loads back up.

I ran all of my anti-* programs in safe mode, with the exception of Hijack This which keeps shutting down on me before the scan is complete. It is the newest version, (1.99.0) and the creator says it might have a bug, but it could also be the Ms4Hd rootkit parasite, but I don't know which one the problem with that might be. In any event, I'm not sure if that parasite could be causing this problem or not. However I do know that this problem is driving me nuts, and I can't figure out what could be causing it. The system was running fine before this, and it seems to have popped up out of nowhere. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

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I had the same problem with XP SP 2. I noticed it had something to do with an old Divx. Try uninstalling Divx and installing a newer version.

[Grim-Reaper]

I had the same problem with XP SP 2. I noticed it had something to do with an old Divx. Try uninstalling Divx and installing a newer version.

[jmcforensic]

I have the exact problem now on two desktops & one brand new laptop. It is driving me nuts!! I am also running XP Pro, SP2, PC-cillin security 2005, Mozilla & Thunderbird.

Any ideas on what may be the issue?

[Captain Chaos]

Oddly enough, a couple days after I made my initial post one of the dozens of things I tried apparently worked, because it worked fine up until 2 days ago. Now it's doing it again. Unfortunately, I don't know what I did the last time to fix it. But I think I might have a slight idea what might be causing it. The last time it happened, my daughter was screwing around on the internet, I'm not exactly sure which sites, but anyway, after I restarted my computer this crap began. Well, Tuesday night she was screwing around again, and Wednesday morning, problem's back. Did a virus scan, clean; did a spyware scan with three different programs, clean. However, upon running Trojan Remover, it got about half-way through and shut down. And when I run Norton Disk Doctor, that shuts down in the middle too, and when it does i get the exact same error message as the explorer.exe except this one say NDD32.exe. So I believe it's one of those self-protecting trojans that have been floating around. Unfortunately, I'm clueless as to how to detect it. If I find anything out I will post it back here.

[jmcforensic]

Well, I solved the problem -- not easily!! I removed SP2 then reinstalled Wins XP, then reinstalled SP2 and updated all windows files. Reloaded whatever programs I had to & created restore point at every step in the process. Then ran pestpatrol & PC-cillin and finally Defrag the drive. Did this on all 3 PC's . AS of right now All is Well!!

Good Luck. I'd still be interested in knowing exactly what did it!

[neckshot]

Interestingly enough i got the same problem today and i thought to myself after reading from here that its not reading for some reason. so on my desktop i right clicked one of my folders and took off read only, applyed, and made it apply to all the corresponding folders or something like that, cause it asked if i wanted to, and now i can get into all of my desktop folders

[neckshot]

i have found from my previous post that this is only a temporary solution. whenever restarting u have to do the same procedure again in order for it to unlock everything, and if u do not have a folder on ur desktop...well then maybe u are just out of luck.