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PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 1:54 pm 
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All well and good.

My problem is that if/when I click on the Explorer icon, on the Taskbar, or use the Windows Key + E combination, my desktop icons all disappear. They may come back after a while, but not always. In addition, my system is pretty much locked up.

Most times, I am forced to use Ctrl+Alt+Del to get the Task Manager, then if Explorer is shown as stalled, there might be - instead of End Task in the lower right corner - Restart Explorer. Naturally clicking on this will bring back my desktop icons and allow me to continue working. But all too often, I and up restarting my system.:cry:


I have looked for an answer to this specific issue, but haven't found it yet. I would appreciate a link to such answer, if it is up here. If not - and I cannot be the only one having this problem - please tell me how to resolve this. I really like Classic Shell and would not want to get rid of it.

Thank you all,

Heshie

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 2:04 pm 
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Do you have any evidence to suggest that Classic Shell is the cause for your problems? Uninstall it and see if the problems go away.


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PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 2:27 pm 
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Hi.
Other than the fact that it did not act that way before Classic Shell, but does after Classic Shell was installed and, subsequently updated? No evidence at all.

That being said, I am not a super guru, and have learned, among other things, that I don't know nearly as much as I'd like.

What I do know is how to try and diagnose a problem. The first question to ask is "what's different?" The answer, in this case, is Classic Shell. Prior to installing it, my 8.1 Pro system did not exhibit this problem.

As I've said, I acknowledge that I am not a super guru and there may, indeed, be other things happening here.

I hope this helps ...

Cheers!

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 7:05 pm 
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Well, as I suggested, uninstall Classic Shell and see if the problem disappears. If it does, the next step would be to install the Classic Shell components one by one to see which one leads to the problem.


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:27 am 
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Again, my thanks. My friends over at WindowsBBS have advised that prior to upgrading to Win 8.1 I should uninstall ClassicShell, just to be sure things go well. So I will take your advice, uninstall it and see how things go before introducing another variable to this system.

I will, of course, let you know how it went.

Cheers!

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:00 pm 
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Your second post suggest that you had windows 8.1 installed, and then installed classic shell. however your 3rd post suggest that you are on windows 8.0, and have yet to upgrade.

Did you upgrade from 8.0 to 8.1 with classic shell installed, only to find your system not working as planned, and thus roll-back to 8.0?

IF-SO:Classic shell isn't the only program that miss behaves when upgrading from 8.0 to 8.1, and you may want to consider reinstalling your video-card driver after the upgrade. (I know I had to repair mine)


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 4:26 am 
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I do apologize for any confusion. I had not yet upgraded to 8.1. At 5:30AM today, I removed ClassicShell, and immediately the problem I initially described disappeared. No more lock-ups when clicking the Taskbar icon for Explorer, or otherwise accessing Win Explorer (File Explorer). The same had been happening when clicking the icon on the Taskbar for Control Panel but I failed to mention that.

However, that is merely a specialized version of File Explorer, opening directly into Control Panel.

Again, over the years both working on and managing Help Desks, I have learned to ask "What's different?" This must be the first question, whenever a problem is encountered.

ClassicShell was the answer. And this has proven that to be true, at least in my case. I cannot say this is true for anyone else ...

Thank you all for your suggestions. I will let you know if/when I upgrade to 8.1 and then reinstall ClassicShell.

Cheers!

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 Post subject: Re: Explorer locking up
PostPosted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 9:22 am 
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OK, so it looks like Classic Shell is indeed the cause of your problem. As I said, you can install the components one by one to figure out which one is the culprit. It may be the start menu. It may be Classic Explorer. It may be a specific feature of Classic Explorer, for example the "shared icon overlay".


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 Post subject: Re: Explorer locking up
PostPosted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 5:55 am 
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I've been hitting a ver specific explorer lockup, that may or may not be related to ClassicShell (i suspect not)

sometimes, i find explorer locks up when i scroll a folders contents, not always and seems to somehow be fil/folder related or columns related in the folder.

Folder Display LIST
Sort By TYPE
Group By DATE

when this happens, it will continually keep happening, explorer failing to respond, until you have to kill it.

When Moving in the folder (scrolling) new items on to the viewing area causes this, first thing i do is move the last object to come onto the screen, if that fails to fix it, then i change the window width, this i found was happening when the 3rd column of files was not fully on the screen, in ALL instances, resetting the folder view to Group by TYPE solves it completely !!


maybe not related to your issues, but thought i'd mention it, running full Classic Shell setup with start menu, up button and custom tool bar


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 Post subject: Re: Explorer locking up
PostPosted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 6:17 am 
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Well, the best way to determine if Classic Shell's component is causing it is to temporarily disable it.

To disable the Start Menu, just right click it and click Exit.
To disable Classic Explorer or Classic IE, disable their addons from Internet Options -> Programs tab -> Manage Addons.

If after disabling that component of Classic Shell, you still get lockups then something else is causing them.

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 Post subject: Re: Explorer locking up
PostPosted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 9:17 am 
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You can try capturing a dump using the instructions here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6


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 Post subject: Re: Explorer locking up
PostPosted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 7:29 am 
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ok, will see what i can do after the weekend, next few days are going to be hectic, and it's not happening alll the time, and i know switching from group by date, to group by type fixes it plus it hasnet happened for a few days at least now, that's why i'm not sure it is classic shell related


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 Post subject: Re: Explorer locking up
PostPosted: Tue Mar 11, 2014 4:05 am 
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I have had exactly the same problem - on two computers with fresh installations both running Windows 7. On the first I removed Classic Shell and that removed the problem as well. Purely by chance I waited for the Program to respond with the second one. After 4 or 5 minutes it did and Classic Start Menu worked fine. Unfortunately the problem recurred when I restarted or logged off so I cannot use Classic Shell unless I am prepared to wait or leave the machine on.
Is a delayed start on some service necessary to running Classic Shell the problem here?
On two further machines, also running Win 7 (64bit) with fresh installations I experienced no lock up. I have noticed that Classic Shell takes a few seconds to load on boot up in any event and presumably that is to be expected.


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 Post subject: Re: Explorer locking up
PostPosted: Tue Mar 11, 2014 4:12 am 
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@jimmyabdn, please capture a dump using these instructions: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewt ... p?f=12&t=6. Since you are experiencing slowdowns/lockups, run procdump -n 10 -s 1 explorer.exe.

On Windows 7, the menu should start as soon as you are logged in but if you have a large number of items loading at startup, it may be starting with a delay. Although no one has reported any delay on Windows 7, mostly on Windows 8 because that OS intentionally delays the startup of desktop apps. In your case, it may be because something is conflicting causing slowdowns. The crash dump will show hopefully. Check your anti-malware to make sure that it doesn't block C:\Program Files\Classic Shell\ClassicStartMenu.exe or C:\Windows\Explorer.exe.

When Classic Shell 4.x is installed, the first-time start of the menu may be slow because it caches all the icons and other data to the C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Roaming\ClassicShell\ folder. Subsequent launches should be fast on Windows 7. Check that you have write permissions for that folder and that DataCache.db is not read only.

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I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.


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