Merkuri
Explorer
I have Vista Ultimate x64 SP1. Every once and a while Explorer will start to behave funny. It seems to happen most often when I do something in Quicken 2008 that causes it to freeze, but I think it's happened other times as well.
The first symptom, of course, is that the application I'm working on will freeze. With Quicken it usually white-screens and says "Not Responding" in the title bar. Other applications I happen to have open at the time, like Firefox, continue to work fine.
If I right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager the Task Manager will open, but it'll be completely unresponsive. The cursor turns into the "waiting circle" when it's over the Task Manager window and I can't click on anything in the window or move it around. Even if I hit ctrl-alt-delete and choose "Launch Task Manager" from there it does the same thing. And usually after I hit ctrl-alt-delete I start getting the "hall of mirrors" effect on my desktop (except where gadgets are located - those can't be clicked on but seem to redraw correctly - the second-hand keeps moving on my clock, for example). Functioning windows remain functioning, but anything related to Windows directly, like Task Manager, the Start Menu, or the Run dialog (launched with windows key-R) either won't work at all or will open and then become completely unresponsive, and no new non-Windows applications can be started since I can't access the start menu, quick start, or File Explorer.
The only way I've found to fix this is to either reboot or hit ctrl-alt-delete and select "log off". As soon as I log off everything seems to start responding again, but then it all promptly shuts down as the computer logs off. Logging off is only a little better than rebooting because either way all of my open processes get shut down and have to be restarted when I log back in.
Has anyone ever seen this type of thing before? I'd ask on the Quicken forums, since 90% of the time when this happens it's right at the same time that Quicken decides to white-screen and go unresponsive, but they aren't often helpful.
Any ideas on what else I can do to recover from this situation without causing all of my programs to shut down? Normally logging off and back on is a pain but not that big of a deal, but right now, for example, I'm in the process of making a full backup of my PC to some DVDs and I don't want to interrupt that. That means I'm stuck with a mostly frozen computer and just Firefox until the backup finishes, which, at this rate, won't be until late tonight - unless it's already screwed up beyond repair. I can see the backup dialog changing periodically as it goes through my files but I can't activate that window. It looks like it's still working, but I have no idea what'll happen when it tries to ask me to put in the next blank DVD.
The first symptom, of course, is that the application I'm working on will freeze. With Quicken it usually white-screens and says "Not Responding" in the title bar. Other applications I happen to have open at the time, like Firefox, continue to work fine.
If I right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager the Task Manager will open, but it'll be completely unresponsive. The cursor turns into the "waiting circle" when it's over the Task Manager window and I can't click on anything in the window or move it around. Even if I hit ctrl-alt-delete and choose "Launch Task Manager" from there it does the same thing. And usually after I hit ctrl-alt-delete I start getting the "hall of mirrors" effect on my desktop (except where gadgets are located - those can't be clicked on but seem to redraw correctly - the second-hand keeps moving on my clock, for example). Functioning windows remain functioning, but anything related to Windows directly, like Task Manager, the Start Menu, or the Run dialog (launched with windows key-R) either won't work at all or will open and then become completely unresponsive, and no new non-Windows applications can be started since I can't access the start menu, quick start, or File Explorer.
The only way I've found to fix this is to either reboot or hit ctrl-alt-delete and select "log off". As soon as I log off everything seems to start responding again, but then it all promptly shuts down as the computer logs off. Logging off is only a little better than rebooting because either way all of my open processes get shut down and have to be restarted when I log back in.
Has anyone ever seen this type of thing before? I'd ask on the Quicken forums, since 90% of the time when this happens it's right at the same time that Quicken decides to white-screen and go unresponsive, but they aren't often helpful.
Any ideas on what else I can do to recover from this situation without causing all of my programs to shut down? Normally logging off and back on is a pain but not that big of a deal, but right now, for example, I'm in the process of making a full backup of my PC to some DVDs and I don't want to interrupt that. That means I'm stuck with a mostly frozen computer and just Firefox until the backup finishes, which, at this rate, won't be until late tonight - unless it's already screwed up beyond repair. I can see the backup dialog changing periodically as it goes through my files but I can't activate that window. It looks like it's still working, but I have no idea what'll happen when it tries to ask me to put in the next blank DVD.
