Alternative to windows explorer?

The_Bullman

Windows explorer keeps on crashing for me whenever I open a folder with avi's, so I'm wondering if anyone knows of an alternative to it?

or maybe an idea why it makes it crash. I'm using xp service pack2

ideas?

Chalk

alt. to windows? linux maybe.....
explorer prety much is windows.

assume youve done the usual virus scans and the like.

maybe disable thumbnail view in folders?
are there any extra processes / lack of ram that could be causing windows to slow down?

when you say crash, does windoes blues screen or explorer just have an exception?
post up any error message you get, [press prtscr and then open paint and paste the image in]
if explorer crashes and the taskbar etc dissapears presss ctrl+alt+del and go to new task and type in explorer, that will at least allow you to paste your error msg.

ressem

There's a list of suggestions here
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=163707

Most are shareware.
Personally I just keep winfile.exe from an old NT4 box. Fast, cheap and not a resource hog.

Capt'n Midnight

for browsing get FireFox.

shell=progman will get around some of it but painful.
check you are patched to date and update mediaplayer and check file associations and turn off thumbnails and try associationg the file with notepad of something to rule out the app , log in as a different user

as for the reason for the crash - microsoft didn't design or test software properly, while windows 2003 is supposedly better in this respect it's still got a IE6 there too..

fragile

start>run>cmd

Directory Opus is a fantastic alternative but it is not free.

Servant Salamander 2.5 is a good free alternative that has much more functionality than explorer

Gone West

your problem is actually quite simple. You are using thumbnail view. Windows has to decode the first frame of each AVI o display as a thumbnail image. your codecs must need updating, that IMO is your problem.

PiE

The_Bullman wrote:

Windows explorer keeps on crashing for me whenever I open a folder with avi's, so I'm wondering if anyone knows of an alternative to it?

or maybe an idea why it makes it crash. I'm using xp service pack2

ideas?

There was a problem with DivX and XP SP2 a few months ago that caused Explorer to crash. Try getting the latest DivX.

Or try ExplorerXP

Gone West

PiE: thats it! I had that same problem, I just didnt know that it was an official issue. I just got the latest codec packs and it worked fine from then on.