Windows Explorer Constant Refresh Loop

Question

Hi,

So my laptop has developed a problem over the last few days that I've tried (unsuccessfully) to fix. I'm now hoping that someone can help.

To fill you in...

I have a Dell laptop running Windows 7.

A few days ago I noticed that when I boot up my laptop, the taskbar and desktop refresh about every 5 or 10 seconds on a constant loop. Also any file explorer window that I open will close.

I was able to stop this by going into Taskmanager and, using trial and error, I ended non-essential tasks to try and find whatever is responsible. I found that Microsoft Direct8Play and 'ClearTypeTuner' both need to be ended as tasks before my laptop acts normally.

Of course, not only is it a hassle to do this every time my laptop boots, but probably about every 10 minutes or so the problem starts over...and so I have to go back into TaskManager to end the task.

A few more things....

I have ran several spyware cleaners (no luck)
I have tried sfc scan
This problem does not exist if I boot in Safe Mode
This problem does not exist in a new Windows user account that I created

In Windows' Event Viewer I notice that the issue with explorer closing and then refreshing correspond with an Event ID of 1002 "The shell stopped unexpectedly and explorer.exe was restarted."

I assumed that the way to solve this was to create a crash dump and then analyse it to try and get to the bottom of this issue, but, after following instructions from others, I see no error dump anywhere on my system drive (whether this is because I'm doing something wrong, I'm not sure).

I would MASSIVELY appreciate any help that I can get with this issue.

Many Thanks

Answer 1

This problem does not exist in a new Windows user account that I created

Sounds like the profile is corrupt for one or more reasons. What you can do is logon with a new account with local admin rights, copy off the files etc. from the corrupt profile, then Control Panel\System\System\Advanced\User Profiles and delete the corrupt profile. Then when you next logon as that user a new profile will be created from an image in \Default User. Then you can copy back the items you saved off the corrupt profile.

--please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

Answer 2

Hi,
If the problem does not exist in a new account, the user profile could be corrupt. You could backup your profile and create a new administrator account. Login with this account and delete the corrupt profile. As this could also be a driver problem, check if you have installed or updated any driver recently.

Best Regards,
Ian