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whozyodaddy

Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2005
Location
California
I've had this problem for ages. Whenever I right click something in explorer, whether it's an icon, folder, application, etc., sometimes it will display the window pane but most of the time it gives me this damn error:

The instruction at "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" referenced memory at "xxxxxxxxxxxx". The memory could not be "read".

Click on OK to terminate the program
Click on CANCEL to debug the program

And then I click OK and it quits that current window or completely restarts explorer.exe. Usually I am only able to right click on an open space, but not any icons. This is very annoying! Any solutions or reasons why?
 
Check your error logs, see what is in there. I suspect it is a memory (RAM) or pagefile error, perhaps some bad ram?
 
it potentially could be a hardware incompatability error as well. I have had a similar problem on a non overclocked Dell machine and was able to track it down to a problem with the vid card and using two monitors...
 
My current machine is a old P4 1.6ghz, 512mb, Dell Dimension 8200. So you guys are pretty sure it is a hardware error, not a software error?

Edit: How do I check my error logs?
 
If it is a dell then its harder to tell actually. One way to check is to do a reinstall of windows, if you have the option.

As for the error logs, ill assume that you are probably using windows xp, so check here for info on how to pull up the event error logs... (applies to both xp home and pro i believe)
 
why not run check disk and defrag it first ?? then run memtest and check your pagefile settings .. if all else fails then do a re-install
 
Sometimes that may indicate virus activity / damaged files, but most likely it's corrupted RAM / too high CPU OC.
Some applications aren't written well, so that may be simple software issue. For example Windows XP SP2 + Netlimiter combo sometimes caused such problems.
 
Thanks. This system has never been overclocked. It is running Windows XP SP2. I don't think it is a virus issue, I ran Ad-Aware, Spybot, and Norton Antivirus.. still the same problem. I will download and run memtest.
 
For testing mem, I'd rather recommend goldmem aka Golden Memory or ram testeer from Microsoft (a bootable disk as well). They seem to be more sensitivethan memtest86.
 
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