Windows Explorer keeps crashing over and over

[xxsilk109xx]

I am working on this laptop, it will boot into windows safe mode and normal mode.
When it does, windows explorer will crash and then restart and then crash again, its a never ending loop.
It is windows vista 64 bit.
I have been searching around google and have tried about everything that I could find. I ran chkdsk which seemed to help as it boots into windows a little quicker but its still crashing. chkdsk found lots of errors and corrected them. I cant run sfc /scannow because as soon as i do anything windows crashes.

i am trying to avoid a reformat on this thing but it might be the only recourse.

Anyone have any ideas on a way to fix this?

 

[Crollins]

Well I have defiantely seen viruses and malware that will make explorer.exe crash... I'd possibly try hanging the drive as a slave on another computer and doing a virus scan on it.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

will do, I am making an image of the disk right now and then I will plug it into my computer via usb and see if I can do a scan on it.

A question I have is for instance i do this with malwarebytes, it usually asks to restart the computer, is this neccessary for a slaved drive?

 

[kagman]

Yeah you could try to slave the drive then run virus scans and stuff.. Also to a full check on the hard drive besides using chkdsk. Check the hardware on that computer to. Also check the RAM.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

Well I have not checked the hardware because this computer is less than 6 months old, so I dont think the hardware is an issue, but if after a virus scan there is still issues I will check the hardware.

 

[kagman]

You never know. But just do a check of everything to be on the safe side...

 

[Crollins]

You mean when malwarebytes asks to restart the computer after the scan while its trying to remove infected files? If so I would think that if it is a slave drive and isnt the drive being booted off than my answer would be no that would be unnecessary. Either way though I would start with doing a virus scan and go from there. I would also as Kagman said do some hardware tests on the ram, hd, etc but I just by my first impressions from what you said I would believe it to be a virus.

 

[kagman]

Let us know what happens....