Recently I noticed that my explorer.exe keeps crashing down as soon as I open a specific folder inside my external drive. A google search revealed that there are lot of similar issues reported by many on the internet. For some users, explorer.exe crashes when they try to open a certain drive, folder or file, and for others it happens when they run a particular software or application. The troubleshooting steps and solution mentioned in these articles are very varied, some of which are accurate. In this article, you will find how to fix these errors simply and easily using event viewer.

What is Event Viewer?

Event Viewer is an in-built advanced tool that displays detailed information about significant events and helpful when troubleshooting errors with Windows and other programs. When the computer is turned on and running, every program and services sends a notification to event viewer which is logged in as a log. The program notification not only happens when the programs start, but also when it shuts down or whenever it come across an error. The notification is shown in the form of information, warning or an error. The reporting is not only restricted to programs, but also for administrative tasks, system tasks, setup tasks and system security tasks as well.

A computer user or administrator can use these logs in order to find where the problem lies inside the computer. In computer networks, system administrator can configure the event viewer to be viewed remotely for tracking information. It is quite common that you may not be aware of an error in your computer until the log in event viewer tells you so. (I just found from Event viewer that my PC is having an issue with installing a windows update)

Let me show you how to fix such issues easy and simple way

1) Click Start -> Run -> eventvwr.exe
or
Start -> Right click “My Computer” -> Manage -> Select “Event Viewer” under System tools on the right side.

2) Expand “Event Viewer”. Under “Windows Log” click on the “Application Log”. Refer the below picture to confirm.

3)Check for the error logs. In this case, there are lot of error logs reported. Check the latest error by clicking on it. Below the window, you can see the details related to that particular error.

In this case, the details show :

Faulting application Path: C:\Windows\explorer.exe
Faulting Module Path : C:\Program Files\K-Lite Codec Pack\ffdshow\ ffdshow.exe
Report ID: 2bc14e2c-930e-11e1-a640-001641f612a8

The faulting application here is explorer.exe and the faulting module path is a file related to K-Lite Codec Pack which I installed in my computer for supporting more video files. From this I can assume that the problem is associated with some corruption in the application K-Lite Codec. K-Lite Codec is a very popular codec pack and there is no reason to suspect it as a bad software. The only explanation is that it might have got corrupted for some reason.

In this case, I uninstalled K-Lite Codec Pack and checked if the issue was fixed. Once confirmed, re-install the software back and check if the problem is re-occurring. Hope you got the logic behind how to fix such issues. Event viewer is a very useful application since it logs in all events that happen in your PC. If properly used, the information inside Event viewer can be used not only to fix explorer.exe errors, but other errors as well.