Sometimes when I boot up Windows or when the OS just has to have a hiccup with Explorer, I get the infamously-humorous error message that states that Windows Explorer must be shut down in order to protect your computer. After confirming it, the Dr. Watson Post-mortem Debugger ALWAYS hangs and prevents Explorer from automatically-restarting, forcing me to go to the Task Manager and killing drwtsn32.exe (which would be the Dr. Watson Post-mortem Debugger) in order to set things right.

Not only is it annoying, but I'm also curious as to why this happens. You know... other than the reason that Windows sucks.

I'm running Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2.

It sounds like a memory issue with windows explorer somewhere, what I suggest is open up the task manager window and watch how your systems resources are being used with it crashes and see if you notice any surge of memory somewhere. You may have to defrag your computer, delete old files, and uninstall old programs and see if that helps.

Also when did this start happen because you might be able to do a system restore to the last your computer ran smoothly if it happen just recently then you could fix it that way. If nothing else happens you might have to reinstall the operating system to fix the issue.

I've rediscovered how to find my own posts and topics.

I've killed Dr. Watson from ever starting... and for some reason (knock on wood), the Explorer crashing doesn't happen.

(For those of you who are curious, you can disable the bugger from within the registry - which I wouldn't touch - or just running drwtsn32.exe and unchecking everything. I remember doing it in another way... however, I don't remember how. )

Strange, no?