Eploror.exe error

Hello out there!
How goes the battle? If it goes at all....
I was wondering what would cause a windows error, say something came up like explorer.exe has generated errors and will be shut down, you will need to restart the program.
I was on this morning with no problems but then this afternoon I wasn't abled to access My Computer or anything in there like program files, control panel, and shared folders.
I am running windows 2000 professional on a pentium based machine.
I usually don't leave my connections on while away from computer but I had done this over the noon hour. Any suggestions?

Shad, you could check

http://support.microsoft.com/default...pi%2Fredir.asp
Microsoft's General Help for Windows 2000 Professional

This is obviously a basic blanket suggestion as this link could cover thousands of types of errors but, I figured I could at least give you a starting point. Also, you should elaborate as to what exact errors you are getting (this would help greatly).

I'm not sure, but this might help you : http://www.aumha.org/kberrmsg.php
I hope...

Cheers

That error can be caused by any number of things, but first and foremost could either be a software conflict (a conflict between Windows and a program you may have loaded) or a memory error (meaning that if you let Windows run for too long, it clog your RAM full of useless junk that eventually causes it to crap all over you, and sorry about your luck if you didn't save that Word file that you've been typing on for the past 4 hours!!!). Explorer.exe is the main program for Windows. In Windows 2000, if you open up the task manager, and close Explorer.exe, your desktop will become non-existent, except for your cursor and your wallpaper.
Some questions to ask you:
Did this happen shortly after you loaded a new program on your system?
How long has it been since you did a ScanDisk, defrag, and disk clean-up?
How long has this machine been loaded?
Which, if any, service-pack do you have?
Do you reboot your machine often? Or do you let it contantly run?
And the last question I have for you is this:
Why are you running Windows when Linux is such a better OS? ;-)

http://users.aol.com/machcu/mspquotes.html

well, i'd say the first thing you should do is reboot your computer. this tends to fix several software-related problems. if that doesn't do it for you, you could try loading your last known good configuration, then working from there.

as for the cause, there are enough things that could cause an Explorer crash, so unless you know what you were doing prior to it crashing, it'll be hard to pick something specific out...

Thanks for the help ya'll.

I have not installed anything new. The link ShagDevil gave has been of help. I am deleting a lot of programs that I forgot were there on my hard drive. I was thinking that the problem might be a popup killer that I installed a few months ago and am having trouble trying to uninstall it. The problem is that windows isnt abled to open the uninstall.ini file.

I have no problem accessing my files in dos and safe mode so I think I'll just back up all data and reinstall my OS. Friends have been bugging me to switch to Linux But I have no experience with that OS at all, plus I wouldnt know how well it would go with the computer technician here who seems to be a little slow.