Start Menu Crashing! HELP!

[MarkFahey]

I am running Windows XP Pro SP2 with all the latest updates.

The problem I'm having is with the Start Menu crashing. Every so often the
left pane of the Start menu goes black and then the shortcuts on the right
side pane also stop working. For instance if I click on the RUN command when
this happens I get a spurious error message saying 'Windows can not create a
shortcut here, would you like to create one on the Desktop'!

The only way I have found to 'cure' this problem is to either log off my
user account, or reboot the computer. By the way my User Account has full
administrative privileges, though it is not the in-built Administrator
Account. On restarting my User Account, after the Start Menu has 'crashed',
I then loose all the toolbars that I've set up on the Taskbar. I have the
Quick Launch, the Address bar, Control Panel and Windows Media Player all
setup on Taskbar, but these all disappear after the Start Menu crash. I have
to then manually re-apply these Toolbars to get them back.

As time goes on this seems to be happening more frequently. It's at
a point now where every time I start the system, from cold, the Start Menu
'crashes' and I have to log off and log back on to get it to work right. It
will then, for no obvious reason 'crash' again while working in Windows. I
haven't been able to see any pattern to this, or any obvious trigger for
this behaviour.

Any thoughts or suggestions as to what to do to stop this happening would be
most appreciated.


Mark

 

[MrChad]

1. Do you have an anti-virus program running with the latest virus definition files? Have you scanned your computer?

2. Have you scanned for spyware using Adaware and/or Microsoft Antispyware?

 

[Markbnj]

Since the start menu is just a snapshot of the file system under c:\documents and settings\[user name]\start menu\ it might be worthwhile to move everything out of there into a seperate folder, then test to see if the problem still occurs. You might have some corrupted shortcuts, or some other problem with the file system.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Markbnj
Since the start menu is just a snapshot of the file system under c:\documents and settings\[user name]\start menu\ it might be worthwhile to move everything out of there into a seperate folder, then test to see if the problem still occurs. You might have some corrupted shortcuts, or some other problem with the file system.

True. Running chkdsk /r might not be a bad idea.

 

[Covenant13]

Do you have a logitech camera installed?

 

[MarkFahey]

Hi Cov,

Yes I have a Logitech Webcam installed.

 

[Covenant13]

So, I think that's the reason of your problem. I have exactly the same problem, as many others who use the logitech quickcam software for their webcam. The only solution I have found, until now, is to uninstall the software and leave only the drivers installed.
After this everything should be ok again...