WinBatch 2014A - After installation on Win 8.1, exlorer.exe crashes repeatedly

[connpatd]

I am running Windows 8.1 and after installing WinBatch 2014A (+ Compiler), explorer.exe crashes repeatedly and then restarts.  The visible indications are that the entire taskbar locks up, then changes color, then disappears, and then restarts.  After each restart, any explorer windows that were open to network shares are closed.

I confirmed this is being caused by WinBatch by uninstalling it for a week.  Explorer did not crash a single time during the week.  I then reinstalled it and the crashing reoccurred within 10 minutes.  I suffered through a whole day of crashing, then uninstalled it for another week.  Explorer did not crash a single time during that week either.

I just reinstalled Winbatch again and explorer.exe has crashed at least 12 times over the past two hours.

Any suggestions? 

[Deana]

Difficult to say what could be causing the issue. The FileMenu utility included with WinBatch is integrated with the Window Explorer. Maybe try re-installing WinBatch but not including FileMenu. Uncheck the Install FileMenu option during installation. Side note: There are no other reports of FileMenu having any issues on Windows 8.1.

Is there anything unique about your Windows setup. For example, a problematic shell extension could be causing the issue. Recommendations to help identify the problematic shell extension:  http://techsupt.winbatch.com/webcgi/webbatch.exe?techsupt/tsleft.web+WinBatch/FileMenu~and~PopMenu/FileMenu+Error~Too~Many~Menus.txt

[George Vagenas]

The standard install also places "PopMenuStartUp exe.lnk" in your Startup folder to run "popmenu.exe".

[connpatd]

Reinstalling without the FileMenu option resolved the issue.  Thank you.

[td]

In a way that it unfortunate.  Filemenu has been working on Windows 8.whatever since the release of each of the OS versions.  It would have been helpful to discover what caused it to not work on your system.

[IJRobson]

Last year I purchased a Windows 8 PC to replace my old Windows XP Machine.  Once this machine was setup and Windows 8 Installed I started to transfer across my systems from the old Machine and when I installed WinBatch 2013C Windows 8 Explorer started running slow?

I remember looking on the Forum at the time and someone had posted a similar problem and the recommendation was to re-installing without the FileMenu option which fixed the problem.

When I upgraded to Windows 8.1 I re-installed WinBatch (this time 2014A) and like Connpatd my Explorer kept Crashing.  Because of the Windows 8 problem I re-installed without FileMenu and that fixed the Problem.

I did not think anything more about this until this Topic appeared.

So at least a couple of Machines have this Problem.

There may be some more information in the original Topic if you can find it?

[td]

FileMenu can fail on any supported version of Windows with a suspect shell extension installed.  Because it happens on Windows 8 doesn't mean that it is caused by some incompatibility with Windows 8.  Or as a statistician might put it, "correlation does not imply causation." 

[Deana]

Reinstalling without the FileMenu option resolved the issue.  Thank you.

You failed to answer my question regarding 'shell extensions'...Here it is again:

Is there anything unique about your Windows setup. For example, a problematic shell extension could be causing the issue. Recommendations to help identify the problematic shell extension:  http://techsupt.winbatch.com/webcgi/webbatch.exe?techsupt/tsleft.web+WinBatch/FileMenu~and~PopMenu/FileMenu+Error~Too~Many~Menus.txt

Your response could be helpful to the next user that may run into a similar issue.

[IJRobson]

My Windows 8 Pro installation was a standard out of the box installation with a few extra installs since like Office, Virus Checker, WinBatch etc.

This Version of Windows was then updated to Windows 8.1 via Microsoft Update.

I have downloaded ShellExView so I will run that on my Machine when I get home.  I am unlikely to have time to investigate this further until the Weekend but I will let you know if I find anything.

[td]

My brand new Windows 8 notebook came straight out of the box with several shell extensions provided by hardware vendors to support various and sundry devices.  When I upgraded to Windows 8.1, I had problems with the shell crashing until the vendors got around to updating there wonderful shell extensions.  FileMenu was never implicated as the cause of problem. I had no part in requesting or installing any of these extensions and normally I remove the 'crapware' when I get a new system.  However, as is often the case, I get to be the guinea pig for a new OS.