Vista - Event Viewer wont load / Explorer crash

Hello all,

So I'm still chasing down why explorer keeps crashing, it's quite annoying. But I guess in doing so I messed with some setting (or maybe I didn't and this happened) and now my event viewer wont run, I even tried running it through cmd with the following commands: eventvwr.msc /s and just eventvwr.msc

I just tried to run event viewer to chase down my explorer crash, then that wont even run, I have no idea what the heck is going on... There's no "cause" except explorer usually crashes when I right click, or when I'm in my desktop folder. Those are the two main things. As far as the eventviewer, I'm clueless. If need be, I can do system restore, but more than likely that's an extreme measure for such a small issue. Its more an annoyance than anything else, it doesnt really bother me lol.

Could it be AVG's context menu?

All I know is that this is really getting annoying, but anyway, if you guys have any suggestions that would be great. Do I need to post any screenshots of anything??? I can post them if needed.

BTW I'm running Vista x64 SP2 on a HP dv4 lappy, the only taskbar items running are AVG, my pointer, and sound...

Thanks for the help guys

Are either of these two running as a process?
Does event viewer give you an error or just nothing?
Any major changes recently?
What if you restored to yesterday?

A little reading for ya:

hope it helps


Cannot start event log service on Vista Ultimate



Event log error 4201 - ERROR_WMI_INSTANCE_NOT_FOUND


"Unable to complete the operation" error in Event Log - microsoft.public.win2000.active_directory | Google Groups

Are either of which two running as a process?

It give me an error, something about a snap-in missing, I dont remember exactly...
No major changes, I really don't mess with the system.

Should I switch to avast! to see if the explorer crash goes away? Thats the only logical thing I can think of... AVG is the only program that added a context menu to shell...

P.S. BTW I booted my pc today and event viewer worked. I think maybe the explorer crashes were glitching it.. IDK though. But it's working now...

I don't see any reason not to try it. I'm using Microsoft Forefront Client Security for 64-bit. Avast would be fine as well.

Explorer is so tied into everything that it very well may have affected event viewer.

Is Forefront free? If not, there are really only three A-V solutions that are free. AntiVir, avast! and AVG. avast! produced BSOD's when I had SP1 and I've never tried AntiVir but I'm wondering if the AVG context menu's are causing my explorer crash's...

But so far event viewer is working... (knock on wood)

Have you tried safe boot to eliminate all non MS services?

No, I have not. I'l boot into safe mode and see what's running... If there is something weird running I'll disable it. Thanks..

I'm sorry. We have a license agreement at our university, and didn't realize there was a cost for Forefront.

Don't worry about it. I'll just pick one, see if it makes the system more stable then just stick with it.