Hey fellas,
Recently I adopted a strange problem in Vista x64. I have a home network, which works fine. Just recently, something strange started happening. Now when I click on "network" from the start bar(or anywhere for that matter) the window goes blank, as if its not even going to the "network places". Its hard to describe, so I will paste a screen shot. Sometimes it works fine. When I just boot the computer it works fine, then a little while later it just magically stops(yet anything connected through the network still technically works, like media streaming etc... I just no longer can see anything in "network"). It just seems as if the explorer is not working correctly, but I have no idea what could possibly cause this. I've tried deleting my network and adapters and re-doing everything(including clearing all network info from the registry) and it did nothing. I thought maybe it was a firewall update, so I uninstalled firewall, no effect.

Here's the screenshot:

Any ideas?

It doesn't even come up with the green bar along top or the sidebar on the left. My shared folders on this PC don't even show. Nothing is even displayed in the location bar. Its just as if explorer stops displaying the network after the computer has been on for so long.

If I end task on explorer in task manager and open explorer back up, it works again(like a reboot). Then not after long, it goes back to not working. Very frustrating cause I often transfer files between systems/network locations.

I've searched all over the net to no avail...



I appreciate any help.

Originally Posted by Airbot

Run SFC see if it fixes anything.

System Files - SFC Command

Yeah, I actually did try that. It fixed one file, that had nothing to do with any of this and the problem still persists.

This seems to happen less than a half hour after a reboot. I had tried the SFC thing, and it did not work.

One other thing, instead of it saying Network for the window down in the task bar, it says Windows Explorer with just an open folder icon, as opposed to the normal Network icon... This is VERY aggravating.

One more thing I noticed, once this happens, network map also stops working and actually causes "not responding" and explorer must be closed.

Yeah, I tried both. Startup repair found absolutely no problems with startup anyway.
I also tried overwriting my current tcpip.sys file with a known good one from my other system. That also didn't work. I then tried replacing my explorer.exe file with a known good one from my other system and I'm still testing it, so far it hasn't done it, but only time will tell.

Well I surely appreciate the help!

Well, as of right now, it seems like replacing the explorer.exe with a known good version of the file is working. I still would like to test further, but its been going since last night(early morning) and still going.