Just last week, whenever I close an explorer window, I get the Date Execution Prevention (DEP) error which causes some Dr Watson debugger to be called by the system.

I initially only have free avg antivirus and zonealarm firewall with built-in antispyware. So thinking it may be cause my any spyware or malware or virus, I installed spybot and spywareblaster and there spybot caught a win32 agent Trojan. I did a full scan on all of there softwares and when all is clear, DEP error still persists.

I search thru google and most were caused by real player but I don’t have any rela player on my pc, just windows media player. Then in one forum, a user said its causes by a corrupted system restore point. So I tried my system restore and indeed I cannot do any system restore. So I followed his steps wherein he turned system restore off, run checkdisk, turned it back on and set DEP to all programs excluding the explorer. When I retried my system restore, its works fine already however the DEP error whenever I close an explorer window still occurs.

Is there any way I can solve this error? To reformat my pc is the last thing I wanna do.

First check this setting:

Right click on My Computer and click Properties -> Advanced Tab, click the top 'Settings' button (in the Performance section) and then click the Data Execution Protection Tab and make sure the option is set to the top radio button "Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only".

See if that stops the error.

hi! thanks for the reply. hmm that's actually the initial setting of dep. i only changed it to the second option after following the solution connected to system restore. but in both options, dep error still comes out

Can you post the verbatim error message please.

The DEP/Dr.Watson issue is widely posted for varying reasons.

In general it is an old program or an old driver triggering DEP to call Dr. Watson.

Dr. Watson is an older and simpler version of Windows Memory Dumps i.e. stack overflows.

hmm i'm at the office right now. I'll try to get the error messages and copy it here when i get home. thanks

No problem.

Here is a link to attempt your own translation of a Dr. Watson log:

How to read a Dr. Watson log

The verbatim error might be more telling but we can check the logs too.

hmm i realized justnow that after i followed the system restore on/off, dep error doesnt come out anymore but still whenever i close any windows explorer window, explorer still crashes and this time instead of the DEP error i get the regular windows explorer error. then when i click 'dont send' drwatson is called again. this is actually the same thing that happened. the only difference is that i get dep error mesage before and now just the windows explorer error message. below is screenshots of what i get and the log file of dr watson



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============
partial dr watson log file


Microsoft (R) DrWtsn32
Copyright (C) 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved.



Application exception occurred:
App: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE (pid=2204)
When: 7/27/2008 @ 1428.281
Exception number: c0000005 (access violation)

*----> System Information <----*
Computer Name: ABIT
User Name: Kuting
Terminal Session Id: 0
Number of Processors: 2
Processor Type: x86 Family 15 Model 107 Stepping 1
Windows Version: 5.1
Current Build: 2600
Service Pack: 2
Current Type: Multiprocessor Free
Registered Organization:
Registered Owner: ABIT

*----> Task List <----*
0 System Process
4 System
500 smss.exe
556 csrss.exe
580 winlogon.exe
668 services.exe
692 lsass.exe
840 svchost.exe
900 svchost.exe
968 svchost.exe
1036 svchost.exe
1132 svchost.exe
1192 vsmon.exe
1468 spoolsv.exe
1568 avgwdsvc.exe
1608 nvsvc32.exe
1672 svchost.exe
208 avgrsx.exe
1512 alg.exe
2204 Explorer.EXE
2364 RUNDLL32.EXE
2372 VM305_STI.EXE
2424 RTHDCPL.EXE
2520 zlclient.exe
2636 PDVDServ.exe
2740 avgtray.exe
2812 msmsgs.exe
2920 TeaTimer.exe
3752 wmiprvse.exe
2156 drwtsn32.exe


complete dr watson log file at:
http://www.2shared.com/file/3664964/...er_online.html

Were you running Zone Alarm previously with no problem?

I would suggest either uninstalling or totally turning off Zone Alarm and see if it resolves your issue.

yup i have zonealarm installed ever since. but okay i'll try turning it off or uninstall it and see what happens...

At least Allow it to pass Dr. Watson.