My work PC was recently hit by a virus that brought me to the point of reformatting my drive and reinstalling everything.

I'm running Windows XP Profession SP3 attached to an internal network of some 100 nodes or so (45 employees, 30+ PC's, etc.).

As expected, most things seem to be working better after the reinstall, with the exception that browsing files on our network with Windows Explorer is quite a bit more laggy than I recall (and others confirm they don't get this lagginess). For example, when dragging the vertical slider on the right side scroll bar in a folder with approximately 300 files, the scrolling is real jerky now while it wasn't before the reinstall.

Also, I rely on searching for text strings inside of AutoCAD drawings, PDF files, and MS-Word documents. I never had a problem before, but now when I use Search Companion for such a search, I get a Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Error and all Explorer windows shut down after I click the OK button.

Now I should note that if I just move the error window to the side without clicking OK, the search appears to continue and function normally. I'm just not sure whether to trust the results or not.

This error doesn't occur when simply searching filenames - only when searching for "A word or phrase in the file:".

I'm using Windows Firewall, Avast! Pro 5.0, and MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware. Two separate Avast! boot-time scans two full MalwareBytes' scans discovered no threats.

The symptoms I've described seem like early signs of a compromised computer, but I'm not sure.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Hi tluxon Welcome to D-A-L

My first thought on this is,what you describe " the scrolling is real jerky" is just the way windows behaves
when you do a install/reinstall and the display drivers have not been installed.
It could be just possible the display drivers have not installed correctly or are corrupted.
Can you right click My Computer and select Properties
Now select Hardware tab and Device Manager.
Is there a yellow exclamation mark beside the Display Adapters.
If so then you need to uninstall them and reinstall them.
It would also be a good idea to get the latest drivers and install them.

This may help with your Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Error

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307817

Jim

Thanks for your response, Jim.

Yes, the lagginess of the Windows Explorer browser was very much like it is before installing correct video drivers (I have the nVidia Quadro FX3450), but I'm not experiencing that same lagginess for most display processes. For example, my solid modeling program (SolidWorks) is working as well as ever and browsing in the file->open dialog is very rapid. I've confirmed that the most recent nVidia driver has been installed, and no errors appear in Device Manager.

The knowledge base article you linked to seems to pertain to Office XP, while I'm using Office 2003 Pro. The error I'm getting is specifically associated with Explorer.exe (see attached pic).

Found someone who had the identical problem and this was his fix:

Downloaded BHO Captor, ran the program, found 5 activex entries and disabled all of them... The problem vanished...

No idea why removing IE BHOs fixed his problem, but it's worth looking at.

Entire thread here: Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library ( Runtime error! Program C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe)

I haven't had any luck drilling down to the source of the problem. BHO Captor didn't find any activex processes running that weren't supposed to be, so that didn't work.

I'm still getting this error that pops up whenever do a search on text within a file using Search Companion. The event log shows the following information:

==========================
Date: Source: Application Error
Time: Category: None
Type: Error Event ID: 1000

Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2900.5512, faulting module axe8sharedexpat.dll, version 3.3.208.1, fault address 0x00016959.
==========================

I've come up empty with this information in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

It appears that axe8sharedexpat.dll is a file associated with Adobe Photoshop, which I don't have installed on this PC. When I search for where it appears, I see it's in the following folders:

C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\DWGeditor
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Acrobat
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Designer 8.0
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Setup Files\{AC76BA86-1033-0000-7760-000000000003}\Data1.cab

Any suggestions?

axe8sharedexpat.dll is also part of Adobe Reader, i have it on my Win 7 system too.

Try uninstalling then reinstalling Adobe Reader, see if the problem goes away.

Originally Posted by Ztruker

axe8sharedexpat.dll is also part of Adobe Reader, i have it on my Win 7 system too.

Try uninstalling then reinstalling Adobe Reader, see if the problem goes away.

I don't have Adobe Reader installed, but I do have Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0, so I'll give that a try. Thanks for the good suggestion!

I guess I misspoke. I don't get that application event error every time I do one of those searches, so I can't say it's necessarily related. Doing a "repair" on the Acrobat Pro installation didn't seem to make any difference.

There are no other symptoms that I've come across except searching the contents of files. At what point should I throw up my hands and assume a rogue element has taken hold of this part of my PC once again?

Uninstall Adobe Acrobat to see if that resolves the problem. If yes then need to see if there are any updates or check the Acrobat forum for others that may have had the problem. If not, we'll have to try some other things, including creating a new account to see if the problem still occurs.

I uninstalled Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 (in case it's of any significance, I chose not to "deactivate" it so I wouldn't have to do the time-consuming "activate" on re-installation) and the problem was still there. Next, I installed Adobe Reader 9 (I didn't have it installed prior) and the problem persisted. Then, I installed Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 again. I'm still having the same problem.

If it's helpful or relevant, I installed a 3rd-party search utility (supposed to mimic Explorer's Search Companion, but faster and better) named Agent Ransack to see if there was a way around this Visual C++ Runtime error. The error did not occur and the searches are noticeably faster.

Another factor that has crossed my mind is that back when I reformatted the drive (not the "Quick" format, but also not the kind that zero fills) before reinstalling windows, I did not delete the little 63 MB unnamed EISA partition that Dell always puts at the front of their factory-installed O/S boot drives. Having this experience has me wondering if there's any possibility that some kind of nearly innocuous virus found its way unto that partition and is somehow able to influence the workings of the new O/S without being detected by any scans.

Thank you for your assistance.