Unfortunately, sometimes the Windows Event Log doesn’t capture the cause or culprit, only the result (e.g. I described the symptoms above, you try to open the Control Panel and your Explorer just stops working or crashes.
So I have done the research for you and found some work-arounds and fixes to get your control panel behaving the way it should. This happened to me the other day and there wasn’t a very good explanation or fix anywhere (unless you do a lot of digging through forums and such).
Have you ever tried to open your Control Panel on Windows XP (or Vista) and every time that you attempted it, you received a “Windows Explorer has Stopped Working� message and your entire Windows environment loses all of its functionality? It can be very bothersome and extremely annoying.
