Usually if explorer crashes, its something you may have installed. And its option/s may appear in the context menu (when you right mouse on something).
And it may also crash say if you're using 64 bit windows and you install a 32 bit program, which adds options to the context menu (it may not like it or may not be compatible). With the version of windows you're using
What you could try is install something likeccleaner(click on advanced) so you can untick the optional installs. Then run it go to tools / startup. Untick everything under the context tab). Then see if it crashes. If it doesnt you could tick each option until it crashes again.
Then you'll know which one is making it crash
It looks like this prob used to happen / may still happen in Vista.
You could try what someone tried above - ShellExView
And yup codecs are a known cause of explorer.exe crashing. And you do have to be careful with some codecs. Some contain / install malware