Whenever I use the open/save dialog, the application freezes and I have to terminate it

Anonymous
2014-12-13T03:13:22+00:00

I've researched this for a month before posting this. I have tried all solutions and I'm still having this problem.

Half the time when I do something with an application that brings up the Explorer dialog such as Open, Save, Save As etc. the application freezes and I have no choice but to terminate it. This happened most frequently with a video editor I used, sometimes after spending an hour editing the video all my progress is lost because I had to terminate the frozen app. This happens with Firefox, this happens with just about every app that summons the Open/Save Explorer dialog.

So far I have tried:

Using a different/default theme since I use a custom one. This appeared to solve the problem for the first few minutes as my video editor stopped freezing when clicking Open or Save video file. But then it froze on the 5th instance or so.

Deleting the ComDlg32 registry key. Sometimes this helps temporarily, sometimes it doesn't. Clearly useless.

Verifying my comdlg32.dll was not corrupt (sfc /scannow). It wasn't corrupt.

Unchecking "Launch folder windows in a separate process" in Folder Options in the Control Panel. This helped the most. Now the explorer dialog freezes only 10% of the time instead of 50%. But obviously the problem still persists so my question is WHY?

I've run into numerous problems as I upgraded to Windows 7 from XP. Not to say I never had issues on XP but at least basic things like this functioned. Basic usability is a frequent problem now since I upgraded with all kinds of random instances of design backwardsness as if I've downgraded.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-03-13T00:02:10+00:00

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-03-13T20:06:22+00:00

    Hi,

    Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft forums.

    From the issue description, I understand that your computer freezes when you click on the open\save dialogue box. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to you. We will help you to resolve the issue.

    You might be facing this issue due to several reasons like third party software conflicts, corrupt System files, virus attack etc. I suggest you to try the following steps and check if it helps.

    I suggest you to refer to the following Microsoft article and check if it helps.

    Windows hangs or freezes

    **http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2681286**

    Safety Scanner Disclaimer: There could be a loss of data while performing a scan using Microsoft safety scanner to eliminate viruses if any.

    Hope this helps.

    Please post back with the status of the issue and we will be glad to assist you further.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-03-14T03:41:52+00:00

    You understood wrong. The OS doesn't freeze, only the application does which is just as annoying if I've done hours of work only to lose it. I did link to the original thread. The reason I posted this new one was for someone to examine the ProcMon log.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-03-20T03:46:29+00:00

    So I had someone take a look at the Procmon log and the culprit was DLLs from Sony Ericson that explorer tried to load before giving up. Windows 7 upgrade adviser warned me about this program when I was doing the upgrade but I ignored its advice to remove it before proceeding because it said removal wasn't mandatory but recommended. Now I see why I should've listened.

    Just because it won't cause serious problems doesn't mean it won't cause any problem at all.

    Moral of the story: listen to the Windows upgrade adviser.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-03-20T03:47:23+00:00

    So I had someone take a look at the Procmon log and the culprit was DLLs from Sony Ericson that explorer tried to load before giving up. Windows 7 upgrade adviser warned me about this program when I was doing the upgrade but I ignored its advice to remove it before proceeding because it said removal wasn't mandatory but recommended. Now I see why I should've listened.

    Just because it won't cause serious problems doesn't mean it won't cause any problem at all.

    Moral of the story: listen to the Windows upgrade adviser.

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