Windows Explorer crash on startup

After installing spyware guard, windows explorer freezes up for about 20 seconds on bootup, then crashes & restarts. It apparently prevents two other startup programs from loading - the psfview utility associated with my OnStream tape drive (1st Safe backup software), and the ASUS motherboard temp / fan monitor utiltiy. If I try to start Spyware Guard manually by clicking the shortcut in the startup folder, the same thing reoccurs. Any one have any good clues on this one? TIA.

 

I'm running Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1. I have Ad-Aware installed, but it doesn't load on startup. What does run on startup is a list of programs including McAfee VirusScan/VShield/Security Center, WetSock, Trillian, psfview (1stSafe backup), the ASUS monitoring utility, PGPTray, and probably some more.

Right now I uninstalled Spyware Guard by deleting the startup folder shortcut, rebooting, uninstalling, rebooting again, and then deleting the program folder. Did I get it all? Please advise. I'd like to reinstall it if I can get it to work.

Thanks.

 

Well of the things you listed, I don't see anything that should be able to conflict with SpywareGuard.

For curiousity's sake, would you be willing to install SpywareGuard and then disable McAfee temporarily, to see if that's what is causing a conflict?

And just to clarify: Have you tried removing SpywareGuard from startup completely, and just manually starting the program after bootup? (Or did you just try manually starting it after the problem occured at bootup?)

Thanks,

-Javacool

 

Hmmm....well, I reinstalled Spyware Guard and used msconfig to block all the other startup programs, and it still crashed explorer. Interestingly, though, msconfig did not stop McAfee from starting up - McAfee's startup registry entries were mysteriously restored. Perhaps McAfee has service or something else hooked into the bootup that checks to make sure all the other components are running, as a security measure.

Anyway, I'm still interested in the program, but I don't want to uninstall my antivirus / firewall programs to test it or get it to work.

 

Hey ashrountree

Yes McAfee uses Services that you need to disable, better yet there is a McAfee icon in Control Panel which should give you quick and easy control to disable McAfee and its components from running on Start-up.

Also did you remove SpywareGuard from the Start-up and manually launch it after Windows becomes fully loaded?

 

As the problems which happend on my computer when I installed SG seems similar to what you are talking about in this thread, I will post the following.

When I install SG, some systray icons--America Online, AOL Dialer, which is available only for beta testers, McAfee Security Center, Synaptics Pointing Device, Quick Time, Winamp Agent--disappear.

First time I installed SG, SG's systray icon didn't show up, the pointer quit working, and I couldn't open anything by clicking or double-clicking for 1 to 2 minute. Then everything disappeared leaving only the wall paper for a second, and everything but the systray icons I mentioned above came back. I killed sgmain.exe and sgbhp.exe in Task Manager and uninstalled SG.

Second time I installed SG, SG's systray icon showed up and everything seemed fine. In 20 to 30 seconds, however, the pointer quit working. the systray icons I mentioned above disappeared, and I experienced the same situation I had first time I had installed SG. As I had SG's icon in the systray this time, I stopped SG by using the systray icon after Windows began to work as usual again, and restarted SG by double-clicking the desktop icon. I made sure SG's systray icon showed up again and that sgmain.exe and sgbhp.exe were working in Task Manager. Everything was working fine, but the systray icons I mentioned above never came back.

I uninstalled SG again because I need AOL and AOL Dialer's icons in the systray for my convenience. On the other hand, SG has never brought any problem on my husband's computer that runs the officially released AOL 9.0, which doesn't have AOL Dialer, and AVG Free Edition instead of McAfee, and that doesn't have Synaptics Pointing Device on it.

Although I'm still very interested in using SG, I don't want to make the system unstable by installing SG again, and don't want AOL and AOL Dialer's icons to disappear from the systray. If there is someone that has nice advice I could take, please advise me. Thank you.

Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 1
Dell Inspiron 1100
Celeron CPU 2.30 GHz
256MB of RAM