"Windows Rot"

Aparantly you haven't read all of the thread?

Photoshop and numerous other programs create registry entries pointing to non existant temp files. That is apparantly normal behaviour and your system will work fine.

But once you remove those entries, photoshop will become horribly slow, and you have to either replace those regkeys or reinstall photoshop!

 

Post your Hijack This log. Also, if you use IE, check Tools > Internet Options > Programs tab > Manage Add-Ons and check for anything suspcious.

 

The only issue I've ever had with random explorer crashes was on my MCE box, where I have 100's of videos in a single folder.
Explorer runs various background threads to print up all that useless info when you mouse over, I had a single bad video (I still have no idea which one) in the folder and it would cause what I presume from the useless crash info was a buufer overrun.
There is a utility around that lets you selectively turn off explorer plugins, you might want to track it down. I run my MCE box without the one that interogates videos.

I've got several machines here that have run XP for years without re-installs. Although I have spent several days of my life trying to manually uninstall MalWare from my girlfriends computer. My favorite being the one that hooks in to the TCPIP stack.

 

Not sure if it has been mentioned,

but it sounds to me like a program has set itself up as an icon provider or file type provider, and, well, crashes.
The problem with explorer is that it is too trusting I guess. It's not really it's fault, more the bad software the plugs in to explorer.

I'll use an example to demonstrate how stupid things can be:

My boss recently had a problem after he installed a webcam driver off a intranet. Unfortunately, the driver installer was all fancy, and uses flash. So it had annoying animations and sound effects. Of course, this meant it required flash to run, so there was a separate program to run flash files in the same directory. Instead of using this application directly, the driver installer would setup a file association in explorer. The file association would only work with one file, the driver.
Ridiculous, but it's what it did. However, the problems began later. Because it was badly associated, any file based operation would cause explorer to poll the program checking to see if a file should use that plugin. *any file*. This also had a problem when disconnecting from the intranet. The associated file can't be found, and takes ~30 seconds to timeout.
The end result is that on his machine, everything from right clicking, opening a text file, save dialog, etc, all took at least 30 seconds to appear.

Get a filesystem logger from sysinternals, have a look at what explorer does when opening a file. 90% of it is various programs that have setup general associations that are pointless.

 

The iconscache is in every folder with images in it. It's called 'Thumbs.db'.

 

There is a common cache file for icons that grows with time (mine is 20MB). Remember that it is hidden so you must enable the "view hidden files" option in explorer.

Path: "Harddrive letter":\Documents and Settings\"your name"\Local settings\application Data

 

I believe the Thumbs.db file is only used when in thumbnail mode. So if you're still having trouble when you're in List View, or details etc. then it's unlikely to help.

Check your system.ini file to see if there's anything suspicious looking in there, see if the same problems occurr in safe mode, yadda yadda...

 

thumbs.db is just a thumbnail cache. You can disable their creation if you go to Control Panel - Folder Options - View - Advanced Settings. Check the box next to Do not cache thumbnails.

 

Or you're running MS Office 2003 and have a huge outlook database...
XP does rot. My 3 year old XPP install on my last laptop basically ground to a near halt and nothing could find malware on it.

 

I bought a used HD off of tiger direct and it came with someone else's XP professional on it and am usign that. Seems to run full speed too even though I changed the hardware config with a new mobo/processor/GPU lol.

 

Wow, you are brave! XD cool that it's worked out for you though.

I find Xp does rot. It's not just malware but other software that you use, that might leave context-sensitive options behind after uninstall, stuff like that I have had problems with. It's certainly not MS's fault IMO, unless you yeah, want to say that they are too trusting. As a general rule of thumb, for optimum peppiness I force myself to reinstall windows once every 6-12 months, when it is convenient. This promotes a lot of good computing practices, IMO. Although it could certainly be argued that it would promote even more good computing practices to never have to reinstall I like to experiment a lot. I'm often playing with skinning programs and such that gradually deteriorate Windows.

 

I hate reformatting but i've had to do it a couple times due to rot. Although i don't blame the OS. I blame me messing with the OS with stuff like Windowblinds and registry cleaners. For my current install i'm not going to mess with the OS with unnecessary tweaks, GUI apps, or registry cleaners. Hopefully now Windows won't rot on me.

 

RegSupremePro or JV16 PowerTools have never screwed my system - even on 'aggressive' settings. Anything broken gets hosed. If they find anything, run 'em again and again and hose everything they find until they come up empty.
I also use Crap Cleaner occasionally.
The only other thing i recommend doing is running "sfc /scannow" after a hosing session. If you have any trouble with any stubborn software, manually break it, then run one of the aformentioned proggies to clean the debris out.
This all works. I haven't reinstalled in 3 years also, even after migrating HW. XP runs sweet, but i also seriously streamline my services and other MS interference too.

 

I wonder if this is a bit level error that can happen in the drive. Perhaps running a full scandisk every couple of months would be a good idea.