Most likely you have some 3rd party shell extension that is interfering with your explorer. The best way to tshoot this problem is to use the Sysinternals AUTORUNS tool to disable these components: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx Once you run it (with elevated privileges), go to the tab EXPLORER, then menu Options... - Filter Options... - Hide Microsoft Entries. You´ll see only the 3rd party entries - and you must disable all of them (by unchecking the entries).