Why does notepad crash on desktop files in the save-as dialog?

I encountered this erroneous behaviour today doing a test installation (W7x64u sp1). I was able to narrow down the culprit, however ymmv, please check for yourself.

In order to tidy the view in Windows Explorer, i.e. hiding Libraries, Favorites, Home Group, Logged In User, I refered to this procedure with the support of SetAcl to do it per command line. So far this seemed to work fine for me.

Now I noticed that in each newly created user account (no matter whether Administrator or not) Notepad crashes when trying to open or save a file. This does not happen in the default Administrator account used for installation. I don't have an explanation for this, but I assume that Notepad's "last file location" points to these Favorites or Library...space that's hidden (yet not removed) by Vishal's procedure.

This tweak has been postponed after all local accounts had been created on the machine. There might be some sort of Registry value to tell Notepad not to look in any M$ botched location, I don't know.

Sounds to me like the previous save-as path (or a network drive) are the hold-up. It wants to render the path it's at and can't because an entry probably either offline or unavailable.

I wish i remembered where notepad stored it's last save path, but the location escapes me. I would try either waiting it out or looking online for the last save location and change it. See if that resolves the issue.

EDIT

Looking in to the COMCTL32.dll it appears it may be loading a thumbnail from a file in the select file dialog that is crashing. Anything in your My Documents (or where ever you've previously saved to) folder that thumbnail generation would bomb out on? You may have the folder size small in normal file explorer (wouldn't generate a thumb) then larger int he save-as dialog which would invoke it. (I can't image it's using the TaskDialog or Drag and Drop abilities)

I have been having this problem for over a year. I attempted the solution specified above to modify Explorer>Tools>Folder Options>Navigation pane, but it did not work. So I went through every tab in the Folder Options dialog (General, View, and Search tabs) and reset everything using the Reset Defaults on every tab. It works now.

As a consequence though, my Windows Explorer default view is different. I can no longer access the Folder Options dialog from Windows Explorer, but I can still find it in Control Panel.

Thanks,

I had a similar problem. I also happen to have Notepad++ installed (although I never really converted over to it and still use plain vanilla Notepad) and what I did was I opened the file in Notepad++ then tried the Save As and it worked fine. I was then able to manipulate the file with Notepad. Not sure what caused the problem in the first place though

The problem exists in a dll shared by multiple programs (comctl32.dll) which is the common dialog control, used to display the usual "FileOpen" and "FileSave" dialogs which ressembles an Explorer window browsing a folder. If there is a shortcut to an offline network location it may freeze applications, including Explorer itself. If there is some file that causes applications to crash upon browsing a directory then this is another cause. If this is the case, it could be caused by eg. a malformed image/thumbnail, malformed document (.RTF,.DOC,.PPS,.XLS,etc), bad coded codecs that are loaded to render video thumbnails, etc, etc.

Also remember that the "Desktop" is a special system folder, which has a registered CLSID and a related module (dll) which will be loaded when the directory is browsed. This DLL may have dependencies, either native or third parties. If any of these modules (dlls) contains a bug it can causes applications that loads it to crash.

You should reproduce this in an environment without any third parties softwares installed. If the problem exists then it is a bug in the Operating system itself and Microsoft should be contacted and bug reported. If the bug exists in another software, then the responsible module (DLL) should be identified and bug reported to the vendor.