Folder crash problem due to WMP

[Humodour]

On my current PC with XP Corporate, I have some folders which are ported over from older XP installations (home, professional, tablet variously). Some of these folders contain or contained music. Now, when Windows Media Player is connected to the net, it seeks album art for any song you it is playing. When it finds it it throws it in the directory of the song and marks it as hidden. Now, the problem is (besides the fact that I can't figure out how to turn it for future songs), these older XP installations must have done something differently, because when I try to open folders which have hidden WMP AlbumArt pictures, explorer crashes - search, IE, anything linked to explorer.exe (but not forefox, mIRC etc). It's a simple thing of running explorer.exe through taskmanager to reactivate it but... I can't get to files in these affect folders.

 

One more thing: I tried a few things and while folder views don't change anything (nor do thumbnails on/off), the folders on crash if the AlbumArt files are actually visible on the screen. Somehow this also extends to performing searches of the afflicted folders (even if the AlbumArt files aren't part of the search - it seems enough to simply scan an afflicted folder in this case). I suppose it's because search actually interects with the files?

 

I'm stumped. Removal with command prompt is out of the question - too tedious.

[Pidesco]

Try booting up in safe mode.

 

Or use the command prompt. It may be your only option.