.dat-file causes explorer.exe to shutdown!

When I enable thumbnail preview on a folder and there is a .dat file in it. It causes explorer.exe to shutdown. anyone know a fix? when i disable it its fine but when its enabled its not. is there a way to manually select just .dat-files to not have any thumbnail?.

thanks in advance Jonas

This may not help you, but out of curiosity, what (if anything) is your dat file extension associated with? In XP, if you go to control panel, classic view, folder options, you’ll see under the file types tab. Usually .dat isn’t associated with any file types (as it can be many different data types - for instance some of the files that makes up the registry have extension .dat). Sometimes it’ll be associated with a media player (occasionally Windows Media Player, or DVD players) because .dat is the extension of MPEG-1 files on VCD’s. I’m just wondering if the application that is associated with .dat is what’s crashing explorer while trying to preview. You could try removing the extension from the list of registered extensions and see what happens.