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I am running Windows 7 and after an unknown amount of uptime Firefox, Google Chrome and other apps are not able to access the filesystem anymore until I restart the apps.

Whats happening is the system stays idle over night and the next morning the problems start: I cannot click a Download or Upload link anymore i.e. upload an image in the Wordpress backend. But it is still possible to drag'n'drop media to the apps.

The energy profile is set to drives never sleep and the logs don't show any errors that are connected to filesystem or explorer problems, except some driver issues for an external USB HDD which I don't use in this scenario.

Any idea what the problem is or how to narrow it down?

[update]
A little more information thanks to @boboes found using procmon.exe. These lines pop up a lot when trying an action to access local files, when I set the filter to process=chrome.exe:

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\CIDSizeMRU\   BUFFER OVERFLOW

procmon screenshot filtered by chrome.exe process
Full Size

[/update]

[update2]
I realized that my pagefile.sys was corrupt. Could that lead to such a problem?
[/update2]

[update3]
Tried the following after the problem reappeared:

  • Try Save As... and Drag and Drop
  • disable Avira Antivir (without restarting the system because as soon as I restart the browser everything works fine)
  • disable Comodo Firewall
  • kill all processes that are killable
  • restart explorer.exe

Nothing helped.
[/update3]

sir_brickalot
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  • What exactly happens that leads you to conclude the applications aren't able to access the file system? Is there an error message you're getting? Allow me to observe that if the programs truly couldn't read/write anything from the file system, they'd crash in short order. – I say Reinstate Monica Dec 18 '14 at 15:27
  • @Tiwsty: Maybe I was jumping to conclusions because I observed that in Firefox I couldn't use "Save image as..." and at the same time I wasn't able to upload images to a website in Chrome. I don't think it's a filesystem problem but some connection problem to the Windows Explorer. – sir_brickalot Dec 18 '14 at 15:39
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    do you know [procmon.exe by Microsoft](http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx)? Using it, you will see if the filesystem is accessed and why it fails. If you don't know, google for `unsing procmon.exe` – marsh-wiggle Dec 18 '14 at 15:45
  • Looks like a driver failure. What antivirus software is running? Errors like this were reported with Microsoft Security Essentials. – marsh-wiggle Dec 24 '14 at 12:07
  • @boboes Avira Antivir Free Version. Merry xmas to you too. – sir_brickalot Dec 24 '14 at 15:56
  • Did you try deinstalling avira and / or driver and firmware update? – marsh-wiggle Jan 05 '15 at 15:40
  • had no time yet. is the next step. thx – sir_brickalot Jan 05 '15 at 17:29

1 Answers1

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Problems like this can be caused by drivers problems with anti virus software.

May be you can solve it with updating your firmware and drivers.

To narrow the cause you may try disabling the live scanner for the browser(s). But mostly the filter drivers stay nevertheless loaded and the problems persist. Then you need another anti virus solution.

Good luck and Merry Christmas :)

marsh-wiggle
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