We have SharePoint Server 2007 running, and we are using office 2003. When we try to open files from the actual folders in explorer view, the whole system will hang requiring a restart. This also happens with Power Point. When opening files from the actual SharePoint site the files open properly.

You are not supposed to open files from Explorer View ... I suggest you train your users better.

I understand what you are saying. however explorer view should still work. Our Sharepoint site is our Intranet. Users open internal stuff from sharepoint, and send links via e-mail. However to send one externally when you try to attatch it it does the same behavior. The system locks up and is non-responsive requiring a power button shut down and restart. Surely this is not an acceptible behavior.

Mike,Can you explain what you mean that one is not supposed to open files from Explorer View? Is this in a document somewhere?Thanks,Peter

On the white paper is states that explorer view is designed just for the purpose of opening files via explorer view as a method of allowingg users a method of opening their files that they are familiar with. So I do not know what he was talking about. If we resave the files via the appropriate program onto the mapped Sharepoint folders then the problem is usually corrected.

Mike, I have the same question about your comment - why should users not open files from Explorer View? If it's not for that purpose then what is it for? I ask because we have a similar issue, except that it seems to be with Word documents, and accessing them from Explorer View (or UNC path) are where the users experience freezing which requires a reboot. Thanks, Chanda

Finally someone else with my weird problem. My users that are experiencing this problem are running IE7, Office 2003, and XP SP2. They are also not able to open word docs via UNC to sharepoint. I have other users that are with the same setup, but are able to open it just fine. If I roll the broken users back to IE6 they are able to open them just fine. It seems to be related to KB updates because some users received updates later on. I did a comparison of the broken machines which received updates 14 days earlier then the ones that are working. It looks like MS has taken some KBs out prior to my machines (that are working) being updated.I've ran webfld.msi and the kb907306. It seemed to of fixed the problem, butthen it broke again after working forabout 3 hours.If you find out any thing please post and I will do the same.Thanks,Sunshineknox

(I saw the question this time)I don't particularly care what the Microsoft paper says (the other comment), I've had experience of WSS since before it was called WSS and there's always been problems with letting users get at Explorer View.Mainly these problems have been the danger of users deleting the folders there but there have been enough other problems (don't ask me which - I can't retain all information in my head) along the way to make it 100% clear to me that encouraging users to use Explorer View is not "a good thing".In the v2 timeframe (i.e. WSS 2.0) a popular newsgroup request was how to I remove the possibility of users opening Explorer View (which of course in time made it to the WSS FAQ because it was asked so often).So rather than bothering to be faced with the consequences of users doing things while in Explorer View, I prefer to avoid the problems altogether by saying that they should use the UI to access a View of the documents in a List rather than using Explorer View.In this thread I was only passing on that view. If you guys want to have this sort of problem by all means encourage users to use Explorer View - I'm saving it for me and my (administrator's) doc lib migrations.

How about a fix for this issue?

This is a new problem. up to aug of this year the explorer view in sharepoint work great. we have been using sharepoint 2003 with out experiencing this problem. here is another site to watch for answers onhttp://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/7fa1fa4d-ce8c-4c24-ab16-e93034289994/

Mike,Thank you for the background info. I do wish that there was a way to disable the Explorer View completely if there are so many known issues with it. The problem I have is that we do not encourage our users to open documents from the Explorer View - it just so happens that many times they get there by clicking a results link from the search results page. Basically, SharePoint is taking them to the Explorer View rather than the default view at times and in those situations they really have no reason to question whether that's the appropriate way to get to a file (at least from their perspective).Alternatively, there are some good things about Explorer View that I'd hate to lose by disabling it completely - namely the ability to cut-and-paste since there is no way to do that (or drag-and-drop) using the UI to reorganize files and folders. One option would be to access the files via UNC path (or mapped drive), however at the present time we are experiencing the exact same problem with the system locking up when we attempt to access files in that manner.Regardless, I don't think anyone was arguing with your comment, or alternatively that any of us "want" to have this problem, it just seems strange (to me at least)to havethe option of the Explorer View available tobasic usersif it's problematic and/or not recommended for use.Thanks for your input,Chanda

Yes, I have the same experience. When I try to open a document on sharepoint it will freeze up the application in question, and I cannot do anything without holding down the power button. Even ipconfig /release does nothing. If I wait 15 minutes it will timeout, but who has 15 minutes? Why offer explorer view, or the ability to click anything if doing so freezes your computer? Sharepoint sucks, period. It needs to be fixed. It also happens if you convert your sharepoint site to a regular desktop folder by replacing /'s with \'s. It's the most annoying thing ever. I wish my company had just used Atlassasian and Confluence. Sharepoint is to file sharing as Lotus notes is to email.