control panel crashes windows explorer

I cannot access the Control Panel in Windows Vista. Whenever I try to open it Windows Explorer crashes. Does anyone know of a fix for this?

I am having the same error. I am going to try a new install side-by-side. Did you do an upgrade?
"Charley911" wrote:

I cannot access the Control Panel in Windows Vista. Whenever I try to open it Windows Explorer crashes. Does anyone know of a fix for this?

Yes, I did an upgrade and I have tried to reinstall, but the installation now crashes and I cannot do that. I am now getting a message that says that this is a known problem and will be fixed in the next release.
"Frank Bergdoll" wrote:

I am having the same error. I am going to try a new install side-by-side. Did you do an upgrade?
"Charley911" wrote:
I cannot access the Control Panel in Windows Vista. Whenever I try to open it Windows Explorer crashes. Does anyone know of a fix for this?

I have found the solution to this problem:
Boot up in safe mode 9keep tapping F8 when the pc's just booting up)
then, navigate to windows/system32
then delete a file called cpqikey.cpl
This should fix your problem. Though, I've read that there may be other offending .cpl files in the system32 folder. Start with this one though as it certainly did the trick for me.
cpqikey.cpl is actually malware, so delete it regardless!
-- phassionate