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I love iFolder, Novell's file synchronization solution. It keeps a handful of folders synchronized across multiple machines including my desktop and 2 laptops.

There hasn't been much development on the open-source side of things and some recent Microsoft updates combined with having iFolder installed have lead to nuisance application crashes. Usually it's after I save a file and exit a program (like notepad) and the offending module is "iFolderShell.dll".

There are some discussions on the issues over @ Novell's forums. It looks like 3.8.4.1 and 3.9 beta clients may have solved this problem - but those clients are only available to Novell's "paying" customers.

There is one way to fix the problem: disabling iFolder shell integration. The only effect that I've seen so far is that I don't see the iFolder icon on the folders that I'm currently synchronizing with iFolder - but other than that things are staying synchronized. Save the following paragraph into a .reg file and double-click it. Hopefully this solves your client crashes like it did for me. Include the REGEDIT4 line below:

REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\iFolder]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\iFolder]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\iFolder]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\iFolder0]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\iFolder1]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved]
"-{AA81D831-3B41-497c-B508-E9D02F8DF421}"
"-{AA81D830-3B41-497c-B508-E9D02F8DF421}"

Or you can download the .reg file here: ifolder-shell-disable.reg

Thought I'd give nSpaces a try since I'd heard great things about it. Unfortunately, after installation, I get a pop-up box that states "Couldn't register the hot key MOD_WIN:S".

I sincerely hope you didn't come here looking to fix it, since I have no idea what's causing it. Since there were 0 Google hits on that phrase, I thought I'd throw this out there so you would know that I also feel your pain.

I picked up an Alienware M14x laptop not too long ago. I never use optical media - so I re-purposed the optical bay to hold a hard drive. I took the original 500GB Seagate SATA drive and put it in this secondary bay, and then upgraded the primary HDD bay with an SSD drive using one of these. You can read more about the process with pics, etc. at notebookreview.com.

Shortly after doing this I experienced startup problems with my M14x. It would take a long time to boot, usually hanging for a very long time at "Loading Windows". It wasn't every time - but more often than not I would have to forcefully power the laptop off and try to get it to boot again.

Some posters on the notebookreview.com forums believe there are issues running SATA 3Gbps speeds on the secondary SATA connector. I did a little digging around and it looks like Seagate has a jumper on this particular drive that forces SATA 1.5Gbps speeds. More information can be found at seagate.com. See section 3.2 for a picture.

I didn't have any "mini" jumpers, so I took a standard-sized jumper, tweaked it with a pair of needle-nose pliars, and jammed it in there. Since then, I've booted successfully 10 out of 10 times. Your mileage may vary.