Why does notepad crash on desktop files in the save-as dialog?

I encountered this erroneous behaviour today doing a test installation (W7x64u sp1). I was able to narrow down the culprit, however ymmv, please check for yourself.

In order to tidy the view in Windows Explorer, i.e. hiding Libraries, Favorites, Home Group, Logged In User, I refered to this procedure with the support of SetAcl to do it per command line. So far this seemed to work fine for me.

Now I noticed that in each newly created user account (no matter whether Administrator or not) Notepad crashes when trying to open or save a file. This does not happen in the default Administrator account used for installation. I don't have an explanation for this, but I assume that Notepad's "last file location" points to these Favorites or Library...space that's hidden (yet not removed) by Vishal's procedure.

This tweak has been postponed after all local accounts had been created on the machine. There might be some sort of Registry value to tell Notepad not to look in any M$ botched location, I don't know.

Sounds to me like the previous save-as path (or a network drive) are the hold-up. It wants to render the path it's at and can't because an entry probably either offline or unavailable.

I wish i remembered where notepad stored it's last save path, but the location escapes me. I would try either waiting it out or looking online for the last save location and change it. See if that resolves the issue.

EDIT

Looking in to the COMCTL32.dll it appears it may be loading a thumbnail from a file in the select file dialog that is crashing. Anything in your My Documents (or where ever you've previously saved to) folder that thumbnail generation would bomb out on? You may have the folder size small in normal file explorer (wouldn't generate a thumb) then larger int he save-as dialog which would invoke it. (I can't image it's using the TaskDialog or Drag and Drop abilities)

I had a similar problem. I also happen to have Notepad++ installed (although I never really converted over to it and still use plain vanilla Notepad) and what I did was I opened the file in Notepad++ then tried the Save As and it worked fine. I was then able to manipulate the file with Notepad. Not sure what caused the problem in the first place though