Comments on: File Explorer keeps crashing, freezing or has stopped working in Windows 11

By: Clive

Clive — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 16:34:00 +0000

This is a very old article, but nether-the-less I was researching this problem and came across this. I had explorer crashing every time I tried to go from windowed mode to full screen and and back again in the flight simulation program, it turned out to be my Avast Anti-Virus application, as soon as I had uni-stalled it my problem with explorer crashes went away. I tried everything else before. Problem was I had used Avast for the last few years with no problem, so looks like an update to Avast caused this very frustrating event. Hope it helps someone even at this late stage.

By: Wes Libbey

Wes Libbey — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 15:44:00 +0000

WIN10 Safe Mode has a choice of correct directory errors. It worked for me.

By: JAK

JAK — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 20:48:00 +0000

In reply to PatSG. I've had the same problem - AudioShell (latest version) crashes explorer.exe, but the older version I had did not. Also running Win 7.

By: ThanksForAllowingGuestPostingA

ThanksForAllowingGuestPostingA — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 23:56:00 +0000

I have this problem only when running new .exe files. Why? Because I
FIREWALL THE WINDOWS SHELL (for security, in principle, e.g. Zero-Day
attacks and just excessive desire for privacy beyond bothering to check
exhaustively what every process is actually doing – and Microsoft like
Facebook, DO tend to shift the goalposts, so err on the side of caution
/tinfoilhat). So, firewalling explorer.exe stops it checking for
certificate-revokation (or something like that, OH SO INTELLIGENTLY ON
TCP PORT 80 AND NOT SSL-secured itself – ironically!)
NO ONE else has mentioned this anywhere that I can see from a quick web search.
Weird
that no-one had the same (whitelist only ESSENTIAL processes for
internet connectivity) setup as myself… and would have absolutely seen
the same issue as I have over multiple machines and Windows versions…
hey, maybe there’s a reason for the paranoia?! Or maybe this is a
reason for the hangs – and they are only hangs, not crashes, generally
(IIRC).

By: Conrad Braam

Conrad Braam — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 15:40:00 +0000

For me, I opened a powershell window (will require you to elevate)
type
get-process vpreview|Stop-Process
the hung explorer (MDI window to be more precise,) will close and other explorers will stay open. I suspect problem is where the previewer can hang if it opens a file on a removable or network drive that goes away unexpectedly.