Thursday, May 11, 2017

Fixing File explorer crashing in windows 10

Just this past week, I've encountered several similar, but different, events in which File explorer in Windows 10 is crashing and resetting. This post will tell you how I fixed File Explorer from crashing in Windows 10 on two different Dell latitude laptops.

  • In scenario #1, I would open File Explorer, either by using shortcut windows key +e or by clicking the explorer icon, or navigating from my computer. File explorer would load, but if I tried to shrink file explorer, the screen window would stutter or shake and ultimately say not responding, before it actually crashed.   So, when minimizing file explorer, it would lock up the window, shake, then crash.
  • In scenario #2, on a different computer: I open File explorer and it opens fine.   When I try to copy or drag a file from my desktop to the file explorer, the file explorer goes black and crashes.   If I try to copy or move a file from one file explorer window to another file explorer window it crashes in Windows 10.
Here is how I fixed windows file explorer from crashing.
  1. Open File Explorer
  2. At the top, click View, then Options.  If you don't see that menu, either hold alt on your keyboard or right click on 'Quick access' and click options.
  3. In the folders options dialog menu, select the 'view tab'
  4. Scroll down in advanced settings until you see "Launch folder windows in a separate process"
    1. make sure this is checked.  If it is already, try unchecking it
  5. Hit Apply, restart file explorer.   Now, hopefully file explorer doesn't crash anymore.


For search engines lookups:
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1 comment:

shane80 said...

This very problem brought me here. Your solution worked for me, thank you very much.