Fixing the Windows Explorer Crash or Freeze in Windows 7
Posted by: Timothy Tibbetts on 12/10/2013 10:01 AM
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Recently I became the victim of the Windows Explorer crash and began the simple (for a geek) search to solve the problem. Well, lo and behold, it isn't so easy. If you start looking for a solution, you find a lot of the same suggestions over and over that doesn't solve the problem, although almost every time you see one of these solutions, it seems to have worked for one or two people giving you false hope. This issue appears to be most common with Windows 7 but we have tested it in Windows 10 as well.
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Update: My problem occurred every 1-2 days. My computer has now been running 11 days without reboot with no further crashes. I am confident the above solution is the fix for this problem. I also found another computer with the same issue and disabling Acronis True Image does fix the problem. If you have Acronis installed, just disable that. If you do not then follow the simple instructions below.
Symptoms: Windows Explorer crashes. This also usually includes Start; Computer, Control, Panel and more. The computer just hangs trying to display but you can’t click on, or see anything and you have to X out of it and reboot to get it to load again.
Solution: there is a good chance that something you installed added what is known as a “shell extension” and it is causing the crash. If you have ever right clicked on a file or folder and saw extra program-specific options, for example, WinZip or CCleaner, that is a shell extension. You need to isolate and remove that shell extension.
Download ShellExView from Majorgeeks and extract it to a folder of your choice. Double click the shexview.exe as seen in the screenshot below.
As mentioned above, odds are a 3rd party program has been installed and we want to disable it to see if the problem is solved. Click on the “Product Name” tab so that everything lists alphabetically. By doing this, you want to avoid all the Microsoft products as that is unlikely.
In my case, as seen in the screenshot below, I disabled all Acronis and Google shell extensions. Why those? I suspected that Acronis was the culprit and I don’t use either shell extensions so I disabled them and the problem was gone. So look for programs that YOU installed (especially those in the time frame the problem started, if you know that) and disable the ones you don’t need OR simply guess and disable one at a time and reboot until the problem is solved.
Optionally, you can list by file date. That option is to the far right but be sure you are looking for third-party programs installed. Not Microsoft and odds are not Internet Browser. That could be helpful if you can guess the month that this started.
Finally, jacked up on 6 cups of coffee, I posted this video to give you something visual:
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O.K., maybe you have not tried anything, so let me go over the three most common solutions I found to this problem:
1: You have malware or a virus: This is the “go to” answer for geek wannabes who don’t even know what a shell extension is. People LOVE to tell you to scan your computer for malware or viruses. The good news is that it can’t hurt. If you have not scanned for a while, it might even find some toolbars or rogue programs you don’t want, need or even know you had. We would use either Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, SUPERAntiSpyware Free or IObit Malware Fighter. All three work well so just flip a coin and pick one.
2: Installing specific fixes from Microsoft: You might be told to go to Microsoft for a specific fix in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, also known as KB. The problem here is two-fold. First, you need to find the exact fix for your exact operating system. There are 150,000 articles so good luck with that. Second, almost anything you download from Microsoft is already in your Windows Updates. So, go to Start, Control Panel, Windows Updates and make sure that you have all the updates and that automatic updates are on. If automatic updates are off, turn them on. If it doesn't let you return to step #1.
3: Re-install Windows: Like step 1, re-installing Windows is a cop-out and the last thing you would do. It has worked for some people. Why? Because after someone re-installs Windows, they didn't install the program that originally started the problem. A week or two later they re-install that program and the problem "mysteriously" appears again. This is why some people return a week, or weeks later only to say the problem came back. There is one case I recommend re-installing Windows, and that is for a really bad malware or virus infection. A complicated infection can take 4-6 hours to remove and leave you with some errors or problems after removal, so it’s faster to re-install and set everything back up in a couple of hours.
This story has been updated - File Explorer or Windows Explorer Crashes or Freezes.
TIP: Update: My problem occurred every 1-2 days. My computer has now been running 11 days without reboot with no further crashes. I am confident the above solution is the fix for this problem. I also found another computer with the same issue and disabling Acronis True Image does fix the problem. If you have Acronis installed, just disable that. If you do not then follow the simple instructions below.
Symptoms: Windows Explorer crashes. This also usually includes Start; Computer, Control, Panel and more. The computer just hangs trying to display but you can’t click on, or see anything and you have to X out of it and reboot to get it to load again.
Solution: there is a good chance that something you installed added what is known as a “shell extension” and it is causing the crash. If you have ever right clicked on a file or folder and saw extra program-specific options, for example, WinZip or CCleaner, that is a shell extension. You need to isolate and remove that shell extension.
Download ShellExView from Majorgeeks and extract it to a folder of your choice. Double click the shexview.exe as seen in the screenshot below.
As mentioned above, odds are a 3rd party program has been installed and we want to disable it to see if the problem is solved. Click on the “Product Name” tab so that everything lists alphabetically. By doing this, you want to avoid all the Microsoft products as that is unlikely.
In my case, as seen in the screenshot below, I disabled all Acronis and Google shell extensions. Why those? I suspected that Acronis was the culprit and I don’t use either shell extensions so I disabled them and the problem was gone. So look for programs that YOU installed (especially those in the time frame the problem started, if you know that) and disable the ones you don’t need OR simply guess and disable one at a time and reboot until the problem is solved.
Optionally, you can list by file date. That option is to the far right but be sure you are looking for third-party programs installed. Not Microsoft and odds are not Internet Browser. That could be helpful if you can guess the month that this started.
Finally, jacked up on 6 cups of coffee, I posted this video to give you something visual:
O.K., maybe you have not tried anything, so let me go over the three most common solutions I found to this problem:
1: You have malware or a virus: This is the “go to” answer for geek wannabes who don’t even know what a shell extension is. People LOVE to tell you to scan your computer for malware or viruses. The good news is that it can’t hurt. If you have not scanned for a while, it might even find some toolbars or rogue programs you don’t want, need or even know you had. We would use either Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, SUPERAntiSpyware Free or IObit Malware Fighter. All three work well so just flip a coin and pick one.
2: Installing specific fixes from Microsoft: You might be told to go to Microsoft for a specific fix in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, also known as KB. The problem here is two-fold. First, you need to find the exact fix for your exact operating system. There are 150,000 articles so good luck with that. Second, almost anything you download from Microsoft is already in your Windows Updates. So, go to Start, Control Panel, Windows Updates and make sure that you have all the updates and that automatic updates are on. If automatic updates are off, turn them on. If it doesn't let you return to step #1.
3: Re-install Windows: Like step 1, re-installing Windows is a cop-out and the last thing you would do. It has worked for some people. Why? Because after someone re-installs Windows, they didn't install the program that originally started the problem. A week or two later they re-install that program and the problem "mysteriously" appears again. This is why some people return a week, or weeks later only to say the problem came back. There is one case I recommend re-installing Windows, and that is for a really bad malware or virus infection. A complicated infection can take 4-6 hours to remove and leave you with some errors or problems after removal, so it’s faster to re-install and set everything back up in a couple of hours.
This story has been updated - File Explorer or Windows Explorer Crashes or Freezes.
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