File Explorer loads forever, many controls disabled

I'm evaluating Windows 10 for my company to check compatibility with our systems and general user experience. We're a small business, and we're presently running a mix of Win7 and Win8.1 machines, all running Pro and joined to our domain. The two machines I've upgraded to Win10 Pro both have the same issue:

File Explorer, when opened, has a loading bar that never finishes. It displays the text "Working on it..." in the file panel, and a very small tree in the folder panel, with just "Quick access," "Desktop," and "This PC" entries. Many controls in the ribbon are also greyed out, including Options, Open command prompt, and the layout controls. (See screenshot)

Possibly related, the recycle bin does not behave as expected. Even with files in the bin, the "Empty recycle bin" option is greyed out both in the ribbon and in context menu from the desktop icon. I can only fully delete files by selecting them within the bin and deleting them again. (See screenshot)

I've searched around for people with similar problems, but I found only one thread describing this issue, and with a preview build. That thread contained a work-around (start->run->c:\) which usually works for me, but which brings up a very quirky File Explorer window, with a folder pane that only shows folders I have actually navigated to using the file pane. It is workable, but I can't ask a normal user to live with this experience, so our upgrade plans are on hold until I can get this resolved.

Has anyone encountered anything like this? None of my personal machines, including a Surface Pro 3 now running Win10 Pro, are having this issue.

Thanks for your time/help!

Update: Based on advice in another thread, I ran sfc /scannow, but it didn't find any integrity violations. After solving a horrible quagmire of driver issues and bluescreen loops on my Toshiba laptop after the upgrade, I'm about to pull my hair out at not being able to solve something so seemingly simple.

Am so sorry for you. Windows 10 is a mess! I am having a similar problem on my Windows 10 Pro x64. I have a folder with lots of movies around 100Gb and file explorer want load all the thumbnails or icons for my files, I get the green loading bar that never finishes; same thing for my games folder. I never had this problem on windows 8.1 pro x64. Another problem is when I click a file lets say its a .mkv file or .mp4, or .PDF file, file explorer would freeze and I would have to kill the explorer.exe process and restart it again trough task manager. Oh and that not all, another problem is sound devices in the control panel will take long to load, when I click it compared to windows 8.1, which only took a second. Another problem I encountered is when I pin a app to the taskbar lets say the calculator app, the icon want show up on the task bar, but its there of course because I can click it and it would open, the icon just isn't showing up; some other apps I pin also have the same problem. My last problem I will say is Windows 10 takes longer to boot then 8.1, I even have a SSD. Sometimes when booting windows 10 I will get a black screen and have to wait awhile for the logon screen to appear.

You said:

If two different computers have the same problem, it has to be the same cause for both of them. What happens if you disable the network? And does the problem still occur if you boot in safe mode? Also, search up the name of every program installed on the computers and make sure that they are compatible with Windows 10. 4 Ways To Boot Into Safe Mode In Windows 10

Hey, thanks for the ideas and the motivation to keep at this! I dug up a spare machine, clean-installed Win7 Pro, joined it to our domain, upgraded it to Win10 Pro, and observed that the problem was not present. Disconnecting from the network did not help machine 1 or machine 2. I'm starting to believe that the common factor between the two misbehaving machines is the software they were running before the upgrade. They're both Dell Optiplex 990s which were running from a Dell factory install prior to the upgrade, and were being used for software development.

Interestingly, both the misbehaving machines have the Dell TDM Service and the Intel RST Service running, each eating 13-15% of the CPU at all times. The clean install machine doesn't have either, since it wasn't upgraded from a Dell factory image. Googling around for details makes me a little anxious about trying to remove either program, but I suppose it's worth a shot.

As soon as I can get a free moment to try, I'll see if this still happens in safe mode. Depending on how that goes, I may try to remove those two services. If I wreck everything and the restore point can't save me... Well, sometimes a clean install is good for the soul. :)

Nikorasu said:

(Problems)

I'm sorry you've been having so much trouble! I've had a great experience with Win10 so far, except for this Explorer bug and a bluescreen loop on my laptop (ended up being the driver WinUpdate was pushing for my Toshiba's internal WiFi card. Disabled it and used a USB dongle instead.). My gaming PC and Surface Pro 3 have been perfect.

My biggest fear right now is honestly the forced reboots. We have some in-house image capture and processing runs which we occasionally need to let run for 60+ hours over the weekend. They'll have my head if one of the processing computers decides to reboot itself at 3:30 AM on a Saturday. It's very unclear to me right now if the "Notify to schedule a reboot" option will wait for someone to come back and schedule, or if it'll just reboot anyway if nobody is around. I can't stand the idea of this company clinging to old operating systems on my watch, but a forced reboot of working machines is simply not workable. If that can't be worked around, there's no way I can move forward with the rollout. One problem at a time, though, I guess.

Fixed it!

Turns out the bloatware was indeed at fault. Should anybody else come along and find this, here's what I did:

1. Open the Services desktop app.
2. Open properties for TDM Service.
3. Set startup type to disabled.
4. Repeat steps 2-3 for Intel Rapid Storage Technology.
5. Reboot.

AgentOddball said:

Fixed it!

Turns out the bloatware was indeed at fault. Should anybody else come along and find this, here's what I did:

1. Open the Services desktop app.
2. Open properties for TDM Service.
3. Set startup type to disabled.
4. Repeat steps 2-3 for Intel Rapid Storage Technology.
5. Reboot.

Thanks for posting. Just completed this action today. Have rebooted and so far so good. I've been opening and closing File Explorer, and switching between drives, in an effort to put it through it's paces so to speak. Hopefully this is the solution I've been seeking.

Thanks for your efforts to resolve this. If it proves not to be a permanent solution I'll let you know, so unless I post back assume it did. I also plan to forward this info to my tech guy. I think he would have figured it out at some point but I know he'll appreciate the info.

Thanks again!