Taskbar & desktop randomly refreshes after upgrading to ten

Hi,

I recently upgraded both my laptop and desktop to win 10 and I am having exactly the same issue on both.

Every so often the desktop and teaskbar will refresh. It doesn't seem to be associated with having anything open, it happens randomly anytime whatever I'm doing. if i'm playing a game it will take me out of the game to the desktop too, it won't close the game though.

I found some information about it possible being AutoCAD 2014 software which I had, but now have unisntalled to try and eliminate the issue but it still persists.

Any help would be awesome :)

I have the same issue.. I think its a bug in Windows 10, maybe its gonna be fixed later in a update...

paulsalter said:

have a look in Reliability History
Go into Control Panel and search for reliability

Not sure if this is normal or not, but I get this when a store app has been updated
Reliability History will show if an app has been updated so you can see if they tie into when you see the refresh

Thanks i'm gonna look to

Ok to confirm, I just caught it happening again and quickly checked the event viewer and reliability history. Its definitely the explorer.exe, found a load of instances in the last week. I can't seem to find anything else which happens at the same time though.

I can view the technical info of each event, but they all seem similar. However one interesting thing to note is that most of them seem to be located at C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe and then I found one located at C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE (why caps?)".

"Explorer.EXE" formatted like that used to show up on my win7 because I had a custom start orb or something, I remember researching it. But I've never had win 7 on laptop or theme patched it. Its probably nothing to do with it, but is a little curious.

Well, I am having this issue for the last 10 days, until today i decided to kill it. It took 3 hours to troubleshoot and finally issue no more exist.
1-First you need to know which file/program is culprit for crashing explorer.exe. Make a folder in "c" drive and name it "dumps".
Open notepad and copy the following.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps\explorer.exe]
"DumpFolder"=hex(2):63,00,3a,00,5c,00,64,00,75,00,6d,00,70,00,73,00,00,00
"DumpCount"=dword:00000002
"DumpType"=dword:00000002

Save the file on desktop as explorercrashdumps-to-C.reg , run the file and it will add entries in registry. Now whenever explorer crashes, it will write a dump file in c:/dumps
2. Go to Kits and tools for Windows 10 - Windows 10 Hardware Dev Center
click on Get Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg) (from the SDK). Run it and during installation check only Windbg (it was 200-300 mb i recall), it will download and install Windbg.
3. Meanwhile your explorer must have crashed some times and you will be able to see at least two dump files in c:/dumps
make a new folder in C:/localsymbols, Open Windbg (x64 or X32 based on your OS), choose File>Symbol file path and wirte SRV*c:\localsymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols and click ok.
Go to File>Open crash dump and choose one of the dump files in C:/dumps.
You may see something similar to this:

Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 10.0.10240.9 AMD64
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


Loading Dump File [C:\dumps\explorer.exe.6712.dmp]
User Mini Dump File with Full Memory: Only application data is available

WARNING: Minidump contains unknown stream type 0x15
WARNING: Minidump contains unknown stream type 0x16

************* Symbol Path validation summary **************
Response Time (ms) Location
Deferred SRV*c:\localsymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Symbol search path is: SRV*c:\localsymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Executable search path is:
Windows 10 Version 10240 MP (4 procs) Free x64
Product: WinNt, suite: SingleUserTS Personal
Built by: 10.0.10240.16384 (th1.150709-1700)
Machine Name:
Debug session time: Wed Sep 23 01:00:48.000 2015 (UTC + 3:00)
System Uptime: 0 days 1:42:19.488
Process Uptime: 0 days 0:02:43.000
................................................................
................................................................
................................................................
................................................................
............................................................
Loading unloaded module list
.............................................................
This dump file has an exception of interest stored in it.
The stored exception information can be accessed via .ecxr.
(1a38.c4c): Access violation - code c0000005 (first/second chance not available)
No .natvis files found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Debuggers\x64\Visualizers.
ntdll!NtWaitForMultipleObjects+0xa:
00007ff8`01933aaa c3 ret

There is a box at the bottom of windbg, write !analyze -v
The status will come as busy (you must be connected to internet) and different files will be downloaded. After few minutes you will see detail crash report.

Last few lines I am copying here:
SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 0
SYMBOL_NAME: vtkfiltering.dll!Unloaded+0
FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner
MODULE_NAME: vtkFiltering
IMAGE_NAME: vtkFiltering.dll
DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4e1d3238
STACK_COMMAND: .ecxr ; ~~[0xc4c]s ; .frame 0 ; ** Pseudo Context ** ; kb
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: INVALID_CLASS_PTR_READ_FINALIZER_LEAK_IN_CALL_c0000005_vtkFiltering.dll!Unloaded
BUCKET_ID: INVALID_CLASS_PTR_READ_INVALID_POINTER_READ_FINALIZER_LEAK_IN_CALL_vtkfiltering.dll!Unloaded+0
PRIMARY_PROBLEM_CLASS: INVALID_CLASS_PTR_READ_INVALID_POINTER_READ_FINALIZER_LEAK_IN_CALL_vtkfiltering.dll!Unloaded+0
FAILURE_PROBLEM_CLASS: INVALID_CLASS_PTR_READ_FINALIZER_LEAK_IN_CALL
FAILURE_EXCEPTION_CODE: c0000005
FAILURE_IMAGE_NAME: vtkFiltering.dll
FAILURE_FUNCTION_NAME: Unloaded
FAILURE_SYMBOL_NAME: vtkFiltering.dll!Unloaded
ANALYSIS_SOURCE: UM
FAILURE_ID_HASH_STRING: um:invalid_class_ptr_read_finalizer_leak_in_call_c0000005_vtkfiltering.dll!unloaded
FAILURE_ID_HASH: {126d30c7-9792-66f7-c085-c1398cc18998}
Followup: MachineOwner
---------

Note down the failure symbol name , failure image name. You can also click on module name and it will show you a link of "browse full module list". Click on this link and you will see many .dll files, you need to copy their names and search in c: drive and program folders and look their location. The relevant software in program files is the culprit and you must uninstall it.
In my case and in most of the cases reported on internet all files belong to Autodesk inventor Bin folder located within Inventor folder. I have cut Bin folder and pasted it at different location and my problem is resolved.
Thanks,

Pumpsmith said:

Thanks, I just had a look and found multiple instances of windows explorer stopped working. However I'm not totally sure that's it. I will have to monitor it to see it happen.

We may be able to narrow it down if we compare are applications possibly.

Do you have any autodesk products installed? This caused the same issue in win8

What security setup and any other related things do you have running? Mine is the stock windows defender + ccleaner and have disabled a lot of startup stuff, all of which I know what it is though.....like One drive. I also have a program called Starter and I have disabled a lot of unnecessary services like bonjor from apple from starting up.

Both laptop and desktop are wireless. I will try turning off to test.

I doubt any of these could be the cause though :-/

I have ccleaner en Windows Defender and i have a lot of background startup programs disabled, but i have the newest insider build so sometimes my explorer just crash... so i don't think i can help you with this now

Well, I am having this issue for the last 10 days, until today i decided to kill it. It took 3 hours to troubleshoot and finally issue no more exist.

Thanks for all the info . This looks very promising, especially as you mention it was autodesk associated. I do have that folder I think, Ill have to check properly tomorrow or next day. I will give what you suggested a try and hopefully nail it.

Thanks again

Ok I've tested it about a week and the problem is gone! :)

Big thanks to tractable

.

I used the ms debug diagnostic tool and tracked it down the autodesk sync. I was to scared to uninstall it in case some of my stuff relied on it, so I just transferred all the .dll files in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Autodesk Sync to a folder on my desktop so sync won't work anymore.

So far everything is good, no crashes at all.