Opening Microsoft Edge Causes Explorer.exe to Hang then Crash

There's a quick fix for every problem with Edge: Use Chrome instead.

margrave55 said:

There's a quick fix for every problem with Edge: Use Chrome instead.

Right, because Chrome has:
- vertical tabs (it had them, like ten+ years ago – but not in modern times)
- "sleeping tabs" (it doesn't have a tab resource saving tech that provides precisely those benefits)
- a PDF viewer that at least remembers what page you were on (neither does Firefox or Opera or..)

When it worked for me (before 20H2), Edge was easily the best Chromium-based power user browser. (Vivaldi and Opera have amazing customization but their UIs manage to become unusably slow and sluggish after some uptime & load.)

Right, because Edge has ... hmmm ... no features or abilities at all ... because it doesn't even run for me nor for lots of other people here.

It's dead, Jim.

Even the 1992-era breathing-N Netscape would be an improvement over Edge! :)

I am pretty sure Edge works properly for the majority of people. IMHO it's better than Chrome.

eLPuSHeR said:

I am pretty sure Edge works properly for the majority of people. IMHO it's better than Chrome.

Hardly. Estimates vary, but here are data from two sources:
Chrome 68.8% 63.1%
Safari 9.7% 19.8%
Edge 8.1% 4.1%
Firefox 7.2% 4.2%
Opera 2.5% 2.3%

for me ?

edge
......
FF only for RAM >8GB

privacy ? i dont care event i turm strict on maximal and using ublock origin and clear cookies etc except password and some exclude cookies (i do that to make lighter ...not for privacy)
if i care about privacy i will not use smartphone even old cellphone, because operator can read my sms and call log (that privacy).... and i will not connect to internet....


cache image
hdd/ssd
ram
OS maintenance
bg process
32/64bit
open tab
startup tab
plugin
themes

that will make different

no tools or independece way to test wich browser lighter and best

that is youtuber scumb*** issue....

Luckz said:

I had this kind of issue ever since 20H2 added forced Edge alt-tab integration;
since you can't turn it off on the Edge side, it will just spam the shit out of your explorer.exe, which makes that freeze up, sometimes crash, and so on.


the "fixes" I found are:
- [untested] don't use 20H2
- don't use Edge
- don't open more than a minuscule amount of tabs
- terminate explorer.exe and keep it off

I just registered to say that I 100% second this post.

I got this problem when MS added the alt+tab integration to Edge, and it immediately made Edge completely unusable. Whole Windows came unusable when Edge was opened back then. I had a LOT of tabs open in the Edge session (hundreds). Quite pissed off, because there was NO way to continue working with that session anymore (without rolling back Windows).

The problem seems to have eased a lot, but not went a way completely. I still have exporer.exe crashing randomly when using Edge, and every time when closing Edge. Edge itself is now usable. I have closed a lot of tabs, so possibly that has contributed too.

Ok the issue is still happening with latest edge update (that comes as part of some W10 updates), again when you get to a session with many tabs (like 200) it will cause this explorer issue that prevents some core windows explorer functions working (like it's unable to write/read from disk/not able to launch programs).

Here is what i found out just now though:
1) Everything working as should, have task manager OPEN and then launch Edge with the big problematic session
2) Explorer starts misbehaving, (at this stage you can see the start bar and quick launch icons). Pressing the start button and try launching anything like control panel it will not open.
3) End explorer.exe
4) Now Edge should be working fine as well as any other open programs now. Quick test is to download any file in edge, it should start download as normal (at step 2, it won't do anything)
5) Now from task manager run "explorer.exe". Explorer will start but it will be blank. Pressing the windows key it will cause it to crash and restart.
6) At this point i had pressed the start key once, but then i left it idle for 2-3 minutes and voila! Quick start icons appear and everything is working as it should! My guess if i restart edge now i'll have to go through the whole process again to make it work.

Also note sometimes in this state the only way to recover is to exit Edge. However sometimes it might fail to exit completely and keep stuck forever until you restart. Therefore it is important that you have task manager open in order to kill msedge.exe in case it happens.

TnF said:

Ok the issue is still happening with latest edge update (that comes as part of some W10 updates), again when you get to a session with many tabs (like 200) it will cause this explorer issue that prevents some core windows explorer functions working (like it's unable to write/read from disk/not able to launch programs).

Here is what i found out just now though:
1) Everything working as should, have task manager OPEN and then launch Edge with the big problematic session
2) Explorer starts misbehaving, (at this stage you can see the start bar and quick launch icons). Pressing the start button and try launching anything like control panel it will not open.
3) End explorer.exe
4) Now Edge should be working fine as well as any other open programs now. Quick test is to download any file in edge, it should start download as normal (at step 2, it won't do anything)
5) Now from task manager run "explorer.exe". Explorer will start but it will be blank. Pressing the windows key it will cause it to crash and restart.
6) At this point i had pressed the start key once, but then i left it idle for 2-3 minutes and voila! Quick start icons appear and everything is working as it should! My guess if i restart edge now i'll have to go through the whole process again to make it work.

Also note sometimes in this state the only way to recover is to exit Edge. However sometimes it might fail to exit completely and keep stuck forever until you restart. Therefore it is important that you have task manager open in order to kill msedge.exe in case it happens.

edit: This method is not reliable. I only got it to work this one time and a handful of other times by random. I cannot reproduce it successfully. What the f*ck did microsoft shitty devs did to break this so much is beyond me. I bet it has to do with code regarding the edge-explorer alt-tab intergration. So far it's been disabled, i think i will try it enabled next time to see if it makes any difference.

TnF said:

edit: This method is not reliable. I only got it to work this one time and a handful of other times by random. I cannot reproduce it successfully. What the f*ck did microsoft shitty devs did to break this so much is beyond me. I bet it has to do with code regarding the edge-explorer alt-tab intergration. So far it's been disabled, i think i will try it enabled next time to see if it makes any difference.

What helps me sometimes is closing like 10 tabs after the process but it's hit or miss. It sucks cause up until now I loved Edge but its slowly pushing me away that I'm not actively looking elsewhere. Vertical Tabs and Collections are a huge plus, I wish there was a bookmark system like Collections that let you view images to get visual idea where you left off on that page.
Also a window view of all tabs with able to multi-select to drag into bookmarks/collections much easier.

It just sucks that the options are running thin, I wish Firefox would just lift features from Edge so I could move there again, but collections, sleep tabs, and vertical tabs are a huge plus for Edge plus the extension support.