Opening Microsoft Edge Causes Explorer.exe to Hang then Crash

Hi,
Don't know what exactly, but these settings solved issue for me:

Code:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"MultiTaskingAltTabFilter"=dword:00000003
"ExtendedUIHoverTime"=dword:00196608
"DisablePreviewWindow"=dword:00000001

Code:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]
"GDIProcessHandleQuota"=dword:00003a98

Code:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"TaskbarNoThumbnail"=dword:00000001

Disabled integration "IEToEdge BHO" using ShellExView (x64).
Working over RDP.
Don't ask me about amount of opened Tabs in Edge - too much.

SkyRE said:

Hi,
Don't know what exactly, but these settings solved issue for me:

Code:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"MultiTaskingAltTabFilter"=dword:00000003
"ExtendedUIHoverTime"=dword:00196608
"DisablePreviewWindow"=dword:00000001

Code:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]
"GDIProcessHandleQuota"=dword:00003a98

Code:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"TaskbarNoThumbnail"=dword:00000001

Disabled integration "IEToEdge BHO" using ShellExView (x64).
Working over RDP.
Don't ask me about amount of opened Tabs in Edge - too much.

Thanks a lot, i will give it a try. How did you manage to find these keys? :)


edit: MultiTaskingAltTabFilter was already set to same value for me, ExtendedUIHoverTime, DisablePreviewWindow both missing, GDIProcessHandleQuota has decimal value of 10000 vs 15000 of yours, TaskbarNoThumbnail missing

TnF said:

How did you manage to find these keys? :)

Googled.

GDIProcessHandleQuota - was found here and seems it's my case:
Some details about it.

MultiTaskingAltTabFilter - controls Alt+Tab behavior in Settings->System->Multitasking

Rest are try to turn off thumbnails in explorer taskbar.

Greetings,

Something I noted recently, because this problem was also driving me crazy, is that whenever Windows 11 was started, I saw in Task Manage that Microsoft Edge was already opened even if I did not open it myself.

I ended the process and then proceeded to open it and Windows Explorer did not hang, although I have to admit that because I have a lot of tabs, it takes a few seconds before I can use Windows Explorer or the Windows 11 menu but the "hang" or "freezing" issues seemed to stop (including Windows Explorer crashing).

I then found this:
2 Ways to Stop Microsoft Edge From Loading at Startup on Windows

According to that, Windows is pre-loading Edge for things like Edge tabs in ALT+TAB and so on.

I do not know if this can help you all, but I did not have any issues since I started killing the Edge process as soon as Windows is started.

Ryu Hayabusa said:

Greetings,

Something I noted recently, because this problem was also driving me crazy, is that whenever Windows 11 was started, I saw in Task Manage that Microsoft Edge was already opened even if I did not open it myself.

I ended the process and then proceeded to open it and Windows Explorer did not hang, although I have to admit that because I have a lot of tabs, it takes a few seconds before I can use Windows Explorer or the Windows 11 menu but the "hang" or "freezing" issues seemed to stop (including Windows Explorer crashing).

I then found this:
2 Ways to Stop Microsoft Edge From Loading at Startup on Windows

According to that, Windows is pre-loading Edge for things like Edge tabs in ALT+TAB and so on.

I do not know if this can help you all, but I did not have any issues since I started killing the Edge process as soon as Windows is started.

I think yours preloads because you have options set in edge settings to either pre-load tabs when windows starts or have extensions set to run even if edge is closed. Unfortunantly I have all those options off and nothing from edge running at startup and still have this problem. :/

If anybody is still left with this problem, I may have found a solution. At least for me it seemed to work so far.

Windows 10\11 recent builds seem to be buggy when running "custom DPI scaling" in windows. I use 200%. I need this mode on, so I wasn't able to turn it off fully. But for edge, where most of my problems happen when it's running, I went into properties of the .exe, and set a custom scale override and chose the "Application" option. So that edge itself gets to do the scaling.

Seems there may be an issue when windows forces its own scaling on edge.

Also, this didn't affect the DPI of edge at all for me. Seems edge is able to pick up on your custom DPI scaling in windows and scale up correctly on its own.

Hello

I made an account to thank you guys. I can't believe this is the sole place on the Internet that actually solves this problem in some respect. I thought for sure it was my hard drive dying.

The one thing that we seem to have in common (that I can see) is that we have a large number of tabs open. Is there anything else that has made us particularly vulnerable to this?

I agree with the previous poster about it somehow being related to scaling.

Why aren't thousands of other people having this issue? I have a lot of tabs, sure, but I had thousands of tabs open with no issue in the past on more primitive browsers and devices.

Is it really just this new thing with windows tab previews?

Thanks again in any case.

Hi
I also have this bad habit to have a lot of open tabs or edge windows, which I tend to not close to be able to go back to them whenever I have time to do that. :)

And I run into this problem few months ago and found out, that changing the default limit (10000) to something higher helped.

I had it on 15000 for quite a while, but recently my edge got wild again and now having it on 30000 is not enough.
After half an hour the system was still unusable. The explorer process is having 25007 GDI objects. The whole bunch of MSedge processes was running 40% CPU and 8,5GB my 16GB memory used. After another half an hour is better CPU only at 10% and around 4GB of memory.
I guess I will leave it running like that and see if it calms itself somehow.

I have imported all the registries mentioned above, but it didn't help.
I would expect, that the TaskbarNoThumbnail disables the Thumbnails completely, but I can still see them while clicking on the tile of all the other programs, not on edge, because od the amount of opened windows/tabs.

I have also tried to switch the scaling from the 100% scaling I find better than the recommended 125%, which is unnecessary big on 15.4" LCD. Changing the scaling on the MSedge.exe didn't help either.

I have also tried to force the dedicated Nvidia graphic card in bios, to leave the Intel drivers from the equation or disable the HW acceleration in Edge, but again nothing

I am still wondering what made it to jump another 7000 GDI objects, I am not aware of opening many new windows/tabs recently.
The last thing which came to my mind is the December WU, because it seems it might be connected, but last time uninstalling the WU didn't help, so I thought it is probably more connected to the update of Edge. I will try it as last resort.

Let me please know if you are all still OK after December WU.


regards and thanks for any comments

PiGeon

I have just spent 2 days going through all my open tabs and wanted to let you know that it looks like the only issue which caused my system to bump into the GDI object limit repeatedly was that something cloned 4 to 5 times all my open windows with several tabs.
I'm not sure what it was, but I have a theory :) It must have been the WU and consequential restarts for the past 4-5 months.

I am currently trying to find a script which would do an inventory of open tabs and find duplicates and close them.


take care

PiGeon