File Explorer hangs on "working on it" & Open As menu crashes

steve108 · 14 Jan 2022

ShellExView - Shell Extension Manager For Windows

And

Get information about Windows software that stopped responding/freezing (hang)

Might be two handy tools for this case.

Do you recognize any shell extensions that seem suspicious and maybe should be disabled?

steve108 · 14 Jan 2022

Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts I would suggest this if the problem occurred more frequently.

Chiffon · 14 Jan 2022

Thanks, I will bookmark this thread and check more into it tomorrow. Will bump the thread when the issue resurfaces.

Just now I figured out that I apparently did not edit all of the keys to disable explorer from reading wav metadata because it's a little different in W10. There is more registry keys (that were protected, under SystemPropertyHandlers). I changed that now and rebooted. Explorer can no longer pull metadata from .wav files.

Reason why I'm bringing up wavs is because on W7, there was a bug where if you viewed a folder containing wav(s) with certain metadata, it would cause a similar effect and bug out explorer.exe (although I'm not getting the 100% CPU usage issue here). Apparently this still happens on W10 according to google searches.

I guess we will see what happens. Really hoping this is just it...

steve108 · 14 Jan 2022

steve108 · 14 Jan 2022

Chiffon said:

Yeah, tonight is the 3rd (or 4th?) time it happened since I built this PC in December. It's weird and seems to happen randomly while I'm looking through folders on my drive. I only first notice it when I go to open "This PC" and it hangs on loading ("working on it"). I assumed it was something related to Quick Start trying to access something that was no longer available (deleted file or disconnected external drive), but I disabled those options to keep it from showing recently & frequently used items.

I checked Event Viewer around the time it started and during. There doesn't seem to be anything related popping up before it began. I'll show some pictures.
I noticed the explorer problem started around ~10:30PM
Under system, there are these 5 warnings that are all similar. I'm unsure if they are related as I don't know what they mean:
https://i.imgur.com/CDbQZgC.png

And really the only errors I see are related to when explorer.exe froze hard when I mouse over "Open As" in right click menu:
Information: https://i.imgur.com/Hb6g6AE.png
Error: https://i.imgur.com/1f2yUoV.png

Yeah I tried those while the problem was happening, including deleting file cache-- unfortunately didn't help

I get those DistributedCOM 10016 warnings too ....... unfortunately it's one of those "must know to ignore" warnings

after you waste hours googling it. My PC works fine:

Code:

The machine-default permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID 
{C2F03A33-21F5-47FA-B4BB-156362A2F239}
 and APPID 
{316CDED5-E4AE-4B15-9113-7055D84DCC97}
 to the user XXX SID (S-1-5-21-XXX) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost_10.0.19041.1320_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy SID (S-1-15-2-155514346-2573954481-755741238-1654018636-1233331829-3075935687-2861478708). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

 XXX = redacted info :-)

Chiffon · 18 Jan 2022

Hi, it happened again after almost 4 days of uptime. And I'm still not at all sure what caused it. I was just watching some videos on Youtube before bed and I decided to check one last time if the issue would pop up and well, it did.
I uploaded some screenshots: (I'm sorry, they aren't in order!)
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
#6 another example of other folders getting stuck - Album on Imgur

ShellExView:
https://i.imgur.com/aKPFuGt.png

Not sure what to look for. Do you see anything odd? @steve108

By the way, these are a few things I've just tried:
File explorer options -> view -> reset folders
File explorer options -> search -> restore defaults
File explorer options -> general -> clear history
I've deleted the contents in : %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

And then restarted explorer.exe after making these steps, but I still get the same results.

Something is causing explorer.exe to randomly bug out until I reboot my PC and I don't know what it is...

It's the same problem with very slow folder loading and hovering over "open with" right click option for any file crashes the process.

I will now be rebooting my PC and going to bed, but I'll read all replies tomorrow and try any suggestions next time this pops up.

Thank you!

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry for double post, but I wanna add one more picture to the above now that I've rebooted my PC.
This is what my "open with" menu looks like when it is working properly:
https://i.imgur.com/kVv7Lp4.png

And once more (taken from the gallery above), here is me doing the same thing while explorer is bugging out:
https://i.imgur.com/0FUYS57.png
^"open with" is highlighted. A little hard to see with the menu being whited out, but as soon as my mouse goes over that menu option, it freezes and crashes explorer.exe.

Callender · 18 Jan 2022

I don't see any problem extension in your context menu for image files. Another suggestion is to disable automatic folder type discovery and set all folders to either details view or list view (all folders and libraries).

It's also possible that explorer is tripping up due to a corrupt video thumbnail or video file in one or more of your folders,

Callender · 18 Jan 2022

More info:

Change Folder Template in Windows 10

See note on automatic folder type discovery under Option Three.

Other tool:

WinSetView v2

See this post on video files:
Where are the Most Recently Used Lists? - Page 3 - Windows 10 Forums

Chiffon · 18 Jan 2022

Thanks @Callender , I appreciate you checking my shell screenshot for any oddities.

I'll look into the possibly of a corrupted video thumbnail or something. I do have some old stuff I've been carrying over since ~2009, so that'll be what I check on first.

Noob question, but is it possible that windows 10 could be getting tripped by it even though I'm not actively accessing folders with those kinds of files? For example: it's doing stuff in the background and checking through sub folders? Because I don't remember going through any video folders last night.

Anyway, I've pretty much exhausted every option except for shooting in the dark stuff like: clean boot, system repair with media creator tool, disabling Windows Search service and rebuilding the index (both of which require a system reboot afaik).

I feel like it's gotta be something related to corrupted thumbnail tripping it since the problem isn't immediately there after a system boot up and the only changes I've manually made to the registry was to fully disable Cortana (adding a key and setting value to "0") and stopping explorer from pulling metadata from .WAVs.

I'll also try removing irfanview in case I configured it wrong and it's one causing explorer.exe is flip out.

Waiting game begins once again. >_<;

Callender · 18 Jan 2022

Chiffon said:

Is it possible that windows 10 could be getting tripped by it even though I'm not actively accessing folders with those kinds of files? For example: it's doing stuff in the background and checking through sub folders? Because I don't remember going through any video folders last night.

Yes, it's possible in particular if you have folder(s) containing video files on your desktop but Explorer tries to create thumbnails for all image and video files and keeps them in a thumbnail cache and if even one of those files is corrupt it can cause explore to hang or crash.

A test that might be time consuming is to move all video files that you personally downloaded or created to another drive then disconnect that drive. Then clear thumbnail cache and reboot.

But first I'd try disabling automatic folder type discovery particularly if you have folders containing video files along with other file types.

This can also apply to corrupt image files.

Note quote from linked post:

I quickly discovered that it doesn't build a thumbnail for a corrupt file! It turns out I had a lot of corrupt .flv files!
And it was a breeze deleting them all, too. I just set Explorer to show medium icons and deleted all that didn't have a preview thumbnail.
Boom, done! So it turns out to also be a good tool for finding corrupt files, too.