File Explorer keeps crashing/restarting/flickering

dalchina said:

If it's a permissions issue, try Tweaking.com's free cautious repair tool (easy to find), following the cautious steps and selecting only the potentially relevant repairs.

dalchina said:

If you then still find you have no problems in a new user profile, then that suggests either

a. Something is running or configured under the old profile that is causing this that is not running or configured in the new one

or

b. The old profile is corrupt

If the same problem is experienced in both the existing and a new user profile, you can try an in-place upgrade repair install.

Not a permissions issues evidently, ran the tool and it fixed like 44 things. Had some issues upon first login of my profile (had to grant access to a few system folders before everything started working again).

Went to save an attachment from outlook and upon saving it to my desktop, the explorer crashed again.

Not sure about the rest of your post...I only have one profile of mine on this machine. There is no 'old' and 'new' profile. I am unable to delete this profile as it is a domain account and I have no other way to login to the machine (from my days as a desktop support tech you have to log out for a profile to be fully deleted).

dalchina said:

Hi, sorry, missed a sentence.

'Create a new user profile for test purposes'

We'll see if IT will allow me to do that but pretty sure GPO has me locked down and will stop me if I try to create a local user.

If you create new user profile,it will be fixed, and it may occur again. So when it eventually happened again , I backed up the registry and the new user profile CLEAN. Then I copy my old user profile files just without the "ntuser" files. If you want to back up those in your new profile you have to do it running under Linux live usb in order not to mess with permissions (which I did and still I got a message that the files cannot be even copied because they're in use).
Try it

FWIW, it turns out my problem was related to installing a second hard drive. I'd replaced a slower 3TB drive with a faster 6TB drive, and Windows 10 didn't seem to adjust to the new install very well. I ended up reinstalling Windows 10 and everything has been perfect since.

I work for a massive company and am still waiting for IT to get back to me but unfortunately I'm locked down from doing a lot of this due to GPO. Even if I wanted to re-install Windows I'd have to ship my laptop as I work remote. Ugh. Miss the days when I was the system admin and had GOD mode to all systems lol...*sigh*

This problem is a big issue. Something (I wonder what), changes the permissions maybe? I can't fix them without making new user account, i don't know how, and everything I tried , failed. This was fixed from December (last time saw it), and now I was forced to format and do a completely fresh installation , due to this problem.
I even changed my windows 10 key, bought a new one , as the one I was using, was from eBay and had problems with it.
Hope this won't happen again. It's totally frustrating.

dalchina said:

- so if it's a work PC, then it's best your IT dept fixes it...

No matter, I just got a new laptop yesterday actually. But I dealt with the issue until yesterday haha.