Windows 10: Seems like explorer.exe is failing to load properly at boot.

Hello TenForums.com,

So.... Ever since formatting my PC with Windows 10 1703, I've been getting this weird issue with what seems to be explorer.exe failing to load correctly at boot time. The PC boots, gets to the desktop just fine but the taskbar shows none of my apps icons (pinned or in the notification area) just completely empty, all it shows is the start button, and I can't click on it, nothing works, the taskbar is just dead, just like when there's a explorer.exe crash.

Only a restart fixes it, the really annoying part is that it probably happens around 50 percent of the time I boot my PC.

.iso was downloaded directly from Microsoft's update assistant or whatever its called.

My specs:

• 2500K
• Z77 Extreme4 (2.90M BIOS)
• 8GB DDR3 RAM
• 128GB SSD as my main drive with a 500GB HDD as my secondary drive
• Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury
• Windows 10 Pro (10563.138)

Did you do an upgrade from the Anniversary update to the Creators update, or did you do a clean install of Windows?

When I did the upgrade from Version 1607 to 1703, it bricked my system. The BCD got corrupted, and once I got it back up and running, I had tons of driver issues, including the issue you state.

I have an ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0, with the AMD FX 6300 with 8 GB Gskill RAM. I had to do a clean install of Windows to fix my issues.

I had upgraded 2 other PCs to Windows 10 1703 from 1607, and had no issues. Those are both AMD FX systems as well.

Makes me wonder if a clean install would fix your issue, unless this is a clean install, then I'm wondering if it is driver issues. The z77 chipset is not officially supported for Windows 10 "z97 and above", but many have stated they have had no issues with Windows 10 on z77 chipsets.

I had Windows 10 on an old AM2+ motherboard with the nforce 750a southbridge, and unfortunately, the Creators update removed support for AM2+ processors, as I cannot get into upgrade to Windows 10 1703 as it says the processor is unsupported.

Hopefully your issue gets fixed. Like I said, a clean install fixed my issue, but, 1703 has tons of issues 1607 didn't have, and it's simple things like .Net framework failing to install due to the system thinking it's still the insider preview, and it was a pain to get my Microsoft account added back on as explorer kept crashing.

MS better get on the ball on fixing this update. So far, it's junk in my opinion, yet its stable.

My thoughts, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Sorry for the delay.

This is on a complete clean install. Downloaded the .iso via the Microsoft Upgrade Assistant.

It's a very strange issue for sure, this doesn't happen on my secondary PC which is also on a platform not officially supported (AMD AM2+).

This is sad really.

Although it looks like the newest update helped with some issues "1703 15063.138" But there appears to be a couple bugs not sorted out, which it appears Microsoft is working on the issues and going to release updates within the next few weeks.

I won't be surprised if the update gets pulled from update servers and the media creation tool till these issues are fixed.