Explorer freezing randomly on opening random folders for a few second

gorgor · 05 Apr 2019

I have the following problem on my laptop, Dell XPS 15 9570 i7-8750H 16GB RAM, that the Windows Explorer freezes for a few seconds, maybe 3-5 seconds on random folders. Just happened again after I opened it and clicked c: and the content just showed up after 3 seconds or so and the entire Explorer was frozen and the GUI not responsive.

Is there any way to find out, what is causing this?

I dont think I have other lags somewhere in Windows, just in this context.

The c: drive is a Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD.

I am using Windows Defender as AV, so no third party AV. Latest Windows 10 64bit, 1809. I did a sfc /scannow already, no errors found. Device drivers are all up to date.

It also sometimes happens when I move a folder with lots of files in it, that it also freezes totally, no copy GUI appears it just freezes and then the copy process is done. It also happens sometimes, when delete a file.

zinou · 05 Apr 2019

Hi Gorgor,

When you say, explorer freezes. does that mean that only explorer freezes or all desktop?
Did you also have audio or video glitches, when playing a video or audio?

Usually, this problem is caused by bad drivers. have you already updated your drivers (Video driver, Intel Rapid Storage, ...etc.). just go to the Dell website and look for newer drivers.

If updating your drivers, didn't solve the problem, then you need to take a trace using Windows Performance Toolkit. Here is a tutorial on how to download and install this tool.

Once the tool installed, type WPRUI in the start menu to open Windows Performance Recorder;
Enable the following options:

Explorer freezing randomly on opening random folders for a few second-capture.png

Start recording the trace while reproducing the issue.
After the issue occurs, stop recording.
compress the generated ".ETL" file and the ".NGENPDB" folder, and share them.

dalchina · 05 Apr 2019

Hi, the first simple things you could try:
a. monitor your task manager using an appropriate view e.g. Resource Monitor when the freeze happens and see if any usage spikes at this point
b. run checks on your disk
- start with
chkdsk x: /scan
from an admin command or Powershell prompt, where x = the drive letter in question
c. Check your Reliability History to make sure something didn't crash at that time

Then try creating a new user for test purposes, and see if the same thing happens when logged in as that user, separating user profile issues from Windows-related ones.

You can try:
Enable and Disable Driver Verifier in Windows 10 | Tutorials

Please confirm you are not over-clocking.

gorgor · 05 Apr 2019

zinou said:

Hi Gorgor,

When you say, explorer freezes. does that mean that only explorer freezes or all desktop?
Did you also have audio or video glitches, when playing a video or audio?

Usually, this problem is caused by bad drivers. have you already updated your drivers (Video driver, Intel Rapid Storage, ...etc.). just go to the Dell website and look for newer drivers..

I cant update any drivers, because they are the latest provided. I actually indeed have sometimes entire Chrome freezes when playing a youtube video. Entire Chrome freezes for about 5-10 seconds getting white, then afterwards redrawing all windows in black and then it works again. But that happens very rarely maybe once every 100 videos or so.

No, for the Explorer, just the Explorer window freezes getting white then afterwards working again.

It could get hard to reproduce the issue while recording, because it is so random and I cant reproduce it with accuracy, but I will try that.

- - - Updated - - -
@zinou I tried to reproduce this and I actually got Explorer to freeze for a few seconds after opening it, but looking into the etl file I dont see anything during that time index:

https://i.imgur.com/f6rBGiX.png

zinou · 05 Apr 2019

Can you share your trace? The etl file and the .NGENPDB foldet

gorgor · 07 Apr 2019

@zinou Would that contain personal information? Could you maybe tell for something I should look for? The file and folder are really big though. I actually recorded another one, deleting one of the .NGENPDB folders, and that causes the Explorer to freeze for maybe 10 seconds with white frozen GUI and no reaction (couldnt move the window), but that is 3GB in size.

- - - Updated - - -

I just noticed that there is no progress GUI showing up when deleting a folder with large number of sub folders / files, or copying it, the Explorer just freezes for the entire delete/copy time.

- - - Updated - - -

I think I have found out what is causing the freezes... this is so typical, seems like a bug to me in Windows or Explorer. It seems to be related to the fact, that I have lots of images saved on Desktop, maybe around 200. I had moved them all into a sub folder on the Desktop, and now the freezes are gone. Not sure why, but it seems, that every copy/move/delete caused Windows to somehow access all images saved under Desktop and causes a total 100% freeze of Explorer for a couple of seconds. This looks like a regression to me, because it seems to scale linear, the larger the file structur is, you want to move or delete. For example, if you delete a folder, with lots of sub folders, like 50+ or so, the freeze is alreay 3 seconds.