Explorer stops interacting with Windows and closes

I wonder if anyone can help?

Since yesterday, one of my PCs has effectively frozen where Windows Explorer is concerned. It takes several minutes to perform the simplest task, such as a file transfer. In addition to this, the Windows taskbar and start menu freeeze.

Windows Settings are also unavailable.

Looking into Event Viewer, which seems to take an eternity to load, I see the following:



Firstly, I must apologise for the image (and the one below) which was a photograph of the PC's screen: the various tools in Windows for images are inaccessible. More relevant however is that this message indicates that Explorer has failed, but why? Although I am advised to look in the Security and Maintenance control panel, there is nothing there to see.

I also notice a series of other repeating messages as follows:



However, for each of these another message soon announces that this process has successfully completed.

I do not know if these messages are related or not, and there appears to be nothing wrong in Windows's Device Manager. I am reasonably sure that the hardware is alright as well despite this being an old PC: everything was alright on Thursday when the PC was last used.

The PC is Windows 10 and updates are very recent. The current version is 20H2 (Build 19042.928).

Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks

Mr Morgan.

@dalchina Thanks for the response.

To answer your questions:

The Windows Update part of Settings is inaccessible so I cannot determine the most recent updates. But the version of Windows is 20H2 (Build 19042.928).

A Surface Test (Disk Repair) in Hard Disk Sentinel was clean with no errors found. The same is true of Windows CHKDSK: no problems were found.

When last checked a few days ago, the C:\ drive of the PC had some 50Gb spare.

I am not sure about System Restore, booting to Safe Mode or creating a new user. This is because running anything on the affected PC takes a great deal of time. However, I will try these options tomorrow.

Well, after much ado this issue appears to have resolved. It may be that the following details may prove useful in the future:

• Concerning the storage optimiser not being able to "retrim on System Reserved", disabling the automatic defragmentation of the C:\ in Windows seems to prevent these messages. It may be that my the hard disk in question lacks a property that the automatic defragmentation now requires. The disk in question is healthy anyway.
• As for Explorer failing, perhaps the above had something to do with it. Or the problem was resolved by the (apparent) removal of Windows 10 Version 20H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5001330) had something to do with it.

In any case, the PC seems to be working normally again ... but it will be kept under observation for now.

Likely a bad drive connection or a bad drive.

I've witnessed Explorer hanging before with a bad drive connection, especially poor contact with the USB port and also with optical drive reading problems, IIRC.