search/explorer crashing. event log shows dll errors. disc imaging?

My version of windows is Windows 10 Home: 21H2.

i already did scannow and dism. in command prompt, it didn't say anything was wrong particularly. i could try to find logs.

But I noticed a few things:

search/explorer didn't noticeably stop and refresh until the 26th of June.

Event Viewer showed errors showing DLLs related to the search feature and windows explorer. some kind of net frame or something.

After Microsoft told me to send them program crash logs, i found errors starting June 15th. June 20th had VIsual C++ updates installed.

Errors were all Windows Explorer. June 14th, a cumulative update for windows 10 was installed.

Starting probably mid-April, there were search errors. I recall some sort of windows error was causing problems. it could have been something like lagging in search in windows explorer, and something else. Microsoft had uninstalled a recent update after that.

So what I have been told by Microsoft was to uninstall the latest update, but also to reinstall windows. some people have said to do a repair install, and some articles say to use macrium reflect, and i know this site recommends that.

I would like to know some information about the best way to do that.

Basically, since explorer often crashes when searching, but it may allow me to use it to copy and paste (it did for copying data to an internal drive), how is the best way to use macrium reflect? i do not know if i have used it on this system, or previously on a different one.

One person says that repair installs will not necessarily work using the same version of windows, but i know the current one is the only one that i can use with all my software and still get microsoft support the longest. I do not know if always doing repair installs when an update seems to prevent files from working is always going to be the solution.

i do know that the event log shows a pattern, and i am not the only person who has had this issue. it has happened for years.

Please let me know about macrium reflect.
Thanks,
Joshua

i probably have a way to back up some stuff on this hard drive by copying and pasting to a specific location, yet i can't search for things due to this issue with windows explorer. What is the difference between a disc image, and a backup? On this system, i can't backup everything. It seems possible that some stuff might be recovered from the manufacturer, and then i probably can put a disc image onto an external hard drive some way. I noticed that the free edition seems to make a different kind of disc image than the home edition (not a file and folder back up). Would I need to make a backup of specific files and a disc image?

something is strange this time. i did practically all of the steps, but windows explorer is not crashing. i am getting the error that windows explorer is not working, no negative results with checkdisk.

Ran troubleshooter prior to searching and it restarted explorer first before opening. First search did not crash with external drive this time. Second one did. Explorer always crashes with external drive search, while internal drives don’t. But error is likely constantly there.

I am attaching screen shots.

Also, I don't have a terabyte external drive, but I am wondering if I can just backup the size that is taken up?

Alternate profile shows some of these such as "reducedspeed" and the one that is just "IMG" and a number. It showed the error, and i used the fix. i have not had it crash explorer on the external drive after this, nor internal drive. You might be able to see that it showed the error that windows explorer was not working. I have seen that it was showing it not working after that as well in the troubleshooting, but not in the search/explorer.
By the way, in the separate issue, i could not type at login for the separate account when it asked to create a pin, but i could login by skipping the pin.

Yes, sure, i will follow up with this tomorrow further. However, I will note that these things happened:
Some of those images I believe were from the new user account. I cannot remember specifically. After entering the new user account, I ran the troubleshooter, I believe. It seems that I searched the data drive (D), for something, then I searched multiple times in the external drive. I had done these after restarting explorer as a fix in the alternate user. Then i logged off of the alternate user, and went to the original user, and ran the search on the external drive, and what happened was that it didn't crash, just like it didn't in the alternate user. Before making the alternate user, it had crashed during the search. I don't recall making any changes with the services on this system. If I had, what I would have done would be to simply force-stop a vpn service in the task manager. No other changes have been made.

i can do scan now, search diagnostic, and rebuild search index next.
The way that I logged into the new account was because I linked it to a microsoft account and skipped the pin. Windows allowed me to somehow connect to the internet at the login. It probably would not have worked if i had not been able to type some internet password at the login to verify my account. there is some known windows issue that disallows new users to use the keyboard when trying to make a new PIN. i will try the other things the next time as it is late here.

i do not really understand this issue myself. it does not make sense that it seems that windows explorer stopped crashing after i restarted it in the alternate user. It still showed the error existing to a degree, but the event viewer stopped showing an error of that. It showed some kind of com error. I am not sure if somehow a permissions thing got changed in the main account after an update or something, but that really doesn't make sense.

- - - Updated - - -

i missed to use option 3 in indexing. will that mess something up that i used option 1? it has indexed most of everything already. Do i need to stop it and go to option 3? what does take note of what is indexed mean? recently, explorer did not crash when i restarted it in the alternate user account.

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these images are from the alternate user profile. This is what i found:
c pass chkdsk


D pass chkdsk


F pass chkdsk
all three did not find any bad sectors.


scannow:


C drive had bad sectors fixed on windows. other discs do not have windows installations, but can be explored in windows. i am also unable to download the diagnostic software that you linked to. it says to get it from microsoft apps or something like that, but when i click that (even if logged in), it just shows a pop up screen, and shows information. there is no actual download link.

i have used 124 GB and 113 GB free on C drive. I have an external drive that has more free space if for some reason i need to make a backup, i have asked on microsoft community about that file. I can talk to support since this system is under warranty. I don't know if it makes any difference, but under This PC, the hard drives have a green checkmark by them, which they didn't have before resetting the search feature in the alternate account. I still haven't had it stop and reset itself while searching (not even in the external drive) after doing that in either user account. I do not think those green check marks were there prior to doing that. I don't know if something changed after the restart of the service previously. I think the green check marks were by the disks on the alternate account yesterday, and after reindexing, it occurred on this account. It is possible that some settings may have changed.