Windows Explorer Crashes At Least Hourly

[Hoggy Dog]

Windows explorer crashes at least hourly, usually only discovered when I close my browser and see my blank, empty desktop, which has been cleared of everything- icons and taskbar. The only way I have found to recover is to log off, then log back on. Rebooting also restores it. But once restored, it soon crashes again. I read somewhere that entering "explorer.exe" into the "New Task" tab of Task Manager would work, but it doesn't have any effect.



I would appreciate help discovering what is causing this and correcting the problem. I have read elsewhere that there are Windows Logs and/or "crash dumps" but I don't know where to find them, and the fact is that my computer is not exactly crashing, which is why I'm not posting this in the BSOD forum.



This is a long-standing issue, 2-5 years at least, but in the past it only happened once or twice a week and did not clear my Desktop- it simply popped up an error message "Windows Explorer has stopped working" with a handy button that said "Restart Windows Explorer" so it wasn't more than an inconvenience. What's new is that it is now an hourly (or more) occurrence, wipes out any open folders (closes them, losing whatever unsaved work was in them) and does not pop up a convenient "Restart Explorer" dialog box.



It would be great if there was some diagnostic software that could help me determine what is going wrong because Windows Control Panel isn't helpful, or I just don't know which area to look in. Thanks.

 

[iko22]

Hi Hoggy Dog

entering "explorer.exe" into the "New Task" tab of Task Manager works when the Desktop and Taskbar has disappeared.

What your computer needs, is to further diagnose the problem, is to run a Clean Startup. See :ar:Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup .

 

[Hoggy Dog]

entering "explorer.exe" into the "New Task" tab of Task Manager works when the Desktop and Taskbar has disappeared.

I read somewhere that entering "explorer.exe" into the "New Task" tab of Task Manager would work, but it doesn't have any effect.

Thanks for your response.

 

[iko22]