Solved Windows Explorer stops responding often

[MisterL]

After I boot up and log into my profile, I see the welcome screen and then my desktop. In the left side of my task bar/notification area, I only see one icon (e.g the battery icon) and the rest appear a couple of minutes after each other. When I hover over the icons on the task bar, they don't respond like they're supposed to. Whichever icon the cursor is hovering over is supposed to spawn two borders: one to the left and one to the right. And when I hover over the Windows button, it doesn't light up. So basically the task bar doesn't respond to the cursor until all the icons in the notification area have loaded. However if I were to click on any of the icons on the task bar before the icons have loaded, the background of the Windows button turns white and the task bar freezes. I know when its freezing because the time in the notification area stands still. If I click again anywhere on the task bar, a window pops up saying the application/program has stopped working and the two options I have are "end process" and "cancel". If I choose "end process", all the icons on my desktop and even the task bar disappears. All that remains is my sticky notes and my wallpaper. Something similar happens when I open folders. If i click on a folder icon on my desktop, it opens. But after a few minutes of working in the Windows Explorer, that same error window pops up and choosing "end process" has the same effect as before. 90% of the time, Safe Mode is the only way for me to use my laptop. The other 10% is when I boot it up normally and take a chance, hoping it'll work fine. When the icons and task bar disappear, the only way for me to shut down my laptop is holding down the power button. Even closing the top is useless because the screen just goes off and goes on again when I open it up. A while back, I was trying to free up memory in the Windows Task Manager and accidentally ended the explorer.exe process, which immediately made all my desktop icons and my task bar disappear. Since then I've known there's something wrong with my Windows Explorer but I have no idea how to fix it.

 

[RolandJS]

"...Safe Mode is the only way for me to use my laptop...."

My two laptops have similar problems. I think we might be the victims of too many security and monitoring utilities that are squabbling in the background and causing foreground problems. I'm now in the midst of dialing back some stuff. I do not know if my problems are your problems -- let's keep each other posted as to what discovered solutions respectively work.

 

[MisterL]

Now that you've mentioned security utilities...

A while back ( around 5 months ago) I tried to update my AVG 2011. I opened the interface and went to the update option. Then it prompted me to restart to finish the installation. When I restarted mp pc, something similar to what's happening now happened back then. I'd open a window (any file, folder or application) and just one click inside that window could cause it to stop responding. I Googled for help and found that AVG causes some people's pcs to work slowly. So I tried uninstalling my AVG. I was unsuccessful but I never had that problem ever again...until this happened. Maybe I should look into how to remove AVG and see if it'll solve the problem.

 

[RolandJS]

Some time ago, a gamer magazine recommended AVG because of its speed and small footprint. How times have changed! AVG is not the only reindeer that looks like it ate the other seven.
I got that line from a recent cartoon similar to: The Grinch That Stole Christmas.

 

[file3456]

Install AVG on your PC, Mac | AVG installation files

That's their removal utility. If that doesn't clear the issue, run Autoruns, go to File and save the ARN file. Zip the ARN file and upload here. I'll look to see what could be doing this. Have you visited the Event Viewer recently?


Autoruns for Windows - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs

 

[MisterL]

It worked

I used the AVG removal tool while in Safe Mode a few hours ago. It successfully removed AVG and when I booted up my pc normally, I could clearly see the problem I had was no more. Even the icons in the notification area appeared considerably faster than before. Thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it.

 

[file3456]

No problem. Please mark the thread solved.