File Explorer is freezing and crashing my Windows 10

Hello,

Yesterday my system has started to experience freezing and crashes. Observed symptoms include the taskbar stopping and no longer functioning, the startup being slower than usual (I own an SSD), the screen going black and returning to normal after the login sequence completes, windows and programs halting and not being responsive.

I've searched across several different forums for solutions and I've looked at the logs in Control Panel. I've tried things like the command SFC /Scannow which replied to me by stating that the checker found system corruptions but was unable to fix them and that a log file was placed in a path, which exists but the log itself does not.

I've tried running DISM Scanhealth, Checkhealth and Repair health, with only the last failing to complete. I've also checked my drives for errors and spent a hour fixing my D: drive when Windows detected it had errors which did nothing. I cleared my explorer cache and that also achieved nothing positive. I tried deleting songs that had long filenames from my computer under the belief that they might have done something to Explorer - like how they included Unicode symbols, which is when the issue started sometime around this. Restarting explorer does not help. Alt-tabbing causes the computer to slow down.

Here are my device specifications I could gather from Windows settings:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40GHz

Installed RAM: 16.0 GB

System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

No pen or touch

Edition & Version: Windows 10 Pro 22H2

Installed on 29/12/2022

OS build: 19045.3570

Experience: Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19052.1000.0

[EDITED] Here are two of the logs from Control Panel: Logs

Note the difference in names and that they both have timestamps from GM T: Sunday, June 6, 2100 12:33:11 AM and GMT: Saturday, May 16, 2026 2:52:08 PM

I also should exclaim I've utilized applications that modify my Start Menu - Stardock's Start10. I've used this application's purge batch script to do a full clean of my system from this application hoping it was the culprit, but this achieved nothing and the problem persists. I also have an shell extension HashTab which adds another tab to the file properties window that shows me file hashes, which I have not installed but I am not completely sure would be the culprit of my problem.

Around the time the problems initially started, I was enabling things like the Windows Clipboard History and trying it out. I was pressing random windows key buttons, one of which was Win+M, minimizing all windows. This is the point that my explorer started to show aforementioned problems, freezing my system and failing. I should also mention that in the control panel logs, explorer was shown as explorer.exe but in later errors it capitalized into Explorer.EXE, which to an end-user like me does alarm me as to the meaning of an abrupt change like that. I could show all logs made by control panel if necessary.

I should also add that a computer technician that installed my SSD and a new RX550 graphics card (the old one was faulty and had to be replaced) installed a custom system Windows ISO named Phoenix LiteOS, but I never had any major system issues on it like this one. I hope that to anyone reading this, I have explained everything that needs to be said and provided as much information as possible that is necessary to help me out on this problem, including everyone else that may have been facing a similar problem.

UPDATE:

Ran DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

It ran for 15 minutes, reached 100.0% then said the source files could not be found. I will try to find a way to attach the LOG file made by DISM, which unlike sfc does actually show up.

UPDATE1:

Here is the Google Drive link to the DISM log. Log here.