The Shell stopped unexpectedly and explorer.exe was restarted

Question

We have about 1000 users running windows 11 that have been having windows shell crashes (task bar and file manager goes away and the shell is restarted. We see an event log entry that says Winlogon: The Shell stopped unexpectedly and explorer.exe was restarted.

Is there a way to better troubleshoot this? we have a case open with Microsoft but so far no luck in finding the cause.

In case it matters this seems to affect the Dell Latitude 7440. But we are not certain that its limited to that model.

See screenshot for the event log that occurs when the issue happens.

Answer 1

Hello jaybird283,

These type of error may have multiple sources for it to happen so I would recommend a holistic approach for troubleshooting.

1. Stop and restart the service. Using an elevated Powershell window run:

Stop-Process -Name explorer -Force

Start-Process explorer

2. Check for Windows integrity issues: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/repair-a-windows-image?view=windows-11
3. Check for drive issues, running:

chkdsk /f /r /x

4. Check for driver updates for your components using:

Get-WindowsDriver -Online

5. Perform a Clean Boot to discard conflicting apps with Explorer shell: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

--If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept as answer--

Answer 2

I am looking for more advanced troubleshooting to know exactly what caused the issue. some way to Analize crash dumps (and generate them in the first place) or logs to do a deep dive into the issue to find root cause. @Limitless Technology