Win 11 Pro - File Explorer Crashing - Outlook and teams not loading

Question

Hi everyone

I have a brand new (3 months old) Dell Precision Laptop I9 - 32Gb Ram - win 11 pro, fairly high spec machine, its on our company domain so is running some group policies for security. I also plug it into a 2 x USB C dell dock I bought with it so I can run multiple screens. We are also using a synology NAS as the main server which I believe does handle a bit of the policies (I am not an expert on this - someone else in the company handles this and has washed their hands of the issue declaring it not a network problem).

Shortly after I bought it, sometimes after booting windows in the morning it would ask for my domain credentials which was weird, I would enter them and then it would either only partially load my profile (desktop icons, task bar icons etc) or not at all. So re-boot would usually do the trick.

Couple of weeks later file explorer just randomly started giving me the blue wheel of death and would hang totally if you clicked on any folder in file explorer (home, one drive, documents and network locations).

I spoke with Dell (fat lot of good that was) who said as it isnt a hardware issue they are not interested due to the warranty I had with the machine. I paid for a one off software suppport with them who promptly told me to re-install windows.

Dell being useless aside, I did do a clean install of win 11 (partly to get rid of the very useful bloatware they install). Apart from a few issues of the clean install wiping all the drivers including the wifi driver which meant I couldnt proceed with installing windows (got past this in the end) it worked beautifully for another coulple of weeks.

Then.... randomly file explorer fell over again for no apparent reason. Funnily enough MS issued an update a few days later which in the release notes mentioning fixing file explorer issues.

Great worked again for a few more days.

Then MS issued another update in the last few days (which cannot be rolled back) and the whole thing imploded again.

This time file explorer fell over once again, outlook takes about 5 mins to load (rather than the normal 5 secs) and then struggles to connect some of the various email accounts, teams will open about 10 mins after clicking it.

Randomly if you leave it about 30mins to 1hr it sometimes file explorer just starts working.

I have checked the performance manager things to see if anything is tying up resources but its pretty much idling across all metrics.

Phoned MS UK help line who directed me to aka.ms/pro to log a support - great, except when I tried to log into it (using both personal and business email accounts) it threw an error saying something about tenants and a non human readable error message (really useful).

I am not an IT expert and totally at my wits end as Dell just want to hide behind a foreign call centre who just follows a script that just ends up with "re-install windows" and windows you cannot get hold of.

I even got a local IT expert in for 2 hours yesterday (paid) and even he walked away scratching his head?

I have a feeling it might be linked to the fact my company has mapped my home folders to be on the synology NAS drive (so we can hot desk between computers) but might be totally clutching at straws with that one.

Can anyone please give me some pointers on what to do?

I cannot keep re-installing windows every couple of weeks - this is insane!

Answer 1

Hello

1. If you have mapped any network drives, please try to remove all then check the issue again. Remove the cloud drive, too.
2. Try to login with a local account to check whether the issue only occurred with the specific account. If there is roaming profile configured, please remove the configuration temporarily then check the issue agagin.
3. If there is any third party antivirus software installed, please remove it temporarily then reboot to check the issue again.
4. The autoruns tool could be used to check all the automatic running components. Pay attention to the component listed in explorer option. If it is possible, please untick the third party options then check the issue again.

Autoruns for Windows - Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn

For analyzing the issue directly, we could try to collect a dump file while the explorer hang or crash. Open administrator command line and run the following command line:

Reg Add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /f

Reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /V DumpFolder /t REG_SZ /D "C:\CrashDumps" /f

MD C:\CrashDumps

Reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /V DumpType /t REG_DWORD /D 2 /f

Reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\LocalDumps" /V DumpCount /t REG_DWORD /D 10 /f

Reboot, there will be dump files created in C:\Crashdumps if the explorer crashed next time. The following may be useful to open a crash dump file.

Debugging a process dump with WinDbg, the very basics... · Joe Kirwin's Blog (josephkirwin.com)

Of course, you could upload the dump to onedrive and share the link here.

Analyzing a dump may be complicated, we may consider to open a ticket for more microsoft resources.

Open Support requests | Microsoft Learn