Windows Explorer hangs and crashes previewing SVG files, eg. preview / tiles / icon view is used

Question

• This occurs on both of my laptops.
• I have two separate laptops, one Dell, the other Lenovo, and BOTH have this problem. My Dell is i712th Gen P chip with 16GRam. My Lenovo is i513theGen H chip with 16G Ram.
• Both of my laptops have Windows 11 Home, Powertoys 76.2 (but issue also with the previous versions of Powertoys)
• This only started AFTER allowing the most recent set of Windows 11 Home updates which I held off on for a couple months until windows forced me to update

Prior to updating in November 2022, I had no problem with PowerToys viewing svg files in a folder.

After the Windows update on my Dell I had two major problems. Firstly the explorer stopped loading completely and I was forced to uninstall the Windows update using CMD console from windows pre-load (ie. troubleshooting mode).

After removing the Windows update on my Dell, this caused more additional problems and I was forced to factory reset my laptop, reinstalled my Windows 11 Home fresh - deleting all files and settings.

After the fresh factory reset of the Dell, with ALL the latest Windows updates, the remaining issue I had was this:

• For any folders with optimization for pictures, or when manually changing settings to view tiles / icons or adding preview panel and attempting to view SVG files, the explorer would infinitely load and hang, causing explorer to entirely crash, and forcing me to log-out/log-in to reload the explorer.

This SVG viewing / explorer hanging issue occurs on my Dell AND Lenovo.

Some general feedback for Microsoft - your most recent updates are causing more damage than the security issues they purport to prevent.

Sometimes I wonder if these are real security fixes or just ways of sneakily adding more bloatware, over-reaching to mess with things to keep the product manager employed, or messing with my settings to collect more data.

I am getting fed up with the reliability (lack of) with Windows.. It's getting back to the bad ol' days where you have to be a technician or tech head to use WindowsOS.

Answer 1

Already installed and uninstalled it because of the same bad experience. The complete explorer freezes and isnt usable after reopening folder / windows again. I had to restart my computer, just to recognize the behaviour was still the same if opening random folders with non svg files in it.

Solution was like i mentioned uninstalling the powertoys. Gladly everything works fine as before again - was glad that powertoys didnt corrupted system settings after uninstalling - would have bin horrible.

Seems microsoft hasn't done anything after i rode someone complains like yours about exact the same behaviour / problems. GG

Cant belive its an official microsoft tool available in their own stores.

I opened a ticket on their official github page - and till its not solved, my bad review on their store will warn other users..

Using:

Powertoy v0.77.0

Windows:

Windows 11 Pro

Answer 2

Yes i am also facing the same issue, it freezes windows explorer

Answer 3

I had the same problem, but after uninstalling PowerToys it went away.