Win 11: Windows Explorer hangs then dies, burying all of the opened windows

Question

After switching to Windows 11, Windows Explorer on my laptop has started dying really often (current build is 22000.282, this is a release one, not insider, not dev).

It happens during some common work: viewing pdf files, editing docx documents, creating/moving shortcuts etc.

Windows starts hanging for some seconds, then Explorer dies and restarts itself, but all the previously opened windows do die and don't recover once explorer restarts. This is a huge pain, and hasn't been fixed for literally decades...

As for the most recent Win Explorer crash, here's the report that I've got from Security and Maintenance → Reliability reports:

Source

Windows Explorer

Summary

Stopped working

Date

‎28.‎10.‎2021 13:04

Status

Report sent

Description

Faulting Application Path: C:\Windows\explorer.exe

Problem signature

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH

Application Name: explorer.exe

Application Version: 10.0.22000.120

Application Timestamp: e846e749

Fault Module Name: Windows.UI.Xaml.dll

Fault Module Version: 10.0.22000.282

Fault Module Timestamp: 07e577ff

Exception Code: c0000005

Exception Offset: 000000000016aecf

OS Version: 10.0.22000.2.0.0.256.48

Locale ID: 1049

Additional Information 1: 7679

Additional Information 2: 7679b9bd2eaa94158d1934247ab0c990

Additional Information 3: e85a

Additional Information 4: e85ab518c760951d88a308f26db8436c

Extra information about the problem

Bucket ID: 49617e4cb1c51211e0cd30ffbd24cd6d (1210677749780630893)

So there are 2 questions:

1) What do I do to prevent Win Explorer from crashing so often for no reason on release builds of Win 11?

2) When will Windows dev team add the auto-reopening of the windows that died due to the Explorer crash? After decades of pain and frustration, it's now high time to introduce this feature!

Answer 1

Clean Boot is different with the Safe Mode, in case of Clean Boot, you may still use service and if there is any service which you need, then you may enable it in the Clean Boot and do your jobs and then enable other services one by one.

Answer 2

No, I did not, because crashes happen at random moments, and I cannot afford myself sit down idle doing nothing with the minimal amount of drivers loaded.

Answer 3

Glad you did, there are many feedbacks in the Feedback Hub but the Windows team will review them all but it might take some time to solve the issue.

Have you performed the Clean Boot as I mentioned earlier?

Answer 4

As for the Feedback Hub report -- I did it long ago. No result, no feedback.

Answer 5

Try open start and search for feedback and open the Feedback Hub app and report this issue.

Try perform a Clean Boot and see if the problem persist?

Take a look at How to perform a clean boot in Windows (microsoft.com).