How to fix explorer.exe restarting in loop

Question

How to fix explorer.exe restarting in loop

Breizh-Brittany 20

Hello,
I'm an average user and I have windows 10 Pro and tried since I bough it in 2020 to make the OS clean. I quickly learnt many things, like do not blindly follow advices from youtube videos of "experts" showing how to have a fast responsive computer. And rather learn each part of windows before changing it componants or anything.

Anyway, since several days I have big problem, even if I don't think I touched anything OS related since months.

Explorer.EXE restart in loop. I don't want to reinstall Windows.
The loop happen sometimes when I start the PC, sometimes when I put a game in Fullscreen and Always when I rotate the screen to portrait mode using NVidia Control Panel.

I tried many things already but I'm not expert so I probably missed something somewhere.

Another problem which I should mention, although I'm not sure if it's related as I have the problem since 2 years now:
PC do not start sometimes, It goes on until bios then screen lost connection, PC's still turning. I have to reset and then it always turn on properly.

Please tell me anything you have in mind, expert or casual, I need fresh ideas!

Yours,
.Mathieu

Config
MB: Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE
PSU: Corsair RM1000x
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5800x3D
RAM: 4x16Go DDR4 Crucial Pro CP2K16G4DFRA32A
GPU: NVidia GeForce MSI Suprim RTX 3090Ti
SSD: NVMe SanDisk Force MP510 480Go

3 other storages including 1 HDD 7200rpm with the Pagefile.sys set to 64Go on it.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

0 additional answers

Your answer

Answer 1

DaveM121 929.6K Independent Advisor

Your detailed description of the problems indicate the Windows instalaltion is corrupt, the best option to stabilise your Windows installation is to perform an in-place repair with the Windows 10 ISO.

Please ensure you download the ISO in the same language as you use for the Windows UI, follow the steps, this is then not like re-installing Windows, it is just like an update and your personal files, settings and installed software will not be affected.

Click this link:

https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows10

to download the Media Creation Tool (Click on Download Tool Now), with that you can download the latest Windows 10 ISO (Select Create Installation Media for Another PC), then choose ISO, not USB

When the ISO file completes downloading

Disconnect from the Internet

Disconnect all external devices with the exception of a mouse or keyboard.

Temporarily disable any 3rd party Anti-virus you may have installed

Then, in Windows File Explorer, double click the ISO and then run Setup.exe and select the Install option.

Very Important - ensure you select the option to keep your files and apps.

Breizh-Brittany 20

Thanks for this answer! I'm a bit affraid of trying this but if I have no choice.

This is the a small part of the result of DISMRepairLogFile :

2025-09-10 05:12:08, Warning               DISM   DISM Provider Store: PID=1588 TID=1772 Failed to load the provider: X:\windows\SYSTEM32\Dism\MetaDeployProvider.dll. - CDISMProviderStore::Internal_GetProvider(hr:0x8007007e)
2025-09-10 05:12:08, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider: PID=1588 TID=1772 [G:\] is not recognized by the DISM FFU provider. - CFfuImage::Initialize
[1588] [0x80070002] FIOReadFileIntoBuffer:(1452):  Specified file cannot be found.
[1588] [0xc142011c] UnmarshallImageHandleFromDirectory:(641)
[1588] [0xc142011c] WIMGetMountedImageHandle:(2906)

Is it possible to find the corrupted file(s) and replace them manually?

Breizh-Brittany 20 Reputation points

2025-09-12T05:19:33.2333333+00:00

I have also read that there is a tool that replaces .dll broken or missing files and that it could be effective in my case. Is that true?
I'm downloading the ISO now...
Breizh-Brittany 20 Reputation points

2025-09-13T07:46:00.8533333+00:00

For the boot, finally I'm not sure when it stop booting, maybe it's before the UEFI boot as I just noticed today screen lost connection before UEFI screen (exatly when the hyphen shows)
And this image says it's also a corruption matter :
Deleted

This comment has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The comment was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.
Breizh-Brittany 20 Reputation points

2026-06-11T20:31:44.9266667+00:00

Hey, I found the problem and just wrote a reply here but it goes deleted automatically for "violation of our Code of Conduct" so good luck everyone because I won't re-wrote.