My Windows 11 Stops opening apps when my External HDD is connected.

Question

My Windows 11 Stops opening apps when my External HDD is connected.

sans ketchup 0

So around yesterday I was just going to open up one of the games on my external hard drive, but I couldn't open anything at all, despite everything working fine merely seconds ago. I have a Acer Aspire A314-36P (Version 23H2 (OS Build 22631.6199)), I think my external drive is a JMicron Generic SCSI Disk Device. I tried connecting it to another computer but it was perfectly fine. My computer is completely fine when it's not connected. Anytime I log into my computer now with my drive connected, it takes a long time to start and it generally takes a long time to do anything. I switched the USB port i connected it to, and that didn't help. I updated my computer, tried chkdsk /f /r, tried a clean boot, and even tried safe mode. Nothing worked. Disk management said it was healthy, Device Manager said it was just fine, and I haven't found any fix. I tried to play l4d on my computer and it worked just fine, i just had to unplug the drive when opening the game. I think this might be something with explorer

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Answer 1

Thoura Sopheak Nanta 580

Hi @sans ketchup

In File Explorer > View > Options > Always show icons, never thumbnails. This prevents Explorer from choking on game files.

Also in file explorer, Right‑click the external drive > Properties > uncheck “Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed.”

Make sure your Universal Bus Controllers drivers are up to date, and also check if your JMicron storage driver is up to date.

If your using Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver, update it to the latest version via Intel's website, Intel has resolved this similiar issue. Use this link https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/search.html#cf-tabfilter=Downloads&cf-downloadsppth=Memory%20and%20Storage,SSD%20Management%20Tools,Intel%C2%AE%20Rapid%20Storage%20Technology%20(Intel%C2%AE%20RST) and download the driver which aligns and compatible with your hardware.

Did you use chkdsk on your main drive or your external HDD? if you used on your main drive, use it on your HDD by running:

chkdsk *: /f /r

Replace * with your actual external HDD Symbol.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

Nanta

sans ketchup 0 Reputation points

2026-08-15T02:46:39.8666667+00:00

I tried the thumbnail thing but it didnt help. I also tried to right click the second drive, but file explorer freezes when the drive is plugged in. My drivers are up to date, i tried chkdsk on the external too. I havent installed intel rst and I don't want to install a driver unless I can confirm that it's actually compatible with my hardware. do you have any other suggestions?
Thoura Sopheak Nanta 580 Reputation points

2026-08-15T03:32:51.75+00:00
Hi @sans ketchup

May you open event viewer, then Windows logs > System, then plug in the external HDD, is there any errors logs when plugged in?

You don't need to install IRST, I was suggesting to update IRST incase if your device is using IRST, because Intel addressed the lagging issue when plugging in external HDD, for IRST Storage drivers laptops.

Also if you want to double-check your theory, open Task Manager, scroll down, end task Explorer.exe, then run new tasks using Run New Task, if performance improves or is normal even plugged in, Explorer is the culprit, to turn explorer back on, Simply Run a new task then enter 'explorer'.

In the meantime, you can try running these commands seperately on Command prompt as administrator:

sfc /scannow DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Try creating another user profile, log in to it, then plug in the drive, Does it also lags? If it doesn't lag, it's profile specific.

Hope this helps!

Best Regards,

Nanta
sans ketchup 0 Reputation points

2026-08-15T16:48:18.3+00:00

I didn't see anything in event viewer. I also can't run "explorer.exe" at all when the drive is plugged in. The commands both did nothing, but it did say that there were corrupted files and repaired them. I did the new user profile test and explorer does not freeze. Though, the drive appears as "Local Disk (D:)" if I remember correctly. It also doesn't show storage capacity. If I try to open the drive or click properties there, Explorer freezes. Steam also doesn't show the drive as connected.