RESOLVED: Explorer crashing on right click

Hi Reticzeta -

I'm Jerico T., I understand that you're having some issues right now, I'll do my best to help you with your concern.

Please try to perform In-place Repair/Upgrade.

In-Place Repair

• In-place repair/upgrade or repair reinstall is a process of re-installing Windows WITHOUT touching any of your applications or personal files. In this way if there's any data corruption, damaged system files or missing system files on your computer, this repair will fix or repair them.

To start we need to download an ISO file of Windows 11 and save it to your computer. Please follow the instruction on the link below to create an ISO file.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-downlo...

Note: You don't have to create a bootable drive, just download the ISO file and save it on your computer then run it.

After the ISO is created, follow the steps below on how to perform repair install on your computer.

Note: Please make sure that you're signed in or have administrator rights to be able to proceed for the repair install.

1. Unplug all external hardware except mouse, keyboard and LAN cable.
2. Disable or uninstall any third-party antivirus program/application to prevent them from interfering with the repair install.
3. Run the ISO file that you downloaded, if there's a prompt asking you "Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?" Click Yes
4. Windows 11 setup will open, read the license terms then Click Accept button.
5. Select Upgrade PC now then click Next button.
6. Follow the steps on your screen.

This process will take some time to complete so you need to be very patient in waiting until the process completes. Once done, restart your computer and check if the issue is resolved.

Don't hesitate to reach back if you need any further assistance.

Hope this help. Have a good day.

Thank you,

Jerico T.

Hello,

Thanks for your reply. I was hoping to avoid something like this. But I'll give it a go.
I'll take a backup tonight and give it a try tomorrow and let you know how I get on.
Thank you

Hi Reticzeta -

You're welcome. Got it, will wait for your update.

Regards,

Jerico T.

I've had the same issue on two different laptops, starting at the same time with no changes by me, although they did both run a Windows update this morning. When I went to one to open Explorer, it hung with only "Home" listed on the left side panel and the green progress bar at the top with "working on it" displayed. This took forever.

When I would launch File Explorer from the Start Menu or a desktop shortcut, it would either start up and hang at the screen described above, or it would open/close, and the desktop would clear and refresh, after about 10 seconds of nothnigness.

I tried the SFC /scannow fix, and it found some errors and corrected them, but it only seemed to help partially. Explorer would load, sometimes more quickly, but still experienced crashes on one machine. The other would open Explorer but sometimes hang. On both, the right-click context menu on any file took about 10 - 15 seconds to open, which was previously immediate.

I tried the DISM.EXE /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth on both machines, but still got crashes on one PC and context menu delays on both. They still both intermittently would load with Home displayed on the right and still take a about 5 seconds to load the other items (Downloads, Documents, etc.) which normally were instantaneously displayed upon opening.

I tried the registry command described above by Reticzeta and that seemed to help consistenly on one of the PCs but the other still crashes about 50% of the time loading Explorer. :(