Yesterday, I was working on a PowerPoint template for my dad that had some image placeholders in it (You know, the ones where you click on them to open a file picker to choose the image). When testing the template, PowerPoint froze whenever I'd try to select an image. This would happen after my first interaction with the file browser (selecting a file, moving the window, changing directory, etc).
At first, I thought this was some bug with the image selector popup. Dragging an image into PowerPoint still works so I went on my way. However, I later found that all my Office programs freeze when I open their respective file browsers, be it to save a file, open a file, select an image or do whatever else requires a file browser.
After freezing, the program will stay in the background until I force close it from task manager.
I'm running Office version 1703 (Build 7967.2161) x32
EDIT:
I sometimes get the following pop-up when it happens:
POWERPNT.EXE - Application Error
The exception unknown software exception (0xe0000002) occurred in the application at location 0x000000007726B802.
Thanks in advance for the help.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers& disabling them there. I can't say whether that would fix this issue, but you could test it.