Windows 10 - explorer.exe crashes when I right click a file or a folder

Question

i've got a problem similar to the one listed in this post on Windows 10: File Explorer Crashing on Windows 10

Basically, everytime i right-click something, explorer crashes. What makes me upset is that this happened without a triggering event: no updates install, nor i've installed anything before it started crashing. It was completely randomic. I've made a dump file, using the instruction given on that post, is it normal that it's 500 MB big? Uploading such a huge file could be an issue for my poor internet connection.

I'm trying to fix this from at least 2 hours, didn't manage to do that. I don't know how to read these dump files.

Thank you for any help you can give me. This issue is making me crazy :s

Answer 1

Most problems such as you describe are caused by bugs in "shell extensions". These are plug-ins to Explorer that provide all the stuff you see in the context menu that right-click gives you. Without looking at the dump it's impossible to say which one is at fault (or even if this is the problem), but you might look at the "Shell Extensions Manager", a free tool from NirSoft. Run it and try disabling extensions until the problem goes away.

If you have a lot of extensions, a "divide and conquer" approach may help. For example, you could start by disabling all non-Microsoft extensions.

Or you can use a classic "binary search". Start by disabling half of the extensions. If the problem doesn't go away, re-enable those and disable the others. Assuming that the problem goes away with one of those groups, now divide that group in half and repeat. In this way you can narrow the suspect field very quickly. e.g. if you had 64 extensions, this gets you down to just one in just six "divisions".

Answer 2

There is another way to do this thing without using third party apps like "Shell Extension Manager".

The simple way to get rid of the crashing is by going to

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shellex\ ContextMenuHandlers

in regedit.exe, backing up the whole ConxtentMenuHandlers folder, and then start deleting all of them one by one (you can start with the ones you've been meaning to get rid of anyway ) and continuously testing the right click. Be careful not to click on an actual folder when opening of explorer after the crash because for me that seemed to solve the problem temporarily. Instead just open up your username folder and right click on a file until it stops. Of course import the Context folder after you find it, test explorer once again by right clicking to make sure you found the problem, and delete the file that caused the problem.

Hopefully this helps someone.

Answer 3

I just fixed a computer with this problem. It didn't require trial and error either but it did require using a specialized piece of software.

The first step is to install Microsoft WinDbg. I used WinDbg Preview from the Microsoft Store but if the Microsoft Store isn't working on the computer (e.g. explicitly disabled), the Windows 10 SDK debugging tools version should work just as well.

In Explorer, navigate to a known folder where the crash is repeatable but don't crash Explorer yet.

In WinDbg, go to File -> Attach to Process... and select a running explorer.exe. There might be a couple to choose from - the one with the longest command-line is probably the correct one. Once the process has loaded into WinDbg, Explorer will be paused at a breakpoint, which is not what we want (yet). Click Go to resume running Explorer.

Now go repeat the right-click operation to crash Explorer. As soon as Explorer crashes, WinDbg will catch the crash and should list which DLL is responsible for the crash. If it isn't immediately obvious which one is the culprit, locate the "Stack" tab in the lower right pane and the stack trace should reveal which DLL is the culprit in the function call stack.

Note that I supposedly disabled the offending extension with NirSoft's shell extension tool but maybe it takes a reboot to work because when explorer.exe came back up, it still loaded the extension and still crashed. I ended up renaming the application's directory in Program Files to get it to finally disable the extension. The rest of the application was broken too and the Setup/Uninstaller was broken too, so renaming the directory wasn't going to make things worse. Then I was able to reinstall the main application. Only then did the shell extension work properly. For how long will it work? I have no idea.

This is a perfect example of why everyone should run Portable Apps for the vast majority of their applications.

https://portableapps.com

A portable app has no shell extensions, no browser toolbars/plugins, very few (if any) registry entries, no COM objects, no system services, and doesn't launch at boot. In short, no unnecessary cruft that slows down or breaks Windows core components. Portable applications are self-contained and can be copied as-is from computer to computer and work every time. Most popular apps have a portable or ZIP or "no installer" version. If you put portable applications and data on a second drive, Windows is about the only thing that sits on C: and reinstalling Windows becomes a far less painful experience. I personally run portable apps wherever possible and, as a visitor finding this Super User post via Google as I did, you should too.