[VelcroBP]

When I open certain folders in Explorer it sort of hangs, while visually all columns aside from the icon at the very left go blank, one by one down the list. Once this reaches the bottom of the folder, it "blinks" and visually loads everything correctly. While this is happening I am unable to interact with the window in any way, i.e. cannot close via any method, cannot go back, etc.

Microsoft live chat was useless. I replied to their auto-generated support case email, but they summarily closed the ticket without a reply a few hours later.

I posted on the official Windows support forum. Most of the few responses I got were vague and treated as a generic Explorer crash/restart and referred me to several external articles/threads. They all amount to throwing the kitchen sink at Windows to see what sticks. Therefore I don't know what the actual root cause could be or where to look/test.

Eventually, someone on the MS forum indicated it was a problem with the indexing and search services, though follow-up questions asking for more info on possible root causes went unanswered. I disabled indexing, and the problem seemed to resolve for a month or so. But it has resumed again. I can also temporarily resolve the issue by restarting the Explorer process. That seems to work for a few days.

I have posted this issue in r/WindowsHelp without any responses. I'm really frustrated and have no idea where to troubleshoot. I don't expect my PC's hardware to justify any types of slowdowns like this simply navigating files and folders, regardless of indexing. But if I'm wrong about that I'd really appreciate some resources to read up on it to temper my expectations.

Here is a video example of the issue

Thanks in advance for reading all that and any pointers/suggestions/links will be greatly appreciated!

 

[spunk.funk]

Try doing a Clean Boot. If that works, you can keep it this way, or you can add one Startup or Service at a time till the behavior returns, then you will know the culprit.

 

[VelcroBP]

Try doing a Clean Boot. If that works, you can keep it this way, or you can add one Startup or Service at a time till the behavior returns, then you will know the culprit.

What services could be suspects for causing this behavior though? The clean boot method is a shot in the dark and seemingly random. the issue isn't something I can replicate on demand either. I've already noted that restarting the explorer process temporarily resolved it. But it then comes back after a seemingly random duration.

 

[spunk.funk]

If you read the link in Post #2 You will see that Clean Boot just disables all unnecessary items that run in the background of Windows that may be causing problems. The computer will work fine this way, but if you want to discover what is causing the issue, Then adding a small group or one at a time of a Service or Startup Item and seeing if the behavior returns then you will know what the culprit is. This is the best way to diagnose issues of this type.

 

[VelcroBP]

If you read the link in Post #2 You will see that Clean Boot just disables all unnecessary items that run in the background of Windows that may be causing problems. The computer will work fine this way, but if you want to discover what is causing the issue, Then adding a small group or one at a time of a Service or Startup Item and seeing if the behavior returns then you will know what the culprit is. This is the best way to diagnose issues of this type.

I get the reasoning behind clean boot triggering, but i have no of way triggering this behavior in order to test. So far only runtime has been the consistent correlation.

I guess I was hoping someone would recognize this specific behavior before and would share what they are able to determine about it. I can share any requested details about my h/w and s/w setup as needed.

For now I'm just restarting explorer.exe every other day as a workaround.

 

[spunk.funk]

You have a way of Triggering the behavior, As Outlined, Doing a Clean Boot, and adding Services and Startup items in small groups or one at a time would trigger the culprit. Then you know what it is. This is the simplest and easiest way to do this. Other then that we are just guessing.