Windows 10: Explorer.exe freezes up on "Working on it" and stops seeing file thumbnails.

The last week or so Windows made a few updates and the Windows explorer started making problems that it didn't have before. I am currently on version 10.0.19045.5131. When I open a folder on the PC or on the SSD it stays ok for a second then the path bar starts getting green like it's loading. It starts not seeing file thumbnails. This will continue forever until it completely gets bugged and doesn't even see stuff in the folders anymore. When I click on a file and choose the "Open with" dropdown menu it completely crashes the whole explorer.exe and I have to restart it from the Task Manager.A

:)

 

File Explorer not showing thumbnails

Brink,

Many thanks for you reply. I have done all the steps you suggested, but no change,

When I open a folder containing photos, some open correctly but the vast majority open with thumbnails, but they very quickly get overwritten and you can not longer see the thumbnails.

Are there any more suggestions?

 

Thumbnails disappear in File Explorer, then Explorer freezes

Hee hee, I do, purely because you suggested it in reply to a previous question I had! I'm using Macrium Reflect (free edition) and take nightly backups.

Thanks for the suggestions. However, I realised after posting that the freeze was usually shortly followed by all sorts of other things going wrong, like the Start button not working, programs not starting or ending, etc. My only recourse was to reboot.

However, it was never a reproducible problem, it was something intermittent, so hard to diagnose. I updated Windows yesterday (all Office updates, theoretically not related), and switched off thumbnail views, and all has been fine since. If it keeps on this way, I'm going to switch back on thumbnails and see what happens.

As I said, the problem was intermittent, so I never got as far as trying any of these.

I'm going to see how it goes. If the problem comes back, I'l try some of these suggestions and see what happens.

Thanks for the reply.

 

Windows Explorer crashes and thumbnails problem

Hi, I hope you can help me.
Windows Explorer is no longer showing thumbnails on files played by Windows Media Player. I've run cmd and regsvr32 shmedia.dll and regsvr32 shimgvw.dll. That seemed to solve the problem...but it created a different one. Now when I try to open a folder on an external hard drive it crashes. I read in an old 2008 post it was an avi file causing the problem and suggested the run cmd regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll. That solved the opening problem but recreated the thumbnail problem. Any help to achieve both functions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.