Windows 10: File Explorer is Freezing and Crashing when Using External Hard Drive (Windows 10, May 2019)

Just in the past couple of weeks, beginning around the middle of May, 2019, my computer has started doing something strange. Sometimes (not always) when I go to access a file on my external hard drive, file explorer freezes up. I always have to manually crash it to get out of the loop, and when I do, the screen goes black. I can alt-Tab back to my active screen, but usually when this happens there's no solution but to reboot the computer. I've looked for solutions to this online but none of the articles I'm looking at are any more recent than 2018 - and worse yet, some of the solutions have to do with accessing the Command Prompt, which I can no longer find (seems to have been replaced by something called Windows PowerShell (Admin). I have no idea what that. This is not a new computer and this has not happened before. I'm wondering if it could be an issue with the latest Windows 10 update or if I should be concerned about my computer. I'm fairly certain it's not my external hard drive because it happens on the one I access through my home router and the one I plug in via USB. Does anyone have any current information on this issue?

:)

 

External Hard Drive

Hi John,

We suggest that you try the troubleshooting steps below:

• Open your External Hard Drive file in File Explorer.
• Type the name of the file you want to search on the search box and click Enter.

The file will show up in Search Results and you will be able to move it to the correct folder.

Let us know if you need further help.

 

saving and viewing files on an external hard drive

Hi Sam,

We appreciate you for being part of Windows 10.

Yes, you may format the external hard drive. Follow the below steps.

• 
  Connect the external hard drive to Windows 10 computer.
  
• 
  Press Windows + E keys on the keyboard to the keyboard to open the file explorer.
  
• 
  Locate the external hard drive on left navigation pane in File explorer.
  
• 
  Right click on the external hard drive and click on
  Format.
  
• 
  Click Start and follow on screen instructions to format the hard drive.
  

I hope the above information helps. Kindly let us know if you need any further assistance with Windows. We are glad to assist you.

Thank you.

 

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.