Question Explorer not responding

[Traxan]

Very odd bug. Came back to the PC with the screen all mucked up and PC frozen. Rebooted and found Mozilla somehow removed from the PC and Explorer won't work. Click on it and no response. If I type CMD from the start menu and right click Run as Admin, no response. If I open a CMD prompt normally it does. If I type Explorer, it eventually loads but I get the green progress bar and it takes forever.

Making it weirder, apps work fine.

Is this a Windows problem, a motherboard issue or SSD problem?

Windows 10 Home, Gigabyte Z370 HD3P motherboard, Samsung EVO970 1TB M.2.

 

[UsandThem]

Have you tried testing your SSD for problems? Samsung Magician or CrystalDiskInfo? That would probably be a good place to start.

You've have posted about problems with Firefox as well in the past, so maybe it simply a software/OS issue?

 

[mxnerd]

Check Windows event viewer see if there is any disk error, and yes also run CrystalDiskInfo.

 

[Traxan]

Magician doesn't support my drive. CDI doesn't install.

firefox is the least of my problems. I don't have a working Explorer.

 

[mxnerd]

On another machine, download Exploer ++ https://explorerplusplus.com/download

extract to an USB drive . no installation requred.

Boot the machine in question into safe mode with networking, plug in the USB drive and run Explorer++. Check Windows Event Viewer.

Same with CrystalDiskInfo (zip version).

Download

[2024/05/01] CrystalMark Retro 1.0.2 – Manual / History Standard Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER (Vista-) Source Code Aoi Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER (Vista-) [2024/04/30] CrystalDiskInfo 9.3.0 – Manual / History Aoi Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER...

crystalmark.info

 

[Traxan]

Looking for the Event Viewer. But I did see that Explorer responds perfectly in safe mode.

 

[mxnerd]

Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer. Custom Views, Administrative Events.

or

Right click This PC, Manage, Event Viewer.

I have Open Shell Menu installed though.

Releases · Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

Classic Shell Reborn. Contribute to Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[mxnerd]

Also start Task Manager, click Startup tab to see if there is something suspecious that sholudn't be in the startup programs.

 

[Traxan]

Got CDI working. Health Status good, 99%, 57 degrees Cent.

 

[mxnerd]

Did you check Event Viewer?

 

[Traxan]

For what, exactly?

 

[mxnerd]

Check whether there is any disk error, SATA port error, NFTS errors, and other errors.

If you don't want to check it, fine. Got other things to do.

 

[mikeymikec]

iaStor* errors too

 

[mikeymikec]

Run an admin command prompt, run the command:

chkdsk C: /f /r

When it asks you to restart, agree to it and then restart the computer. The computer will then run a full filesystem check on the drive letter in question, take any action it deems necessary, then reboot automatically and will create an entry in the Windows logs > Application log at the time the check completed with a source called 'wininit'.

In that log entry, failures of any kind and bad sectors/clusters are things to watch out for.

 

[Traxan]

Well, I had been intending a disk wipe and reinstall for some time. I upgraded from 7 to 10 three years ago and was seeing increasing wonkiness, so I had been contemplating a reinstall. Last night was the final straw. Seven hours later I have a working system. Now to take a C: image snapshot and burn it to a DVD.

Thank you to all who tried to help. I appreciate your efforts.