{"id":27072,"date":"2012-01-17T11:45:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T16:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/?p=27072"},"modified":"2012-01-17T11:45:36","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T16:45:36","slug":"ask-leo-what-do-i-do-when-windows-explorer-crashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/ask-leo-what-do-i-do-when-windows-explorer-crashes\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Leo: What do I do when Windows Explorer crashes?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/20090929leonotenboomwp.jpg\" alt=\"askleo\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"attachment wp-att-7652 alignleft\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By Leo Notenboom<\/p>\n<p><font SIZE=\"1\">Windows Explorer keeps crashing on me. Sometimes, all that I need to do is open a folder in it, and *poof* &#8211; it&#8217;s toast. Why? And what do I do?<\/p>\n<p>And to be clear, I&#8217;m talking about Windows Explorer &#8211; not Internet Explorer.<\/p>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n<p>Windows Explorer is a very special program. In many ways, it &#8220;is Windows&#8221;, in that it&#8217;s actually the program that&#8217;s responsible for displaying the task bar, the Start menu, the task-switcher, and a fair amount more.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and it&#8217;s also the program that you can use to browse around your hard disk to look at files and folders.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s definitely completely unrelated to Internet Explorer, but there is one characteristic that they share that can cause the kinds of problems you&#8217;re seeing.<\/p>\n<p>They can both be extended.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022<\/p>\n<h3>When Windows Explorer dies<\/h3>\n<p>You may have noticed that when Windows Explorer dies, in some cases it takes the Windows taskbar and Start menu with it. As I mentioned, that&#8217;s because those are actually displayed by Windows Explorer.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, when that happens and the base instance of Windows Explorer dies, other components of Windows are supposed to notice and start it up automatically again. That&#8217;s why you might see the taskbar disappear and then reappear after a few seconds.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, that doesn&#8217;t happen. In that case, you can typically type CTRL+ALT+DEL and start the Windows Task manager, and then click the File menu followed by Run, or click the New Task&#8230; button:<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/img.askleomedia.com\/2011\/task_manager_create_new_task.png\" title=\"task_manager\" class=\"alignnone\" width=\"393\" height=\"296\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/ask-leo.com\/what_do_i_do_when_windows_explorer_crashes.html\" target=\"_blank\">Article Continued Here:<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>This post is excerpted with Leo&#8217;s permission from his blog.<\/p>\n<p>FaceBook URL:   <a href=\"http:\/\/ask-leo.com\/fb\" target=\"_blank\">Leo&#8217;s Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Twitter URL:     <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/askleo\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/twitter.com\/askleo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/techtalk.pcpitstop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/20090929leonotenboomwp.jpg\" alt=\"askleo\" class=\"attachment wp-att-7167 alignleft\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Windows Explorer is the workhorse behind the Windows user interface. In many ways it *is* Windows. I&#8217;ll cover what to look for when it crashes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":66012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[46,4875,823],"class_list":["post-27072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leo-notenboom","tag-ask-leo","tag-leo-notenboom","tag-windows-explorer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ask Leo: What do I do when Windows Explorer crashes?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Windows Explorer is the workhorse behind the Windows user interface. 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