It’s not doing any viable scan, nor updating. It’s been going at least 12 hours at high CPU rates and prevents one from doing anything else at all besides starting task manager. It is what I said; executable running wild, with 10 that would be Windows Defender. No other AV. System was running well before the 1511 upgrade. At one point I was able to open a command prompt and confirm 1511. Happens on ANY login I use (all admin capable so far).

I tried safe mode. No avail. Did reset losing all apps I’d installed but not files. No avail. Finally see that what I see is Explorer.exe restarting several times per second for no apparent reason. Tried even to do a system image restore (from August) but it needed unspecified drivers – and I don’t want to lose files if I can help it, lots stored on that hard drive. I’d like to keep the system startup as simple and clean as possible to see what is nuking Explorer but I can’t run MSCONFIG since New Task can’t keep focus long enough.

That tweaking program – pure malware. Still cleaning up after it. So nice to see that on this group. As to the PC, explorer.exe still crashing several times per minute. Some apps install, some won’t though they say they do, such as Office 365. Tried to install Nvidia drivers from Nvidia, installer crashes on 7up error.

Tweaking – real nice piece of malware! YOu go there and you get your pc over-run with all sorts of nice garbage

I clicked on Majorgeeks, got the bad stuff anyway.

But back to the original problem. Explorer being hosed. So badly that it restarts several times per minute and interferes with installations of some software. Many things don’t work, such as device manager. Restart only works from the page you get if you ctrl alt del. And so on. Office 365 says it installed but it’s not there. All this on a PC that had worked fine on the official Win 10 release, and only went bonkers after the 1511 upgrade. And which has had Win 10 1511 installed as a complete reset of the C drive.

The problem with sites like this is that they are designed to be extremely confusing and make it very easy to download garbage; this is what gets the sites the money to keep going.

In the meantime, I still have no clue as to why explorer.exe’s main process keeps crashing, and nothing that I know of to stop it, nor no reason to believe that scanning my system with potential cr-pware will solve anything.

I already completed the reinstall (wipe of the C drive). It’s up, but as noted earlier, the explorer.exe problem still exists. I’m thinking now of going back to the first Win 10 Pro release and then blocking the 1511 update, and hoping that ‘fixes’ the problem for now, and that MS finds a solution – not that they seem to know there’s a problem. I’m guessing there is some Win bug reacting to a driver.

Win 10 Pro original release fully patched before this happened.

After upgrade to 1511 explorer was going crazy.

Did reset keep your files, no help from that. No apps installed. Search box does not work. Edge and IE don’t work, Chrome and firefox do. Cannot share files.

Did reset wipe files, only change was that explorer didn’t crash once per two seconds, instead once every several seconds. With that happening, could install some apps but not others. Can run some settings and control panel items (like adding a pin, changing screen background), but not others including event viewer (it just won’t open), same with device manager. I know how to run them, they just won’t open. Search box does not work – closes when explorer crashes. Cannot share files.

FYI, I am an IT professional, was a programmer for many years, also a DBA. I’ve been using computers for about 40 years, Windows since V3.1, before that DOS. The PC in question – I built it, originally with Win 7 Pro. Asus mobo with I7 2600k, Nvidia 450, etc.

Reinstalled from scratch Win 10 10240. System working perfectly. Actually better then it had been; now bluetooth works for the first time, and Windows Backup (V7 style) working perfectly, also for the first time since I added a large WDC external drive for backup. I also now have no data at all on the system drive, something I should have taken care of long ago.

I still have no idea if I can safely upgrade to 1511; however, I have full backups in place this time.

Except that I still don’t know if it will run 1511. However, there could have been something, drivers perhaps, that was not 1511 compatible, that would now be gone.

I like 1511. I had it in VirtualBox via fast track and had already installed it on an HP laptop where it’s done fine. My issue here; if I try 1511 again, will once again explorer.exe go crazy crashing once a second? We never figured out the cause, but it happened even on a ‘wipe’ installation. So this suggests it will happen again.

Drew, I’d say you are correct, because I did the upgrade again (this time from a DVD) and the system is up and running on 1511 and appears to be stable. Had to reinstall Win 7 games and gadgets (not a big deal) but otherwise everything is up and running normally so far. So I never will know what caused that freaky behavior.

As to the gadgets, I use a few that I really like and have had no problems with them, but I do understand the issue. 1511 Win 10 Pro is running with a few weird issues. 1. Can’t see files on another 1511 (Win 10 Home) PC and vice versa. I can ping but nothing in ‘network’. Same problem in Homegroup. ALso found all my drives set to sharing turned off but dealt with that. From what I see online, there are serious bugs in 1511 networking that MS has no clue about. People are posting suggested fixes including making sure some services are on Automatic (instead of manual start), and opening a few ports on private networks. Not sure yet what if any will help.

http://www.windows10forums.com/threads/computers-not-appearing-on-the-network-map-after-installation-of-version-1511-kb3103688.4917/

Usernames are consistent between PC’s.

I followed some online suggestions to open some Windows Firewall ports,
“I added port exceptions (TCP 5357-5358 and UDP 3702,5355) to the PC trying to reach the shared folders. – Set Sail Media Aug 20 at 16:04”

make sure certain services were running properly,
http://www.windows10forums.com/threads/computers-not-appearing-on-the-network-map-after-installation-of-version-1511-kb3103688.4917/

Also did what shown here regarding adding a registry entry;
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-10-network-share-access.html

So far I’ve only changed one of the 2 PC’s; now from the other I can see most of what I need – the rest I’m sure is just a sharing change need.

Summing it up, there are some problems in Win 10 that for me didn’t surface until 1511; crazy behavior by explorer.exe requiring complete reinstallation of original 10 then reupgrading, and then some mix of firewall, registry and service setup errors, all of which are fixable. But nothing really helpful on the MS sites.