Win10 1709 File Explorer Dialog "Hangs" – not possible to "end task"

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Hi all – just reporting a new glitch on Win10 1709 following an install of the latest Windows 10 updates. Curious to see if others have experienced this …

When using file explorer to view the content of my drive, I’ve had 2 “hangs” in the last 3 hours. Only file explorer hangs, the rest of the windows desktop appears to be running. BUT if you try and interact with any windows desktop elements that leverage the windows explorer functionality (which is most of it, to be honest), you tend to find that the dialog that are opened will also hang.

However, you can still open the task manager, but you cannot end-task on the offending dialog. It shows up in the list, but choose to end task simply has no effect and the hung dialog simply stays where it is. Shutting down works, but signing off doesn’t – the sign off process hangs at the “waiting for windows event handler” stage. After 15 minutes I did a froced shutdown, and then it all rebooted good as gold.

I’ve done a disk test, memory test, sfc /scannow (does that EVER show any problems?), and all clean.

The system was stable prior to the latest updates, as of March 14th.

Best,

Marc

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It may just have needed a re-boot or two – this seems to be “normal”. Do you still have the problem?

cheers, Paul

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Hello Paul – sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier, but I was taking your advice to heart and giving the system a bit of a workout. So far, so good. Thanks for the feedback on this. I’d rebooted once, but after the second time, it seemed to be behaving itself. Cheers!

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Paul T

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Hi – I think I’ve got to the bottom of this. I use an explorer plugin called “Fast Picture Viewer Codec”, which expands the file explorer’s ability to read various additional file formats. Apparently, there’s a known issue with this whereby some windows updated de-register the codec, but I suspect this is done in a less than elegant fashion. Accordingly, explorer hangs. After 2 reboots I think Windows might automatically disable the codec from loading, as following my 2nd attempt to boot back in, the problem went away but explorer stopped being able to read some of the extra file formats I use.

Repairing the install fixed it.

Cheers,

Marc

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workin’ just fine for me, though I don’t know what all this means!!

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