Forum Discussion
Right-click on file hangs Explorer
Finally this is what worked: I reinstalled Microsoft Office and restarted the PC. Everything seems fine now. (The original installation had been done by Dell when I purchased the computer.)
I'm having an issue similar to, but MUCH more destructive than, the one described in the first comment by Ms. Cushing: the Explorer Shell continuously crashes and restarts every few seconds to minutes, and every single Explorer crash in the Administrative Events log is followed one or two seconds later by a Warning regarding Windows Hello for Business akin to what she described:
Windows Hello for Business provisioning will not be launched.
Device is AAD joined ( AADJ or DJ++ ): Not Tested
User has logged on with AAD credentials: No
Windows Hello for Business policy is enabled: Not Tested
Windows Hello for Business post-logon provisioning is enabled: Not Tested
Local computer meets Windows hello for business hardware requirements: Not Tested
User is not connected to the machine via Remote Desktop: Yes
User certificate for on premise auth policy is enabled: Not Tested
Machine is governed by none policy.
Even if the system is idle, the Shell will crash spontaneously after no more than three minutes, but I can easily elicit crashes by for instance RIGHT-CLICKING on the Desktop... sound familiar? The only way I have managed to keep the system at all usable is by terminating the Shell entirely and/or using an alternative shell (e.g. Cairo). This is occurring in a system with Windows 10 *HOME* and Office 2010 installed.
- I identified the specific cause of my problem: an installation of Free Launch Bar. I had been using it for years without interruption or issue until now, so something ELSE changed, whether it was a Windows update or other software that began misbehaving. Oddly, the "freemium" version, True Launch Bar, didn't cause the same shell behavior even when only installed in trial mode. I reported the issue with Free Launch Bar to the author, and he showed no interest in pursuing a solution, so I have abandoned both.
I eventually solved it in the same way as the original poser of the question. I deinstalled Office 365, or at least the idividual programmes - Word, Powerpoint, Excel - and the problem went away. The trial period had ended but that didn't stop the problem. I now just have Office 2010 and it's all fine.
Before I found the real culprit of my instance I had uninstalled Office 2010 because of reports like this one. Doing so was a destructive one-way trip for me, because it was a digital purchase and while I still had the license key I had lost the downloaded installer to a disk failure and could not download it again.
I uninstalled Office 2010 with no hope of reinstallation only to discover that it WAS NOT the cause of the issue for me. Now I am left with having to purchase Office AGAIN or use LibreOffice as an alternative (and a poor alternative at that when it comes to spreadsheets).
