Forum Discussion
Is there a coherent way to investigate File Explorer crashes?
I have installed Win11 24H2 from scratch (i.e., not upgrading a previous version of Windows). I find File Explorer is crashing. This tends to happen when I right-click on something in File Explorer. It seems mostly to happen when I right-click on something in the navigation pane, but I just had a crash when I right-clicked on empty space in the Details pane.
Google searches lead to lists of things to try. Prior experience teaches that these laundry lists of possible solutions can waste a lot of time. Experience with this particular problem supports that impression.
It seems it might make more sense to know where to look, in various logs, to figure out what happened, in the moments after some such crash. Or to have a tool that can parse such logs in lay terms.
The question is, is there a tool or method that I can use to approach Explorer crashes systematically, instead of trying random "solutions" that may actually have nothing to do with the problem.
When File Explorer crashes, Windows may generate a crash report. To view these reports:
- Press Win + R, type WerFault.appcrash, and press Enter.
- This will launch the Windows Error Reporting tool.
- Look for reports related to File Explorer.
I had the same issue on my laptop and still waiting for a public fix!
Seems like you installed software which hooks into the traditional context menu.
Hard to troubleshoot.
Try updating all Software. Winget upgrade --all helps you for most of these.
Please check if this also happen in safe mode.
Sometimes, simply restarting File Explorer can resolve temporary issues.
Does it do the same in safe mode with networking?
