SOLVED

WVD Issue -Explorer Constantly Crashing and Restarting

Brass Contributor

Just wondering if anyone else has come across an issue where explorer.exe keeps crashing and restarting every few seconds when you login to WVD using the Remote Desktop client on Windows 10 2004.

You can't even sign out as by the time you open up the windows start menu explorer.exe is restarted and you loose the Windows UI.

The workaround was to restart the VM which resolved the problem for now. 

 

The error in event viewer is:
Faulting application name: explorer.exe, version: 10.0.19041.329, time stamp: 0xb584d6c9
Faulting module name: srchadmin.dll, version: 7.0.19041.1, time stamp: 0xe9485001
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000020e6
Faulting process ID: 0x654
Faulting application start time: 0x01d65a5038b36735
Faulting application path: C:\windows\explorer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\windows\System32\srchadmin.dll
Report ID: 92845fd7-74e9-4bfb-8b04-3b96443985b7
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

 

41 Replies
best response confirmed by Mark Aldridge (Brass Contributor)
Solution

@Mark Aldridge   Hi Mark,  I'm seeing the same issue occur every now and then. It's caused by the Windows Search service. If you restart this service the issue stops (you don't need to restart the host and you can restart the service with everyone else logged on).

 

I've had to created a scheduled task to restart this service at logon.  Far from ideal though. I assume it's yet another bug in Win10 2004... 

 

On top of a major bug in FSLogix (which breaks OneDrive Files on-Demand) I'm getting pretty fed up with Microsoft right now.

@tilikumtim thanks for that information.

 

I've created a scheduled task within group policy to restart the Windows Search Service when a event is logged based off explorer crashing. Hopefully this will fix it and I wont see this issue again.

 

See the attached screenshots of how I have configured this for anyone else that has this problem.

Here's the event log XML filter I used.

<QueryList>
<Query Id="0" Path="Application">
<Select Path="Application">*[System[(EventID=1000)]] and *[EventData[Data[1]='explorer.exe']]</Select>
</Query>
</QueryList>

@Mark Aldridge @tilikumtim 

Thanks for taking the time to post this and share workaround. I've reached out to the Search team and asked which logs would be required to root cause this issue. Let me circle back as soon as I hear more. 

This turns out to be a known issue (internal tracking number is 21167387) and fixed in future builds of Windows. I will start our backport process as soon as possible to make sure we service current in-market versions of Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session. 

Thanks,

Pieter

We are seeing the same issue, I initially thought it was the custom xml file we use to set the start menu tiles and task bar icons, was pleased to see this post although annoying it is a known issue, I will try the work around suggested here, anyone know if a patch to fix the issue will be released?? @Mark Aldridge 

Hi Mark, I tried your workaround, however I am still getting the explorer crashing and restarting, any other suggestion? This is on the hosts and they are definitely getting the policy, thanks in advance. @Mark Aldridge 

@UoS70 and you have confirmed that the scheduled task is working correctly?

Can see from the history that it's stopping and starting the service. You should be able to see the event in Event Viewer to confirm the service is being stopped and statured as well.

@Mark Aldridge Hi Mark, initially the policy was set to run with a service account, not sure how that happened, I changed that to the correct account and the task is no running, thanks again for your help.

I will add that applied this fix and it did not resolve explorer.exe constantly crashing. It turns out my fix was that I had reached my quota in Azure File Storage for FX Logix profile containers. Hope that helps others because it took way too long to figure that one out.

@PieterWigleven 

 

Hi Pieter,

 

Do you got any update regarding this issue? Just saw the same behaviour with the Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session, Version 2004 + Microsoft 365 Apps image from the gallery.

 

This is not acceptable for any production environment at the moment!

 

With kind regards,

 

Stefan Dingemanse

@SDingemanse we'll need more information. As you can read in this thread there are multiple potential causes for this issue, not directly related to WVD but Windows in general. If I deploy this image I'm not seeing the issue so we'll need a CSS support care to get to the bottom of this.

Also seeing the same thing. Brand new 2004 farm created. 4 servers. All exhibiting the same issue. Search service causing the explorer.exe to crash. If I restart the service then the user logs in ok and works. 

We experience similar on 2004. Explorer crashes resolved by restarting the search service. We also get sporadic slow performance in explorer as well as opening office docs from OneDrive/Sharepoint libraries. Slow performance can be seconds or minutes, during longer issues if we restart the search service normal performance resumes.

This specific issue only impacts Windows 10 Enterprise/multi-session version 2004 and the fix is currently scheduled for release in the third week of October.
In that third week of October - if you manually click the “Check for Updates” button you will get it. If you won't check manually, you’ll receive this bugfix in November's Patch Tuesday (second week of the month).

@PieterWigleven Hi Peter, do we have an actual date on the release of the fix?? Or can you update this forum when it has been released so we know??
Cheers

Adam

@Adam1970 Hi Adam, should be this week - not sure which day exactly. It will require to check for updates manually, see if anything (other than AV definitions) is being pulled down.

@tilikumtim What is the OneDrive issue you are experiencing?  We are running into the issue in this discussion but also utilise OneDrive Files On Demand and have issues with things disappearing between WVD and local machines.  Just wondered if this was the same issue?

 

I'm applying the service restart to my environment as we were first impacted by the App Readiness bug and then this issue.  I've spent the last 3 days working on getting WVD stable again and 2 days last week so WVD is proving to be a major headache we can do without.

@Lee_E  The OneDrive issue was where an error would state 'OneDrive cannot connect to Windows'. The error has 2 options 'Try again' (which does nothing) and 'Download files' (which downloads everything in OneDrive). If you then go into OneDrive settings, the Files on demand option would be missing.

I logged the issue with Microsoft and they provided me with a hotfix for FSlogix which seemed to fix the problem. It's worth noting there is also a public preview build (2009) for FSlogix, so you might want to try that (otherwise contact MS to get the hotfix).

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Mark Aldridge (Brass Contributor)
Solution

@Mark Aldridge   Hi Mark,  I'm seeing the same issue occur every now and then. It's caused by the Windows Search service. If you restart this service the issue stops (you don't need to restart the host and you can restart the service with everyone else logged on).

 

I've had to created a scheduled task to restart this service at logon.  Far from ideal though. I assume it's yet another bug in Win10 2004... 

 

On top of a major bug in FSLogix (which breaks OneDrive Files on-Demand) I'm getting pretty fed up with Microsoft right now.

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