Windows Explorer (Explorer.exe) causing problem to Steam Games Apps (Serious Bug Report)

[Akidovich]

When open Windows Explorer (Aka. My Computer) left before open any games from Steam , any games not set the screen resolution as the same as the native resolution (Example 2560x1600 display set 1920x1080 game resolution in game settings) , the game would launch but will immediately crash and cannot be fixed without END EXPLORER.EXE PROCESS IN TASK MANAGER AND RE-RUN IT or by restart the PC.

Sometimes even without open Windows Explorer (Aka. My Computer) , this bug still happens.

This problem always happen after Windows 11 2023 Fall Update. (Windows 11 23h2)

All updates from Windows Update are installed. All drivers are up to date.

No Performance Optimizer software were used.

This is not related with graphic driver. I have already used DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) , sfc/scannow & dism command.

Switching from Intel to Nvidia graphic driver don't help.

Only by restart or end explorer.exe fix the issue without restart the PC.

[Kage Goomba]

Explorer.exe is one of three (?) main critical components to a fully functional windows system.

It's what lets you navigate the system - IE folders/windows/desktop.

If its crashing - you have bigger problems than Steam.
Your Windows System needs a major repair.

Considering your referencing a update - I suggest you attempt a system restore and roll back the update.

Be prepared for a full reinstall of the OS - time to pull out all your restore/repair options a this point.

There's a slight chance it's steam - you could try reinstalling it - but frankly the only time I've ever seen Explorer involved - is a damaged windows system - or something is causing major interference.

You may want to check your Event Viewer/System logs for clues and start back tracing for any apps that may be interfering - antivrus/firewall could also be a culprit.

Could also be file-system damage as well.

May want to try booting to safe mode and then restarting to normal mode as well.

Long list of things to try - none of them pretty.

Sorry for the bad news regardless.
Good luck.

On the bright side - majority of games save files are backed up to the steam cloud (if your using it).

[Reaper]

For one thing, why are you running 2560x1400? That isn't even a standard aspect ratio that I know of. 2560x1440 is the closest standard resolution.

Second, why are you switching between an Intel and Nvidia driver? What kind of graphics card are you even using?

[Kage Goomba]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Reaper:

For one thing, why are you running 2560x1400? That isn't even a standard aspect ratio that I know of. 2560x1440 is the closest standard resolution.

Second, why are you switching between an Intel and Nvidia driver? What kind of graphics card are you even using?

His display may be weird/widescreen or other.
GPU Driver switching is not unusual if he's got a Motherboard with integrated CPU/GPU combo and a GPU Card.

Laptops are frequently seen in this configuration.

Odds are - he's on a Laptop to be sure.

[Akidovich]

Thank you

After Steam Client latest update (30 Nov , Build 1701289036) , my games often run without problem even with Windows Explorer is opening

EXCEPT If I do some management with my files , folder (Copy , Paste , Cut) before , then the games would crash on launch again.

Funny , that on my other pc that have Windows Update turned off for a month can run fine.


And sadly that I had reinstalled Steam today even try using the Beta Version , but I won't help.

PS. I accidental mistyped 2560 x 1600 to 2560 x 1400 , sorry to lead to your misunderstading.

I have wide screen display with Mux Switch which I can auto or manual switch to Nvidia Display Driver to use additional functions for more power consumption.

[Kage Goomba]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Akidovich:

Thank you

After Steam Client latest update (30 Nov , Build 1701289036) , my games often run without problem even with Windows Explorer is opening

EXCEPT If I do some management with my files , folder (Copy , Paste , Cut) before , then the games would crash on launch again.

Funny , that on my other pc that have Windows Update turned off for a month can run fine.


And sadly that I had reinstalled Steam today even try using the Beta Version , but I won't help.

PS. I accidental mistyped 2560 x 1600 to 2560 x 1400 , sorry to lead to your misunderstading.

I have wide screen display with Mux Switch which I can auto or manual switch to Nvidia Display Driver to use additional functions for more power consumption.

Ignore reaper - he's not entirely savvy on such things as GPU switching and odd displays in-spite of the typo.

Sounds like your making progress - keep on keeping on!

[Akidovich]

Thanks Kage !

I will keep update the situation

Hope for be useful for other users who suffer the same for Windows stupidly buggy 11.

[Kage Goomba]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Akidovich:

Thanks Kage !

I will keep update the solution

Hope for be useful for other users who suffer the same for Windows stupidly buggy 11.

It's one of the main reasons I'm delaying my eventual upgrade to 11 from 10.

It's just not a finished product in my eyes.

[Zefar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Akidovich:

Thanks Kage !

I will keep update the solution

Hope for be useful for other users who suffer the same for Windows stupidly buggy 11.

I think the issue is on your PC.

The Explorer.exe only crashed back in 7 and before. In both Win10 and Win11 it has not crashed once.
Even at work I have never had any of the hundreds of PC have the Explorer.exe crash on Win10.

To me it sounds you've broken your installment of Windows if you have the explorer.exe crash that often.

[Kage Goomba]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Akidovich:

Thanks Kage !

I will keep update the solution

Hope for be useful for other users who suffer the same for Windows stupidly buggy 11.

I think the issue is on your PC.

The Explorer.exe only crashed back in 7 and before. In both Win10 and Win11 it has not crashed once.
Even at work I have never had any of the hundreds of PC have the Explorer.exe crash on Win10.

To me it sounds you've broken your installment of Windows if you have the explorer.exe crash that often.

Explorer has crashed in all OS's historically - for any number of reasons.
This reasoning is flawed.

That said - it could be any of a dozen causes that would do this.
Damage to the OS being just one of them.
Could be a bad patch - Anti-vrius getting too aggressive - list goes on.

People do weird things to their systems.
Don't presume its perfect because you don't see it.

[RiO]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

The Explorer.exe only crashed back in 7 and before. In both Win10 and Win11 it has not crashed once.
Even at work I have never had any of the hundreds of PC have the Explorer.exe crash on Win10.

To me it sounds you've broken your installment of Windows if you have the explorer.exe crash that often.

It happens more often than you'd think:
https://www.windowslatest.com/2023/10/14/windows-11-kb5031354-is-causing-major-issues/

The recent October KB update is screwy.

Also, specifically with the fall 23H2 update, iirc there are issues where Copilot and the Nvidia display driver can conflict. These may occur more easily when the GPU is under load (like from a video-game) and as Copilot's UI afaik integrates into the Windows shell directly, if it crashes it could very well take the taskbar, start menu, et al. along for the ride. And all of those are hosted in the explorer.exe instance.

So my first advice if uninstalling the buggy October KB update mentioned doesn't fix things, would be:

Figure out how to figure out if your machine has Copilot. (Because not all regions in the world have it.)
Then figure out if your machine actually has Copilot.
If it does; figure out how to kill it.
Kill it.


-----
Fun anecdote:

I have a business laptop which also loves to crash Explorer as well as the entire Windows Security subsystem. Which I've traced down to having Hyper-V installed. Which was a necessity for using Docker before. I've re-rigged that to use Docker through WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux v2) and no more crashes. Now I just have WSL2 gobbling up 50% of the RAM and never releasing it. Which Microsoft has tried to fix no less than 3 times already. And each time they've failed.

Bottom-line: MS and Windows are not infallible. In fact, they are very, very fallible. Comes with the territory of being a huge product with a lot of variance to its specific configuration. You will always have untested cases that will only come to light in-the-wild.

[Zefar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von RiO:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

The Explorer.exe only crashed back in 7 and before. In both Win10 and Win11 it has not crashed once.
Even at work I have never had any of the hundreds of PC have the Explorer.exe crash on Win10.

To me it sounds you've broken your installment of Windows if you have the explorer.exe crash that often.

It happens more often than you'd think:
https://www.windowslatest.com/2023/10/14/windows-11-kb5031354-is-causing-major-issues/

I have a business laptop which also loves to crash Explorer as well as the entire Windows Security subsystem. Which I've traced down to having Hyper-V installed. Which was a necessity for using Docker before. I've re-rigged that to use Docker through WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux v2) and no more crashes. Now I just have WSL2 gobbling up 50% of the RAM and never releasing it. Which Microsoft has tried to fix no less than 3 times already. And each time they've failed.

Bottom-line: MS and Windows are not infallible. In fact, they are very, very fallible. Comes with the territory of being a huge product with a lot of variance to its specific configuration. You will always have untested cases that will only come to light in-the-wild.



Also, specifically with the fall 23H2 update, iirc there are issues where Copilot and the Nvidia display driver can conflict. These may occur more easily when the GPU is under load (like from a video-game) and as Copilot's UI afaik integrates into the Windows shell directly, if it crashes it could very well take the taskbar, start menu, et al. along for the ride. And all of those are hosted in the explorer.exe instance.

So my first advice would be:
Figure out how to figure out if your machine has Copilot. (Because not all regions in the world have it.)
Then figure out if your machine actually has Copilot.
If it does; figure out how to kill it.
Kill it.

It's hard to say how many reports they got. Windows has probably a billion users in total so when they get 10 or reports from users they might think it's a lot but it's still less than a fraction of the userbase.

Also this might be from users who go out of their way to force uninstall a lot of key programs or turn off features to make the OS run "faster".

But yes it can happen but it's certainly not common. Also I see that the update they are talking about are from October. I keep my OS up to date and not a single issue.

[RiO]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

Also this might be from users who go out of their way to force uninstall a lot of key programs or turn off features to make the OS run "faster".

But yes it can happen but it's certainly not common.

I think you missed the part where the writers of the article replicated this problem in office?

Furthermore, commonality in itself is no factor in causal relationship.
Citing commonality as the reason to say the user's system is to blame, without knowing any of the details wrt the state of that system, is more than a tad short-sighted.

[Akidovich]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von RiO:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

The Explorer.exe only crashed back in 7 and before. In both Win10 and Win11 it has not crashed once.
Even at work I have never had any of the hundreds of PC have the Explorer.exe crash on Win10.

To me it sounds you've broken your installment of Windows if you have the explorer.exe crash that often.

It happens more often than you'd think:
https://www.windowslatest.com/2023/10/14/windows-11-kb5031354-is-causing-major-issues/

The recent October KB update is screwy.

Also, specifically with the fall 23H2 update, iirc there are issues where Copilot and the Nvidia display driver can conflict. These may occur more easily when the GPU is under load (like from a video-game) and as Copilot's UI afaik integrates into the Windows shell directly, if it crashes it could very well take the taskbar, start menu, et al. along for the ride. And all of those are hosted in the explorer.exe instance.

So my first advice if uninstalling the buggy October KB update mentioned doesn't fix things, would be:

Figure out how to figure out if your machine has Copilot. (Because not all regions in the world have it.)
Then figure out if your machine actually has Copilot.
If it does; figure out how to kill it.
Kill it.


-----
Fun anecdote:

I have a business laptop which also loves to crash Explorer as well as the entire Windows Security subsystem. Which I've traced down to having Hyper-V installed. Which was a necessity for using Docker before. I've re-rigged that to use Docker through WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux v2) and no more crashes. Now I just have WSL2 gobbling up 50% of the RAM and never releasing it. Which Microsoft has tried to fix no less than 3 times already. And each time they've failed.

Bottom-line: MS and Windows are not infallible. In fact, they are very, very fallible. Comes with the territory of being a huge product with a lot of variance to its specific configuration. You will always have untested cases that will only come to light in-the-wild.

Just killed Copilot via regedit and disabled Hyper-V from Control Panel.

I don't know why but somehow I can't manage to uninstall Kb October update , maybe because I have 23h2 installed?

Not sure if crashes are gone (No problem occur yet) but the good point is now my laptop is running a bit faster and has less ram consumes. lol

[RiO]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Akidovich:

I don't know why but somehow I can't manage to uninstall Kb October update , maybe because I have 23h2 installed?

That's possible, yes.
Depends on how Microsoft handled the delivery of both the update and of the milestone upgrade. If the milestone upgrade effectively had a roll-up update integrated in it, it's possible that you can no longer uninstall the separate update because e.g. it was either already removed (as it was integrated in the milestone upgrade) or because the ability to remove it was blocked off due to it also being a part of the milestone upgrade. Updates that are marked as dependencies of other updates can't just be uninstalled, iirc.

[davidb11]

I've crashed Explorer in Windows XP, all the way up to Windows 10.
But it should not be easy to crash all the time.
It should be a rare event.

Most of the time Task Manager Running Explore exe works to fix it.