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Doug Van
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Win10 Pro File Explorer - frequent crashing!

Greetings all,

Since about 3-4 weeks ago, I have been encountering frequent File Explorer crashes, whenever performing normal copy, move, and/or rename file operations. For instance, 100% of the time, if I am moving files (a mix of documents, PDFs, zip files, etc.) from drive D: (internal SATA drive) to drive R: (an external eSATA RAID), it will crash some time after 2 GB (1000 files) have moved.

The error log is the same, every time.

Faulting application name: explorer.exe, version: 10.0.18362.449, time stamp: 0xd3046e6b
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.418, time stamp: 0x99ca0526
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x00000000000f9269
Faulting process id: 0x2cc28
Faulting application start time: 0x01d5bea86d27cbea
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 1d00ccbf-f927-49b7-8c48-4d1fffc16dea
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

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Observations
Apparently the crashes only occur when drive D: is involved; whether it involved moving, renaming, or just navigating folders. I seem to be able to do any number of file operations on other drives without encountering a crash. I not 100% on this theory because D: is my primary working drive. Most certainly, crashes are far more frequent on drive D:

What I have tried
(none helped)
- File Explorer > View > Options > Change Folder and search options > Privacy >Clear File Explorer History
- Turned off thumbnails
- Uninstall Open-Shell (version 4.4.138) (I dearly miss this plug-in - thank goodness it wasn't the cause).
- Drive scan and repair - no faults found
- Comprehensive virus scan
- Ccleaner Pro comprehensive clean up

Finally, I attempted (and failed) to re-register ntdll.dll, as per someone's suggestion. The error: "The module "ntdll" was loaded but the entry-point DLLUnregisterServer was not found."

More details
- Windows 10 Pro (latest updates)
- Drive D used to have software-based file compression! I do not recommend this! Never ever use it because it will slow your computer and file operations!
 I mention this because there are still many files that remain compressed. I only turned off-compression at the folder level (to stop any future auto-compression) because uncompressing individual files would require many days.
However, it's important to add that the file compression existed long before the File Explorer crashing began.
- I have an Intel Core i7 and 32 GB of memory. Drive D: has about 1 TB of free space (out of 3 TB).
- No unusual software installs occurred in the past 4 weeks. Maybe a Windows update?
Windows 10SoftwareWindows OS

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Last Comment
Adam Leinss

8/22/2022 - Mon