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.
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?