Solved Opening certain folders causes Windows Explorer to crash

pwp

New Member
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Hi guys,

Having a bit of trouble here! There's a certain folder on my external HDD which causes Windows Explorer to crash when I attempt to open it. I've tried running a full virus scan and nothing has been detected, so I'm ruling out anything like that. Could it be down to file corruption?

Also, strangely enough, I copied the folder to my desktop and was able to open it and look through the files, however, as soon as I try to sort the files by certain parameters (date, size, etc.), it causes Windows Explorer to crash again.

Any idea what's causing this and how it can be fixed?

Many thanks!

(P.S. I apologise if I posted this in the wrong section!)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Hi guys,

Having a bit of trouble here! There's a certain folder on my external HDD which causes Windows Explorer to crash when I attempt to open it. I've tried running a full virus scan and nothing has been detected, so I'm ruling out anything like that. Could it be down to file corruption?

Also, strangely enough, I copied the folder to my desktop and was able to open it and look through the files, however, as soon as I try to sort the files by certain parameters (date, size, etc.), it causes Windows Explorer to crash again.

Any idea what's causing this and how it can be fixed?

Many thanks!

(P.S. I apologise if I posted this in the wrong section!)
There is a big chance that something that is attached to explorer.exe is causing this issue, have you tried a clean boot? otherwise try to disable all Explorer.exe plugin's, see this article for that
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center 64-bits.
Do these folders include multimedia files (music/video) ?
If so one of them might be corrupted, which makes explorer crash when attempting to grab a thumbnail or other information.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 (x64)
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
I've had this too many times. It's either that you could have too many files in one location for your computer to handle or there are corrupted files.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    -
    CPU
    -
    Motherboard
    -
    Memory
    -
    Graphics Card(s)
    -
    Browser
    Maxthon (Latest)
    Antivirus
    None, Don't need
@Yuri: I just tried a clean boot and unfortunately I'm still having the same problem, but thanks for the suggestion!

@oneeyed/Scripts: Yes, the folder is filled with both images and videos. I've tried viewing the folder (on my desktop) in list view, and it still causes a crash. Is there anyway I can detect which file(s) is/are corrupted?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
@oneeyed/Scripts: Yes, the folder is filled with both images and videos. I've tried viewing the folder (on my desktop) in list view, and it still causes a crash. Is there anyway I can detect which file(s) is/are corrupted?
Since explorer crashes each time you access the folder it could be a pain to determine which file is corrupted. What I would do is use an alternative file manager (Best Free File Manager), or the command line to move part of the suspected files in a test folder, which you can then check with explorer. Or launch the videos one by one in your multimedia player, and use skip forward to navigate sequentially through all the files until the player crashes or gives an error warning.
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 (x64)
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Well I'm able to access every file if I copy the folder to my desktop, but explorer crashes as soon as I attempt to sort the files by date, size, etc.

I've also skipped through every image and video, and didn't had a problem with opening any of them. :/

EDIT: Oddly enough, I created two new folders, and separated the images between them in the hope of narrowing down the corrupt file(s), but I am able to use both folders with no problem.

EDIT2: I merged all of the files back together in the same folder, and I'm back to square one. It's still crashing!

EDIT3: I've fixed it! I optimized the folder for 'General Items' and now there are no problems! Thanks to everyone for the help, it's been much appreciated :)
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
I have same problem.

I transferred file from HD to OneDrive and same issue.

I optimised the folders to General Items but issue still occurs.

Going to try external File Manager. Are they easy to use?

Thanks for help so far. I'm guessing a corrupted file.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    IOS
Third party substitute for Explorer seemed to help me regain access to everything (I used open source Double Commander). Worst case, just copy out what you need.
I suspect the problem lies in the thumb.db files that windows tries to generate for too many of large media files, perhaps with animations compressed with codec that explorer struggles with, or perhaps one dodgy file. Quickest trial and error approach might be copying half of files into another directory, and see if that one triggers same issue - if so, halve that directory and test again (and so on) until you only have one file left.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
No solution.
Similar problem on folder with 26 files, 6GB total.
When pointing to the folder, I see the usual rotating disk but it goes for ever. After several minutes (on an W7 i7 SSD 1TB) the folder content is displayed.
But I notice that remote access on simple workgroup network enables direct simple access, immediately.
I still don't know what causes this issue.
Moving the folder does not change characteristics.
No thumb.db file (suppressed indexing as I had continuous crazy IOs on the SSD)
Strange. Never saw this before. I will try solving this.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    W10 pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    home made
    CPU
    i5 750
    Motherboard
    asus
    Memory
    8
    Graphics Card(s)
    amd hd7800
    Browser
    ie11
    Antivirus
    panda
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