If File Explorer is not responding in Windows 11, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager, find Windows Explorer on the Processes tab, right-click it and choose Restart. The taskbar and desktop vanish for a second and come back working. If it keeps freezing, open File Explorer Options, set it to open to This PC, and clear the File Explorer history.
Applies to: Windows 11 (23H2, 24H2, 25H2) and Windows 10 (22H2) | Last updated: August 28, 2026
Key Takeaways
- File Explorer is also the process that draws your desktop and taskbar, so restarting Windows Explorer from Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) unfreezes all three without a reboot. If the taskbar is gone entirely, Task Manager’s Run new task option with
explorer.exebrings it back. - File Explorer opens to Home by default, and Home has to rebuild your recent files and frequent folders every time. One stale entry pointing at a drive that is no longer there is enough to make the window sit and hang. Switching it to open to This PC and clearing the history is the whole fix for a lot of people.
- If one specific folder crashes when you open it, tick Always show icons, never thumbnails in File Explorer Options. If the folder opens fine after that, a video or image inside it is breaking the thumbnail handler. It is a test, not a cure.
- Explorer crashing the moment you right-click something is very often a third-party shell extension. Windows keeps no list of them, so uninstall whatever you installed just before it started, or use a clean boot to prove it and NirSoft’s free ShellExView to find it.
- Microsoft’s own repair order is DISM first, then SFC, because DISM supplies the clean copies SFC repairs with. Running them the other way round is why SFC so often reports files it could not fix.
Quick Steps
- Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc, find Windows Explorer on the Processes tab, right-click it and choose Restart. No taskbar? Use Run new task and type
explorer.exe. - In File Explorer, click the three dots on the toolbar > Options. On the General tab, set Open File Explorer to: This PC, untick the recent and frequent items under Privacy, and click Clear next to Clear File Explorer history.
- If one folder crashes, go to the View tab in the same window and tick Always show icons, never thumbnails. If the folder now opens, a file inside it is the problem.
- If it crashes on right-click, uninstall the app you installed just before it started. If you cannot remember, do a clean boot with
msconfig, or use ShellExView to switch extensions off one at a time. - Right-click Start > Terminal (Admin) and run
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth, thensfc /scannow, then restart. - Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates, then restart even if it does not ask you to. If freezes come with the screen going black, update your graphics driver.
- Still broken? Create a second local account under Settings > Accounts and sign into it. If Explorer is fine there, the problem lives in your user profile, not in Windows.
In This Guide
- Restart Windows Explorer from Task Manager. The reset that gets most people moving again.
- Open to This PC and clear the history. For Explorer that hangs the moment it opens.
- The thumbnail test. When one specific folder is the one that crashes.
- Crashing on right-click. Shell extensions, the clean boot, and how to undo it.
- Repair Windows with DISM, then SFC. In Microsoft’s order, and why the order matters.
- Install pending updates and check the graphics driver. The two things Microsoft’s own page tells you to do.
- Test a second local account. The last step before you consider resetting the PC.
Restart Windows Explorer From Task Manager
File Explorer is not just the window with your folders in it. The same process, explorer.exe, also draws your desktop and your taskbar. That is why a frozen Explorer window so often takes the Start button and the taskbar down with it, and it is also why you can fix all three at once by restarting that one process instead of the whole PC.
Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager. On the Processes tab, scroll until you find Windows Explorer, right-click it, and choose Restart. The moment you click it, the taskbar and your desktop icons disappear for a second and then come straight back. Any Explorer window that was hung is gone with them, and the next one you open starts fresh.
No Taskbar at All? Use Run New Task
Sometimes Explorer dies completely and you are left staring at a wallpaper with no taskbar and no Start button. The Ctrl + Shift + Esc shortcut should still open Task Manager even then, because Task Manager does not depend on Explorer to launch. At the top of the Task Manager window there is a Run new task option. Click it, type explorer.exe, press Enter, and your desktop and taskbar come back.
Note: This is a reset, not a cure. If Explorer freezes once a month, restarting it is all you need to know. If it keeps happening, something is causing it, and the rest of this guide is about finding out what.
Open File Explorer to This PC and Clear Its History
If Explorer hangs the moment you open it, or sits with a blank window for a few seconds before it draws anything, this fix is very likely the one for you. By default, File Explorer opens to Home, and Home has to build your recent files and your frequently used folders every single time it opens. If one of those entries points at a drive or a folder that is not there anymore, an unplugged external drive or a network share that has gone, that is exactly where the window can sit and hang while Windows waits for it.
Open File Explorer, click the three dots on the toolbar, and go into Options. On the General tab there is a setting for which page File Explorer opens to. Switch it from Home to This PC. This PC does not have to look anything up, so there is nothing for it to stall on.
Further down the same tab, under Privacy, you will see the options for showing your recent files and frequently used folders. Switch those off while you are testing. Then click the Clear button next to Clear File Explorer history. For a lot of people, clearing that history is the whole fix, because it throws away the stale entry that was causing the hang. If Explorer behaves after this, you can turn the recent and frequent lists back on later and see if it stays fixed.
Tip: Clearing the history also wipes the Quick Access recent files list, so do not be surprised when it comes up empty. It rebuilds itself as you work. If you prefer to make the This PC change through the registry instead of the Options window, I cover that in my guide on setting File Explorer to launch to This PC with regedit.
One Folder Crashes? Run the Thumbnail Test
If Explorer is fine everywhere except one specific folder, and that folder crashes or freezes every time you open it, the culprit is usually a file inside it rather than Explorer itself. Go back into the same Options window, and this time click the View tab. In the Advanced settings list, find Always show icons, never thumbnails and tick it. Click Apply.
Now open the folder again. If it opens fine with plain icons, then one of the files in there, usually a video or an image, is breaking the thumbnail handler when Explorer tries to draw a preview of it. This setting is not the fix. It is the test. Once you know that is the problem, turn thumbnails back on, then go through the folder to find the file that is doing it, and move or delete it.
The reason this works is that the thumbnail handler runs inside the Explorer process, so a corrupt or half-downloaded video takes the whole window down with it. Plain icons stop Explorer from ever touching the file’s contents, which is why the folder suddenly opens.
Crashing on Right-Click: Find the Shell Extension
This is the one people ask me about most. Explorer works fine until you right-click on something, and then it crashes on the spot. That is very often a third-party shell extension, which is an app that has added itself into your right-click menu. Cloud drive clients and archive tools are the usual suspects, but anything that puts an entry in that menu is loading its own code inside Explorer every time the menu opens.
The awkward part is that Windows does not give you a list of those extensions anywhere in Settings. So the simplest first move is to think about what you installed just before the crashing started, and uninstall it. Settings > Apps > Installed apps sorted by install date makes that easy to check. In my repair shop years, the answer was a recently installed app far more often than anything else.
Prove It With a Clean Boot
If you cannot remember what you installed, do a clean boot. It is Microsoft’s own method for finding out whether a third-party program is behind a problem, and it starts Windows with only Microsoft’s own services running.
Press the Windows key + R, type msconfig and press Enter. Go to the Services tab, tick Hide all Microsoft services, then click Disable all. Now switch to the Startup tab and click Open Task Manager. Disable your startup items in the list there. Close Task Manager, click OK in msconfig, and restart the PC.
If Explorer behaves itself after the restart, you have your answer: it is something you installed. Turn services and startup items back on a few at a time, restarting between rounds, until the crashing comes back. Whatever you turned on last is the one to uninstall.
How to Undo the Clean Boot
This is the step that catches a lot of people out, and the ranking videos on this topic never show it. A clean boot is not permanent, but it does not undo itself either. When you are done testing, open msconfig again, go to the General tab and pick Normal startup. Then go back to the Services tab, click Enable all, and re-enable your startup items in Task Manager. Restart, and everything is back the way it was.
ShellExView Lists Them All
There is also a free tool from NirSoft called ShellExView that shows every shell extension on the PC and lets you switch them off one at a time. It has an option to hide all the Microsoft extensions, which leaves you looking at only the third-party ones. Disable the non-Microsoft extensions, restart Explorer, and if the right-click crash stops, turn them back on one by one until you find the offender.
Repair Windows With DISM, Then SFC
If none of that did it, the next thing to rule out is damage to Windows itself. Right-click the Start button and open Terminal as an administrator. Microsoft’s own order here is DISM first and then SFC, because DISM is what gives SFC good copies of the system files to repair with. Microsoft’s System File Checker page says it in one line: you should run DISM prior to running the System File Checker.
Run the DISM command first and let it finish. It can sit at a percentage for a while, so give it time:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealthThen run the System File Checker, and restart the PC when it is done:
sfc /scannowYou can also chain the whole thing into one command, which runs DISM, then SFC, then restarts the PC 30 seconds after SFC finishes. Paste it into the administrator Terminal and walk away:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth; sfc /scannow; shutdown /r /t 30If you have run sfc /scannow before and it told you it found corrupt files but could not fix some of them, running it before DISM is almost always why. I go into that in more detail in my guide on why SFC scannow fails when you run it first.
Install Pending Updates and Check the Graphics Driver
Go to Settings > Windows Update and click Check for updates. Install whatever it finds, and then restart the PC even if it does not ask you to. Microsoft’s Update Windows page is explicit that a restart makes sure any pending updates are actually installed, and a half-installed update is a known way to leave Explorer misbehaving. Microsoft’s own page for fixing File Explorer when it will not open boils down to exactly this: check for updates, restart, and only then think about a reset.
If Windows Update itself refuses to install anything, that is a separate problem with its own fix order, and I walk through it in how to fix Windows 11 update errors.
If the Screen Goes Black or Blank
If the Explorer freezes come with the whole screen going blank or black for a moment, the graphics driver is the next suspect. Explorer draws the desktop through the graphics driver, and a flaky driver shows up as exactly this kind of flicker-then-freeze. Grab the latest driver straight from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel, whichever made your graphics card. I have a full walkthrough for all three in my guide on how to install or update your graphics driver on Windows 11 and 10.
Test a Second Local Account Before You Reset
Before you reach for Reset this PC, there is one more test worth doing, because it tells you whether the problem is in Windows or in your user profile. Go to Settings > Accounts, add a new account, and choose the option that says you do not have the person’s sign-in information, then add a user without a Microsoft account. Microsoft’s page on creating a local account walks through the same clicks.
Sign out, sign into the new account, and use File Explorer for a while. If it is perfectly fine in there, the problem lives in your user profile, not in Windows. DISM and SFC only check Windows’ own files, so a broken per-user setting is invisible to them. In that case you can move your files across and carry on in the new profile, which is a lot less work than a full reset.
If Explorer crashes in the fresh account too, the problem is in Windows itself, and a reset or a repair install is the next honest step. If you are weighing up which kind of account to keep long term, my guide on local accounts versus Microsoft accounts covers the trade-offs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does restarting Windows Explorer make my taskbar disappear?
Because the taskbar, the desktop icons and the File Explorer windows are all drawn by the same process, explorer.exe. Restarting it from Task Manager closes that process and starts it again, so everything it draws vanishes for a second and comes back. Nothing is lost and no files are touched.
Will clearing File Explorer history delete my files?
No. The Clear button in File Explorer Options only empties the list of recent files and frequently used folders that Explorer shows on its Home page and in Quick Access. Your actual files stay exactly where they are. The lists rebuild themselves as you open things again.
What if File Explorer started crashing right after a Windows update?
Start with Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates and a restart, because a half-installed update is a common cause and the fix is often already waiting. If it is clearly one specific update that broke things, you can remove it from Settings > Windows Update > Update history > Uninstall updates. I cover that process in my guide on uninstalling Windows 11 updates.
Is it safe to run DISM and SFC?
Yes. Both are Microsoft’s own repair tools and they only replace damaged Windows system files with clean copies. They do not touch your documents, photos, apps or settings. The only thing to watch is the order: DISM first, then SFC, as Microsoft’s own documentation says.
Do these fixes work on Windows 10 too?
Yes. Restarting Windows Explorer from Task Manager, the File Explorer Options window, the clean boot with msconfig, and DISM and SFC all work the same way on Windows 10 (22H2). The Options window is under View > Options on the old ribbon instead of the three-dots menu, and the default opening page is Quick access rather than Home, but the settings themselves are the same.
