Recover (Faster) From a Windows Explorer Hang
Every once in a while, Windows Explorer hangs on my machine. (I’m running Windows XP. ) I’ll be able to switch between programs using alt+tab and all my running software still runs, but nothing I do will get Windows Explorer going again. In previous versions of Windows I could kill the Explorer using the task manager and the operating system would restart it. XP doesn’t do that anymore, which really surprised me the first time I did this. “Now what?” I thought. The only thing left to do is hard reboot, right? Nope!
It turns out that logging off and logging back on is enough to re-initialize the Windows Explorer, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Kill Explorer: First, the unresponsive instance of Windows Explorer needs to be killed, in the usual way:
- Open the Task Manager by pressing ctrl+alt+delete.
- Select the “Processes” tab and find “explorer.exe”. I usually sort by Image Name to find things easier. Just click on the column header named “Image Name” and it will sort ascending. You can also click it twice to sort descending if the item you’re looking for is at the end of the alphabet.
- Once you’ve located explorer.exe, click on it to highlight it.
- Then click the “End Process” button to kill it.
- A warning will appear about undesireable results, but things are already pretty hosed to have gotten you here anyway. So, just click Yes.
You may have to repeat this process a few times, but eventually you’ll notice that your toolbar at the bottom of the screen is gone. At this point you can’t do much of anything. Now what?
Close All Other Open Windows: Now, shut down whatever programs you still have running. Press alt+tab to get to each one and close it as usual. Don’t forget to save!
Re-Log In: Pop open the the task manager again. Click on the “Shut Down” menu and select the “Log Off _user_” menu item.
This will log you off and get you back to your log-in screen. If you don’t normally have a log-in screen you’ll still get one. All you have to do is click on your user name (probably the only one). For me, logging off and back on is way faster than rebooting the machine entirely — which can take three to four minutes at the very least.
Read more: Windows
Russell wrote:
Another way to handle explorer hangs is to follow the above and after you have “explorer.exe” killed off, go to File -> Run and type “explorer” that’ll restart explorer and usually (at least for me) lets everything start talking to each other again.
Posted 23 May 2007 at 11:32 pm ¶
matt wrote:
“Another way to handle explorer hangs is to follow the above and after you have “explorer.exe” killed off, go to File -> Run and type “explorer” that’ll restart explorer and usually (at least for me) lets everything start talking to each other again”
That’s fine until you notice that the majority of your items in the far right part of the start bar are missing even though they are still running. Running explorer is a quick fix. Logging on and off again is overall a nicer fix. Depends on what you’re up too I guess.
Posted 24 May 2007 at 1:40 am ¶
PC-VIP wrote:
Umm . . . while there’s nothing technically incorrect in this tip, I think it’s important to point out that no matter how hosed Explorer gets, shutting down explorer.exe in the way you have recommended is not without its dangers.
Yes, things are, as you said, “hosed”. Yes, that is annoying at best, and at worst potentially so bad as to make your advice as good as any other solution.
Because it has hooks so deeply into the operating system, though, users shouldn’t use this tip to get Explorer to shut down “faster”—mostly because we are all a bit impatient and that word describes . . . nothing.
When Explorer hangs, wait a good long time AND be sure you have no other option; else, you could lose data in files that are either still in your write cache, or even just open and in a less-than stable state.
Jeff Yablon
President and CEO
PC-VIP Inc.
PC-VIP.COM
Posted 24 May 2007 at 2:48 am ¶
Barry Mahfood wrote:
Good tip. I had a situation where explorer.exe would hang at startup and never become useable. I ended up uninstalling a couple of my most recent installs and now explorer works fine. Go figure.
Posted 24 May 2007 at 5:37 am ¶
John Cooper wrote:
CTRL+SHIFT+ESC is a more direct way to open Task Manager than the two step CTRL+ALT+DEL, ALT+T.
Posted 24 May 2007 at 7:00 am ¶
Ross wrote:
The “majority” of my items re-load themselves in the task bar when I kill/re-run explorer. The two that don’t I leave running as I don’t really care about their system tray icons anyway. Since re-loading explorer is ten times faster than logging off/on, and doesn’t force the computer to re-run the lengthy and often time-consuming startup scripts my work imposes on my computer, I’m going to re-load 9 times out of 10.
Thanks John Cooper for the task manager shortcut…never knew that but I’m going to use that all the time now.
Posted 24 May 2007 at 7:42 am ¶
Monoto wrote:
I’ve sometimes seen that when explorer hangs, drwatson.exe steps in to try and fix things. It just usually doesn’t get very far.
In the process list, I usually kill any instances of drwatson.exe, and then if explorer.exe doesn’t disappear with them, I end it too.
Then, just like Matt commented, I start a new instance of explorer directly from the File menu in Task Manager.
Posted 24 May 2007 at 4:34 pm ¶
Ronkas wrote:
wow man, this isn’t a fresh tip, the use of task manager is foundamental in Windows machines.
Anyway, this is aboslutely useless if you know you computer and you know how to keep it safe and clean, so if your PC is unstable and keeps freezing and crashing, try to prevent instead of go crazy with reboots.
(reboots are absolutely not pr0. w00t. :p)
Posted 21 Jun 2007 at 3:38 pm ¶
B HIll wrote:
My question is what is causing Windows Explorer to lock up in the first place? I have been having a problem where it locks up and basically locks my entire PC. The ALT+TAB will let me move from application to application, but I can’t do anything when there. These lock ups are seemingly random and fully lock my PC no matter what I do. In order to make this happen, I simply have to be browsing for a file in some folder or directory and it does not seem to matter whether it is a network folder or a local one. I can go for days without it happening, and then BAM 14 times in a row as soon as I launch explorer and try and go to some folder.
This is getting very old, and I have to use the task manager to cancel it, which releases my PC. logging off or rebooting does not seem to solve the issue and when I reopen windows explorer, the lock happens again. I thought maybe I was mouse clicking too fast and did not give it time to catch up with my clicks, but this also does not seem to be the culprit.
Bryan Hill
Glendale PD
Crime Analyst
P.S. Microsulting: The use of profanity when using Microsoft software at work or home and yelling uncontrollably into the air like someone cares
Posted 03 Jul 2007 at 5:03 pm ¶
Cidinho wrote:
In the process list, I usually kill any instances of drwatson.exe, and then if explorer.exe doesn’t disappear with them, I end it too.
——— END QUOTING ————-
Well, if explorer.exe was created by drwatson.exe, then you can just right click it and kill the entire tree, so you’ll get 2 free seconds…
You say: ONLY 2 SECONDS? WHY WOULD I DO THAT?
I answer: Count how many times explorer crashes and multiply by 2. It’ll save you more than half an hour every year xD]
Anyway, it’s just so you don’t get your wrist hurt for pressing enter twice…
Posted 16 Aug 2007 at 3:50 pm ¶
anteus wrote:
Just kill the process and go to the program tab, choose New activity… enter “explorer.exe” and enter and it’s up
Posted 16 Aug 2007 at 4:59 pm ¶
Kevin wrote:
@Jeff Yablon
Killing explorer is going to stop data from being written to cache? wha? That’s ridiculous. Applications do not use Explorer to open file.
I’ve killed explorer thousands of times over the years and never had it corrupt anything. It’s fine. Go ahead. I’ve often restarted it manually as indicated. It won’t always result in a stable system, sometimes it’s still unhappy - fine. Log out then. At times it may even be necessary to reboot to be alright again.
If it WON’T die using the task manager, go to a command prompt - use
taskkill /im explorer.exe
Run that a couple times -it’s similar to using task manager to kill it. If it’s still reporting that it’s killing explorer, it’s hung hard. If this is the case, use
taskkill /im explorer.exe /f
to force it as a last resort. This works when the task manager won’t.
Posted 20 Aug 2007 at 8:09 am ¶
Jedi_Information_Pro wrote:
Can Anyone help ?
How do I fix explorer.exe
“Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the
inconvenience.”
AppName: explorer.exe AppVer: 6.0.2900.2180 ModName: ntdll.dll
ModVer: 5.1.2600.2180 Offset: 00011f6c
Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for any inconvenience.
Posted 30 Aug 2007 at 11:39 pm ¶
Jonathan wrote:
CAUTION ABOUT THIS TIP
Hi.. I actually did this .. I “killed” explorer as per the instructions above.. and have been doing so whenever my explorer hangs.
HOWEVER, the last time that I did that.. explorer did not start back up again. i went to task manager and ran C:\Windows\explorer.exe but it refused to start up.
Upon rebooting and after logging in.. explorer no longer starts up.. even in safe mode. Running the computer via starting up with the last known settings that work doesn’t get it to run either.
Does anyone have any idea how to solve this? Any comments will be much appreciated.
Posted 02 Sep 2007 at 1:07 am ¶
Justin wrote:
hi,
I am experiecing the identical problem. Thanks for the work arounds. Is there a permanent fix/patch/upgrade?
Justin
Posted 18 Sep 2007 at 12:16 am ¶
Michael wrote:
Try putting in your windows cd and then at the command line run “sfc /scannow” and reboot when its done. If that doesnt work try this http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
I think you need your cdkey but its saved me reinstalling windows a few times.
Posted 19 Oct 2007 at 7:32 pm ¶
shawn wrote:
Right now explorer is totally hanging but the rest of everything works fine even the force kill wont work–it says its allready killed. but i have an annoying context menu stuck on top of firefox and taskman still shows explorer.exe AARGGGGGGGGGGGGG
microsoft=gay
firefox is still breezy as ever and alt-tab works but w/o a taskbar im kinda in the dark
Posted 24 Jun 2008 at 12:24 am ¶
Johny Obvious wrote:
A wonderful list of work arounds…
However, does any one know a way of actually isolating the ROOT cause of explorer.exe hangs and then correcting its behaviour?
Posted 24 Sep 2008 at 4:39 am ¶
Martin Thornhill wrote:
Yeah, the only real question - what causes this crap - and there is defeaning silence!
A shame, because I have identical problems on Windows 2000.
Perhaps the ultimate workaround is just to abandon Microsoft?
Posted 06 Nov 2008 at 4:08 pm ¶
Vidhya wrote:
I have the same problem of explorer hanging in my 1.5 yr old Laptop & tested for virus but no virus found .
Noone is able to detect the rootcause.
Everyday pretty much it keeps hanging & while I tried to resolve the problem of my own with my head knowledge , I ended up loosing my PST folder out of my machine & couldnt retrieve,
Does Folder Defragmentation would help or should we need to format the machine ?
Posted 16 Dec 2008 at 12:07 am ¶
Vladimir wrote:
Vidhya - You might try Michael’s tip above, but if this was happening daily on my machine I’d back everything up and do a clean install. If that doesn’t fix it you have a hardware problem that hopefully is still within warranty to get fixed.
Posted 16 Dec 2008 at 8:30 am ¶
wreetojyoti wrote:
guys, its much easier to bring back the toolbar after killing explorer.exe from the “windows task manager”
open the manager.(after u’ve already killed the explorer)
then goto “file” (top left) now select New task(run)
enter c:\ out there.
enter
the toolbar together with the desktop will return just an error will pop out.. click ok and its fine again
Posted 23 Apr 2009 at 7:14 am ¶
j winters wrote:
as of 6/30/09: an update to show this issue still crops up. Microsoft doesn’t seem to want to fix this ongoing issue.
I use the task mgr to kill the folder that is not responding (explorer), fortunately explorer restarts.
have done sfc /scannow, malware scans, av scans, register cleanups, emptied the recycle bin; all to no avail. seems to have just started for me within the last few weeks; i dont have a restore point to before the last microsoft automatic updates but the timing seems coincidental.
what i see:
the first time after logging on, any activity in an explorer window (right click, delete a file, etc) causes the lock up. the hour glass just sits there in the explorer window. you can move to other parts of the desktop but the system seems hung except for task manager. i don’t even see explorer using cpu in task mgr. killing the unresponsive explorer task blanks out everything but task mgr while explorer restarts. then things seem to work again.
hope this provides some sort of clue as it looks like lots of people would like this nuisance eliminated.
this will take someone that knows the internals of how explorer interacts with the system (even on a right click of a file, before any action is even taken) to get a clue as to what could possibly hang up.
Microsoft really needs to fix this ongoing, basic issue with explorer.
Posted 30 Jun 2009 at 4:51 am ¶
Vladimir wrote:
j winters, it sounds like it’s time for you to reinstall windows. As painful as that may be, a clean install will likely do wonders to your system.
Be sure to back up your machine first! I’ve been using Drive Snapshot for a little while and really like it over the very obtrusive Norton Ghost.
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/
Posted 04 Jul 2009 at 7:18 am ¶
nsn wrote:
my laptop’s barely a year old and this problem surfaced about a month ago. i do disk checks, registry cleanups, malware scans regularly from the beginning. i just reinstalled xp, the hanging problem being the driving factor to that. guess what? it still hangs!
i suppose it usually hangs when i’m accessing my other drives (i have hardly a need to browse C drive folders) so maybe there’s a possibility the problem lies in those? since the clean install was done over C and left those two alone.
Posted 07 Dec 2009 at 10:01 am ¶
XxXMAK1994XxX wrote:
hey there is one more way just use task manager to kill the explorer.exe and then use the file tab and click on new task (RUN) and type in it explorer.exe its even faster than this tip i usually use it
Posted 14 Dec 2009 at 12:02 am ¶
Chuck Spidell wrote:
I’m experiencing this exact same problem. I’ve tried installing CCleaner and disabling all start up routines with no results. I’ve got a fresh Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB with a fresh install of WinXP. Anyone figure out a fix to this problem?
Posted 09 Jan 2010 at 4:07 am ¶
Rajesh wrote:
My understanding is explorer hangs whenever it is not able to get the information, either from RAM of from HDD.
if is HDD you can used WDC lifeguard and do the extended scan to make sure there are no bad sectors.
To check RAM, try removing and putting it back may be some pins are not connecting properly.
Posted 26 Jan 2010 at 9:25 am ¶
Jenga wrote:
oh lol
Try going to run and entering “explorer.exe”
Wow, that’s like restarting the computer every time you turn on word
It hangs because the memory allotment is screwed
Since you don’t know how to run a program, your best option right now is a reinstall
Posted 15 Feb 2010 at 10:12 am ¶
Frederick wrote:
When Windows Explorer hangs on my system, Dr. Watson also hangs. Going to Task Manager and ending the Dr. Watson instances (usually 2 of them) causes the system clear.
Posted 18 Feb 2010 at 3:24 am ¶
SteveH wrote:
Running XP on Acer Aspire netbook.
In my case the lock up happens quite frequently, maybe after only 5 minutes of operation. I can still move the cursor, but there is no response to any of the mouse buttons or keyboard keys so I cannot even activate task manager. Hard reboot seems to be the only option.
Posted 29 May 2010 at 3:15 am ¶
Gael wrote:
I got the same problem and found this hotfix:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB972685
I followed the links and install the Visual c++ redisp 2008 SP1.
Don’t know whether it fixes this problem yet but the problem description sounds like what I am seeing.
Posted 07 Jun 2010 at 3:10 am ¶
AlvarX wrote:
I had the explorer hang problem in Windows 7, after killing all explorer tasks, in the Task Manager the Shutdown menu doesn’t appear, what I did is open the “new task (execute)” in the File menu, type “explorer” and press enter so the process starts again. Worked fast and clean for me, the task bar is back and I am happy
. Thanks for the advice.
Posted 25 Nov 2010 at 3:25 pm ¶