Windows Explorer crashes - Envy 13

[CrazedKilla124]

Hey, 

I currently have an HP Envy 13 with an i5-8265U, 8gigs of RAM and Win10. Bought it a month or so ago, started using it only a week back. 

I started experiencing a new, and highly worrying problem just today. 

Every time I open file explorer on it and open a folder which has any kind of document, file explorer is crashing and not responding anymore until I force end it on task manager. 

To be more specific, when I open the folder with any document, it's alright. As soon as I even click - not even double click - on a document (PPT, DOC, possibly excel) file manager is hanging. 

I used to think this only happened with MS Office docs, so I changed default document apps to OpenOffice. It stopped for a bit, but started hanging with that too. The worrying thing is, the most recent time this happened, when I decided to force close it on TM, the whole desktop turned blue and refused to move. 

This problem does not occur with anything other than aforementioned file types, not even PDF. Music, etc. work okay. 

This is a nigh-brand new laptop, and I'm honestly super super tired of computer devices being a pain in the ass. 

My copy of MS Office expired today, and this problem started just today, so I have a feeling this problem might have something to do with that. 

No, I was not using a pirated copy of it before. Yes, I have an antivirus running - Avast (free lol). Come to think of it, it asked me to restart today for some updating or whatever, then told me there was a resource clash with McAfee (which came pre-installed) and I gave it privilege. Anything to do with that? 

Please help, I've got a lot of assignments to submit and I can't have a brand new laptop that I dote on do me in like this. 

[manikyath]

anything out of the ordinary performance wise? (high cpu usage, high disk usage, etc?)

[CrazedKilla124]

20 minutes ago, manikyath said:

anything out of the ordinary performance wise? (high cpu usage, high disk usage, etc?)

Yes. When I would force closed once, The fans did kick up a storm. But otherwise nothing that I noticed. Went thru task manager. Not sure if the behavior is abnormal, but disk usage did shoot up once while this was happening. Again, seems like nothing extraordinary 

Tried deleting file explorer history, as has been pointed out by a website. Responded well as soon as I deleted, conked off the second time.