Windows Explorer Just Broke...

[avrona]

So my Windows has gone all weird, it mainly seems to be something to do with Windows Explorer. it's not allowing me to install Office so when I went into the program files folder to investigate I've noticed whenever I right click in there it freezes, so I restarted my PC and now I can't access windows explorer at all, my show desktop button isn't working, searching anything from the search bar also doesn't work and just searches forever, and if I right click on the desktop I also just get the spinning ball forever, any ideas on what's going on??? Additionally I get a little notification saying that search indexing was turned off whenever I try to search something, and when I looked in services for Windows Explorer, it gave me the option to start it but when I did it just said "access is denied".

[icovelev]

Backup everything important and just reinstall windows. 

[avrona]

Just now, icovelev said:

Backup everything important and just reinstall windows. 

Just did like 2 days ago...

[Viper9]

5 minutes ago, avrona said:

Just did like 2 days ago...

Check the SMART status of your SSD/HDD with CrystalDiskInfo.

 

If everything is fine try these commands using command prompt (cmd) has admin:

 

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chkdsk /r

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sfc /scannow

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dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth

 

 

 

[avrona]

Just now, Viper9 said:

Check the SMART status of your SSD/HDD with CrystalDiskInfo.

 

If everything is fine try theses commands using command prompt has admin:

 

 

 

 

In crystaldiskinfo all the drives are fine. Just tried those 3 commands and they didn't find any issues.

[Viper9]

Just now, avrona said:

In crystaldiskinfo all the drives are fine. Just tried those 3 commands and they didn't find any issues.

Are you sure? chkdsk alone should ask you to restart your PC and it should take a while. 

[avrona]

1 minute ago, Viper9 said:

Are you sure? chkdsk alone should ask you to restart your PC and it should take a while. 

Yeah and it came back with nothing.

[Viper9]

5 minutes ago, avrona said:

Yeah and it came back with nothing.

Backup your files, create a new bootable Windows installation media using the Media Creation Tool.

 

Delete all the partitions and reinstall Windows 10 on a single partition and on another drive if possible. 

 

When the installation is completed, launch Windows Update, install all your drivers and try again. 

 

 

[avrona]

23 minutes ago, Viper9 said:

Backup your files, create a new bootable Windows installation media using the Media Creation Tool.

 

Delete all the partitions and reinstall Windows 10 on a single partition and on another drive if possible. 

 

When the installation is completed, launch Windows Update, install all your drivers and try again. 

 

 

I literally just reinstalled Windows a few days ago.

[Viper9]

3 hours ago, avrona said:

I literally just reinstalled Windows a few days ago.

So if it's not a software issue it's hardware. 

 

That's why I said "install Windows on another drive". 

[Jarsky]

6 hours ago, avrona said:

In crystaldiskinfo all the drives are fine. Just tried those 3 commands and they didn't find any issues.

I don't understand how you could have completed those 3 commands within the 1 minute between him suggesting them and you replying?

chkdsk generally takes a good 5 minutes on a smallish drive with reboot. 

sfc and dism take a couple of minutes as well....

 

If you say you've already reinstalled fresh Windows and have the same issue, then you have a hardware problem. 

Windows File Explorer response relies on not just your OS drive, but the health of any drives its trying to query...which includes your data drives. 

Try unplugging any additional data drives you have while testing.