Repair explorer.exe without reinstalling Windows?

[da na]

Background: Recently due to hard shutdowns I've had to do and sudden power losses, File Explorer no longer works quite right on my workstation. It crashes when I turn off a monitor, and Start is broken. I would love not to reinstall Windows, as I have tons of software installed on my workstation and redoing all of that would be a multi hour pain in the ass. 

If explorer.exe is the problem (which it almost definitely is), I have an idea. I boot my workstation from an HP Z Turbo Drive, I believe I can disassemble the PCIe card and take out the NVMe. I can then put the NVMe in a system with a spare NVMe slot, delete explorer.exe from C:\Windows, and paste in the explorer.exe and related DLLs from the working computer's Windows install. Or is that a bad idea...

Yes I have tried dism and sfc commands and those have predictably done nothing. 

 

Windows 10 LTSC x64

HP z840 workstation, 2x Xeon E5-2697v4

Z Turbo Drive 256GB boot (Samsung SSD)

tons of other drives

RTX A4500, Quadro K620

[Skiiwee29]

Cant you just use the windows repair instead of reinstall during the process? If I remember correctly when you load up the install media it gives you the option to repair as well.

[aDoomGuy]

Try this and see if it helps.

 

EDIT: You cant use Start menu?  I think you can open CMD as admin from task manager? Ignore this if you did check disk on the drive. You didn't mention it so I think it's worth a try doing that first and then SFC etc.

 

Scan system drive

Search Start menu for cmd and choose run as administrator. Then run command below before you reboot and let it scan.

chkdsk c: /f /r

Scan system files

When back into Windows after scan open cmd like before and this time run command

sfc /scannow

Scan Windows image

Reboot if it fixed anything. After reboot or if it didn't fix anything run these commands in cmd admin session.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /ScanHealth

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth

Then reboot and see if any of this made it better.

[da na]

6 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Try this and see if it helps.

 

EDIT: You cant use Start menu?  I think you can open CMD as admin from task manager? Ignore this if you did check disk on the drive. You didn't mention it so I think it's worth a try doing that first and then SFC etc.

 

Scan system drive

Search Start menu for cmd and choose run as administrator. Then run command below before you reboot and let it scan.

chkdsk c: /f /r

Scan system files

When back into Windows after scan open cmd like before and this time run command

sfc /scannow

Scan Windows image

Reboot if it fixed anything. After reboot or if it didn't fix anything run these commands in cmd admin session.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /ScanHealth

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth

Then reboot and see if any of this made it better.

Said in the original post that I have tried those but they did not work. 

[aDoomGuy]

5 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

Said in the original post that I have tried those but they did not work. 

I know but if you didn't try checkdisk before the others... you may wanna give that a shot first and then do the rest again if check disk did anything. You can do a simple scan with checkdisk and see if it can fix something. If not it looks like reinstall time to me, sorry. If the PC have been shut down without the proper procedure then it's likely there are issues checkdisk can fix.

 

21 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

C:\Windows, and paste in the explorer.exe and related DLLs from the working computer's Windows install.

You can try (after backup) but I doubt it will help. I think Windows install media repair only repairs boot issues but I may remember it wrong. Haven't used it in maybe 5-10 years.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Mel0n. said:

I would love not to reinstall Windows, as I have tons of software installed on my workstation and redoing all of that would be a multi hour pain in the ass. 

i agree with the others, windows repair seems like your best bet, but if that doesn't work,  you also have to consider that the likelihood of being more broken or damaged than you realize right now is quite high and think about a reinstall as a last resort.

 

And I know! Same here on my gaming pc, it would take me at least a week to set up everything again how it is right now, but thats why i have like 5 or 6 full backups,  i can go "back" at any time, and they're all windows 10 1809 (maybe 1 or 2 are 1803)

 

But sounds like you don't have backups?  Definitely also something to think about for when you fixed this current issue, which i wish you the best of luck with and sorry if I'm not much of help, just brainstorming the options you have (to my admittedly limited understanding) 

[da na]

7 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

i agree with the others, windows repair seems like your best bet, but if that doesn't work,  you also have to consider that the likelihood of being more broken or damaged than you realize right now is quite high and think about a reinstall as a last resort.

 

And I know! Same here on my gaming pc, it would take me at least a week to set up everything again how it is right now, but thats why i have like 5 or 6 full backups,  i can go "back" at any time, and they're all windows 10 1809 (maybe 1 or 2 are 1803)

 

But sounds like you don't have backups?  Definitely also something to think about for when you fixed this current issue, which i wish you the best of luck with and sorry if I'm not much of help, just brainstorming the options you have (to my admittedly limited understanding) 

I have backups, just not of software. I have all my files backed up but I do not backup software.