tech support File Explorer Crashes? And some other weirdness that may be related (?)

[Trouble]

Not sure what happened but now all the sudden windows explorer crashes as soon as I click on anything. It opens to the home page fine, just can't go anywhere from there. Also tried creating a new folder and I can't open it either, just crashes again.

 

So far I have used autorun and disabled everything non Microsoft or Windows in the file explorer tab. I've gone into file explorer settings, cleared history and restored default settings. I've disabled a bunch of superfluous apps from launching on startup (rgb controllers and such). Restarted numerous times which brings me to another thing...

 

My PC will not "restart" now. I hit the restart button, close all the apps, and it'll say "restarting" with the loading circle. But no matter how long I leave it it just keeps going. So I have to shut it down through the power button instead.

 

Also Windows says I've got a couple small updates available, both Microsoft Defender. But they keep failing. Just like how I tried to update my graphics driver (Nvidia) and it got ~1/3 of the way and then just completely stopped progressing.

 

Edit: Discovered a new layer to all this. Oddly enough, I can open a media app and open file explorer through that where it works perfectly fine. Can open folders, open files, plays fine, etc... But go back to the file explorer on its own to open the same folder ANNND it crashes..... I'm so beyond lost right now.

Edited March 6 by Trouble
Added Info

[OddOod]

Between your two posts, my guess (hope) is that your windows install is toast. Something has gone terribly wrong. You MIGHT be able to save it for now with a DISM/SFC run, but at this point I'd say it will be less aggravating to just reinstall windows

[Trouble]

Tried the scan, it found 2 bad files and was able to repair them. But that still didn't fix it. I'm done for today, but I guess tommorrow I'll try and work on reinstalling windows. Tried using System > Recovery > Fix problems with Windows update. But just like my other attempted updates it's been stuck at 0% for half an hour now.

[Trouble]

20 hours ago, OddOod said:

Between your two posts, my guess (hope) is that your windows install is toast. Something has gone terribly wrong. You MIGHT be able to save it for now with a DISM/SFC run, but at this point I'd say it will be less aggravating to just reinstall windows

OK, so I think I've got it fixed. Everything seems to be back in order again and I can't find any "weirdness" anymore. And even better, I didn't have to reinstall windows. (Skip to last paragraph for final solution, the rest is just documenting the frustration I suffered through).

 

After everything yesterday I figured my last resort was to boot from a win10 flash drive I made when I first built this PC, luckily I was able to find it. Cause making one would've been impossible without finding another computer.

 

So next step was to get into the BIOS. At which point I discovered that while if I just let it reboot normally it would go to log in as it should, everytime I tried to get BIOS it would lock into a black screen.

 

Looked into what might cause that and got a plethora of possibilities, but mostly issues with displayport and multi monitor setups. So I ran 1 monitor with an HDMI, problem persists. At this point I was getting kinda frustrated and decided I'd disconnect and or reseat everything I could get my hands on and hope for the best. Started with rear i/o first and everything seemed ok. Then got to the inside and started taking the fans off my cpu cooler (between cooler and GPU I can't get at 95% of my motherboard) and as soon as I took the front cpu fan off I spotted it.

 

A lock tab on one of my ram sticks was just BARELY open, literally the smallest possible amount open it could be. So I clicked it back into place, rebooted again, and it's as if nothing ever happened. Everything back to normal and just as happy as can be.... Sometimes I miss being a console peasant. Life was much simpler then.