Easy workaround for a rather super-annoying problem

Apr 6, 2020 07:55 GMT  ·  By

Diagnosing a bug in Windows 10 is very often a process that requires more than one attempt, especially when we don’t know exactly what’s causing the problems.

This is exactly my experience with a recent Windows 10 issue, which caused the operating system to freeze every time an application tried to launch the Open or Save as dialog.

More specifically, the issue happened with browsers, which I used for work either to upload or to save files on my device. More often than not, invoking the Open or the Save as dialog resulted in Windows 10 freezing, and the only way to recover was to kill off the explorer.exe process.

However, this “workaround” didn’t necessarily manage to fix things every time, as occasionally the Task Manager, which I used to end the explorer process, stopped responding and eventually forced me to reboot the device and recover to a fully working desktop.

It goes without saying this wasn’t the most convenient workaround because it interrupted my work, not to mention that the bug coming back occasionally was a frustrating experience which, given I’m currently working from home due to the pandemic, made me think about switching to a non-Windows platform for a more reliable experience.

But as it turns out, the issue isn’t as difficult as you’d imagine to fix, although as I searched online for workarounds I discovered that such an unexpected behavior could have multiple causes.

What did the trick for me, however, was disabling Quick Access in File Explorer.

I personally rely on Quick Access a lot, as I pin certain locations that I need for a limited period of time in order to find them faster. Of course, disabling it isn’t necessarily something that I’m a big fan of, but at least everything’s working correctly right now without any occasional freezing.

So here’s what I did.

Click the Start menu and type Folder Options. Launch the first result that reads “File Explorer Options” to fire up the screen that allows you to configure a series of settings for the built-in Windows 10 File Explorer.

In the Privacy section (in the lower part of the screen) you need to disable the two options:

  • Show recently used files in Quick access
  • Show frequently used folders in Quick access
Also, make sure you click the Clear button to clear File Explorer history.

After you make these changes, only folders that you manually pin to Quick Access will be displayed in this section in File Explorer.

So why do you need to disable these two options? As it turns out, File Explorer, which powers the Open and Save as dialogs, causes the freezing when searching for recently used files and frequently used folders. If some of these files are located on a network drive that’s no longer accessible, the file manager keeps scanning, thus causing the whole thing to freeze.

This is why in some cases killing off the explorer.exe process fixes the issue, simply because it interrupts this scanning process and returns things to normal.

Of course, if you want to restore the default configuration of File Explorer and the Quick Access feature, it’s enough to just follow the steps mentioned above and re-enable the said options in the File Explorer Options screen. A Restore Defaults button is also offered in the same screen, should you want to bring back the original configuration.

Everything described here happened on Windows 10 version 1909, which at this point is the latest stable version of the operating system.