[SOLVED] EXPLORER.EXE Crashes

[dimdem]

I'm having trouble with recurring crashes of EXPLORER.EXE. It seems to happen when I return to the PC after having been away for some time, although not necessarily when I have been gone long enough for it to sleep. Crashes don't always seem to show in the Event Log, but here is one that did:
Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 10.0.19041.746, time stamp: 0xca234864
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.19041.662, time stamp: 0xec58f015
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x000000000010bd5c
Faulting process id: 0x19b4
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6f1765b4ed9f6
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 3a8ec64e-a765-4bb3-8276-04c9a120ab12
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

What I have tried so far without success is to use the DISM and SFC tools and to use ShExView to disable all third-party shell extensions. This is all on a new clean install that I undertook to solve some other problems. Any other ideas?

 

[rocktalkrock]

If you were having other problems before re-installing Windows, the problem may be with your hardware or the hardware's compatibility with Windows 10.
Can you identify the parts in your PC?

 

[dimdem]

Well, there haven't been any recent hardware changes under the hood. I started having issues with Acrobat crashing, and one or two other programs were glitching. To try to resolve that I did a "refresh." When I did that several programs---Dropbox, Chrome---would crash several times a day (again, when I was not using the computer). So I did the clean install, which only left me with the Explorer crashes.

The PC is a very standard Dell 8920. Radeon RX480 graphics card. Not overclocked. I did add a new monitor at roughly the same time as the Windows reinstall, but surely that's not the issue. If there is any sense in which I'm pushing the system is that I have four monitors physically connected, which the card supports. Most of the time, though, two are disabled in Windows.

 

[dimdem]

So I have found a "solution" to this problem, but it still has me confused. The problem doesn't occur if I disable my graphics card and just use the integrated video. Obviously that's not a solution that I can live with. Should I assume that it's a bad card and that a replacement would solve it? Does it make sense that a bad card would cause explorer.exe to crash?

 

[rocktalkrock]

So I have found a "solution" to this problem, but it still has me confused. The problem doesn't occur if I disable my graphics card and just use the integrated video. Obviously that's not a solution that I can live with. Should I assume that it's a bad card and that a replacement would solve it? Does it make sense that a bad card would cause explorer.exe to crash?

A faulty graphics card would not likely cause this problem, it would more likely be caused by the drivers. Have you updated all the drivers in your PC since you did the clean install?

 

[dimdem]

A faulty graphics card would not likely cause this problem, it would more likely be caused by the drivers. Have you updated all the drivers in your PC since you did the clean install?

I have updated drivers without success. I have also rolled back to older drivers, ones that were out before the issues started. I could try going back to very old ones, I guess.

 

[dimdem]

Stranger and stranger. The only hardware change that I made to my system at the time these problems started was a new monitor. I wasn't worried about that being the cause. However, just to see I disconnected it. No explorer crash even though i was certainly away from it long enough for that to happen. Again, it never happens when the monitor is on and the system is in use. It only happens when the system has been idle at least an hour or so, minimum. Windows powers down the monitor at 15 minutes, I think.

 

[rocktalkrock]

Stranger and stranger. The only hardware change that I made to my system at the time these problems started was a new monitor. I wasn't worried about that being the cause. However, just to see I disconnected it. No explorer crash even though i was certainly away from it long enough for that to happen. Again, it never happens when the monitor is on and the system is in use. It only happens when the system has been idle at least an hour or so, minimum. Windows powers down the monitor at 15 minutes, I think.

Do you have Sleep or Hibernate enabled in your Power Options? They can cause problems on some PC's.
Are you using the "recommended" power plan?

 

[dimdem]

Do you have Sleep or Hibernate enabled in your Power Options? They can cause problems on some PC's.
Are you using the "recommended" power plan?

I switched over to "performance" in case that was the problem. Setting the computer to never sleep or hibernate didn't help.

 

[dimdem]

I think that I have, if not solved the problem, at least found a viable workaround. It seems that the problem was using my new monitor over DisplayPort. When I connect it via an HDMI cable instead, the system is completely stable. I guess maybe some weird incompatibility between GPU, driver, and monitor. I had a reason for wanting to use DP instead of HDMI, but I can live with this.