Windows Explorer Freezes, Also Cannot Save Or Open Any Exisitng Documents, Directories Or Files

Hi guys

About a month ago my ASUS i7chipset laptop computer started freezing up whenever I tried to open, save, or even look at any directory on my hard drive. As an IT novice of sorts I have narrowed it down to a fault of Windows File Explorer. The laptop still functions as a web browsing PC even though thats all I can use (using updated firefox) I have narrowed the issue down to Windows File Explorer. The hard drive is not at maximum capacity either (about 80% used) I havre also used the defrag program and also cleared Windows registry.

I have also run numerous virus/malware programs - ESET online & Malwarebytes but I cannot open MSWord documents, or try to save new Word documents. It just freezes the entire PC. I also cannot save anything off my web browser to harddrive (photos, word documents, PDF etc). I am currently running Windows 7 Professional and latest Firefox as my primary browser & latest Opera, Chrome, etc These are all up to date versions. All the web browsers seem to work fine, but i cannot download & save, nor open existing files or directories.... anything either.

I would appreciate some of everyones expert advice on how to find a solution...

 

STOP doing that. Disk/registry cleaners are not a safe way to fix things that are broken and they can quickly make things much worse.

Backup your personal files if you haven't already done so. Worst case scenario is your hard drive is failing so you need to prepare for that. If you can start the computer in safe mode and try opening explorer to backup/copy all of your personal files like documents, photos, music, etc. to a flash drive or whatever.

You can try to run sfc /scannow and see if that will repair it. Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files.

Something like Tweaking.com - Windows Repair is a good option too.

 

It sounds like you could possibly have a bad shell extension. To check that possibility download ShellExView and extract the program to somewhere convenient.
Run the program and in Options, put a check in "Hide All Microsoft Extensions".
Select all items then right click and "Disable Selected Items".
You'll then need to log off for the changes to be applied to windows explorer.

If things seem OK, then you'll need to find the bad extension via a process of elimination.

 

Will do thanks guys. And yes I went out last week and bought a seagate "backup" external hard drive and copied the entire hard disk as I have already assumed the hard drive might be failing. I am currently in the market for a SSD as a replacement (and doubles the RAM to 8 GIG) now that i have a tonne of time due the COVID19 lockdown in my country, I will give all the advice a go. thanks and greatly appreciated. Will report back soon....

 

Windows may just be corrupted so before buying a new SSD and if you can not repair it then you can reinstall using the Create installation media for Windows method from Microsoft. Personally I would just upgrade to Windows 10. It's stable and pretty easy to figure out plus is has turned into a great OS in my opinion.

But an SSD is a great upgrade option for performance and 8gb of RAM really makes a difference compared to just 4gb.