Windows Explorer Acting Up - Drives And Icons Gone
Nov 6, 2015
After several hours on my pc i open a windows explorer window and this comes up;
Now if i open up a new explorer window on top of that this comes up;
If you notice the icons are gone, if i close both windows and open a new one it starts over from the top.
Other issue is if i click on properties on files like images no property window comes up, i bet there is more but this just happen an hour ago. Everything works apart from that, bluetooth headset, games, videos, browsers, email etc. and... windows search doesnt work, doesnt turn out any results even if i search for something like notepad
I had 8.1 and now 10, but the issue is with a restore point i did, a program i was using for work was acting up after windows did an auto update.
Did a restore point and now things are not opening right, applications that use to open just hang...i want to reinstall windows 8.1 BUT i dont want to reinstall Photoshop and other essential programs.
I want to restore and keep files BUT if there is an issue with doing that then ill reinstall from scratch.
I have several server drives mapped to my Surface Pro 3 tablet, and from time to time they disappear from Windows Explorer and XYplorer (an Explorer replacement). They are still there and mapped, as Net Use shows them mapped properly. But to get them tho show up in either Explorer or XYplorer, I have to physically remap them (right click: Map Network Drive...) and when I do so they already show up with the proper drive connection but won't appear unless I finish the remapping. XYplorer has a tool to reconnect all network drives, but nothing happens there.
When I insert any removable drive (USB, SD cards, etc) the device shows up twice in Explorer. Once under "This PC" tree and the other as a device. See attached pic (USB Drive H):
I remember hearing about this being the way it's designed to work, but frankly it's a bit silly - I only need to see a single entry for the drive/device...
Is there any way to get rid of one of these entries without stuffing up some other Explorer feature?
My new windows 10 only sees my PC - when searching for my files in Explorer, it cannot 'see' my two external drives when I plug them in. I've looked in Device Manager and they are not showing in there either. How can I tell Win 10 to access my external drives?
I thought Win 10 would automatically spot my external drivers the moment I plugged them in? Then it would go search for and install the appropriate drivers - but it isn't doing that..
After a system refresh of Windows 10 all external disk storage drives, Micro SD and USB are listed twice in file explorer. This is a common problem, reported many times in forums and community support web sites. Could a solution be to reload file explorer. Is this possible and where would I find the download?
Before installing Windows 10 I clean reinstalled my Windows 7 onto a new SSD but inadvertently left my BIOS boot drive as my old HDD. Now I find that I have my windows 10 boot files in the HDD and the rest of the OS on the SSD, so I am still dependant on that old HDD. It's quite old, and I tried to swap it out to a new HDD but found this issue.
I've tried BootRec /RebuildBcd, BootRec /FixMbr and BootRec /FixBoot, rebooting the PC between each, but without success. I want to make the SSD bootable, what have I missed?
I noticed that when opening Desktop in Windows Explorer, it doesn't show any of the icons of This PC, My Documents, Network and Recycle Bin. I have enabled these icons to be shown on the Desktop through the "Desktop Icons Settings" option. However, Explorer ignores them and only shows icons that are manually put on the Desktop.
It's been a few days now since icons aren't showing everywhere including Desktop (really bugs me, this one), Taskbar (Not actually disappeared, but deformed), and File Explorer. I did things like calling Task Manager up and end the process of explorer.exe and run it again, no luck. I restarted Windows, yielded no results. I also tried turning the machine off and on again, to no avail.
Here are some screenshots regarding the problem I am facing.
While Desktop and Explorer are not working as well as they should, Start Menu and Tablet Mode appear to be quite fine by themselves.
My machine is running Windows 10 Home Edition, not Insider Preview. I don't know how to find the version/build numbers, but I'm positive it's the latest build available since I just checked Windows Update.
After the Windows 8.1 debacle, Windows 10 has been a breeze. But instead of seeing the actual thumbnail of a graphic file in file explorer, I get this. Is there some setting where I can actually see what the picture is in file explorer?
I have a Surface Pro 3 with windows 10 ENT. Everytime I right-click on files that aren't system icons (my computer and things like that) I get this message:
I have booted with a clean boot. I have corporate antivirus that I cannot remove and I do have the classic start menu app installed ( I have removed this in the process of trouble shooting but have since reinstalled it as it had no positive effect)
Here is all the log info I could find from event viewer (entries are separated by ************):
Faulting application name: explorer.exe, version: 10.0.10240.16603, time stamp: 0x56553bcd
I recently have noticed that windows 7 and I just upgraded to windows 10 via the free upgrade, will not show all my hard drives ? On start up they show for a few seconds then go away. Both are WD. One is 500 gb, and the other is a new 1TB. I am not sure when this started but noticed it just recently when I tried to access my pictures on the 500gb drive. I have tried just about everything here with no luck. The 500gb drive does have a windows vista OS on it but the 1 TB is just for back ups etc. All was fine some time ago but now, all I see is my SSD with my OS and an external drive. Also the Hard Drives do show up in Bios. I might have found a reason this happens. Most likely on a windows and / or driver update. On my system the drivers for these missing Hard Drives you can see them in device manager by selecting view / show hidden devices.
I currently have Windows 7 installed on a 128 GB SSD (C drive), which also houses my more "essential" programs and the Users folder.
I also have a 1 TB HD (E drive) which I installed the rest of my programs on (though, the registry still remains on C) and also contains most of my personal data. I moved the My Documents, My Music, etc. from C to E.
If I decide to upgrade to Windows 10, will the installer detect that I also have programs on my E drive? Or does it only look at the primary drive, my C drive?
This morning I tried to login to my windows machine, windows 10 pro, intel i5 3.30ghz, 12gb RAM, 2TB HD. and kept telling me password was incorrect. I then removed windows password thru other admin user, and now all external hd's except for c: drive all lecked by bitlocker. Never installed or activated it.
I have 2 internal sata drives and 2 usb drives locked. I have gone to control panel, bitlocker, and tried to unlock drives, tried to do a search for key id on pc and nothing is found. My raw files are in the backup drives.
plugged in USB thumb drive opened windows explorer right clicked drive scan with windows defender and it said scanning pc but it never shows any options so I dont know if it scanned pc or usb for sure why or not
My Windows' acting up, tried every trick in the book to fix it and no dice, so I'm taking the easy yet bothersome route of reinstalling everything. Again.
But Windows 10 has a "Reset this PC" option under Settings > Update & Security > Recovery (screen cap for clarity) which in practical effects, it's what I need, but faster and less bothersome.
Problem is, I have more than one (physical) hard drive on my system, and I don't know if Windows will restrain itself to formatting the system drive or if it'll format all drives present.
And I'd rather ask a relatively dumb question than risk losing all my backed up data XP.
Windows Search returning no results on one of my external harddrives. I have already:
Tried indexing the HDD and rebuilding.Non-indexing and rebuilding.Indexing only specific folders on the HDD and rebuilding.Specifically disabling indexing for this drive in the drive's properties.Checked that I have the appropriate permissions on the drive (they are identical to my other HDDs).
Crude example of my problem:
I am looking for the following file, A:Example est.txt.I am inside the A:Example folder.I search for "test", "*" or "txt".It says there are no results.
And it says "no results" instantly - it doesn't appear to even try.
I do not have a second drive with sufficient space to move the contents to do a format - so I'm looking for non-destructive solutions.
Since Windows 10 preview, I've had really weird Explorer behavior. Sometimes, when I click a directory, Explorer will open two instances of it in two new windows, in addition to the already-open window that I was clicking from. This happens at random with different folders, usually ones that are sub-folders of folders on the desktop.
There's no rhyme or reason, and I'm not accidentally double-clicking. I have my folder options set to single-click open and windows open in the same window. I've also reset my folder options and this problem has not changed.
I've even reset the computer and still experience this issue, so it's not a lingering bug from the preview, I don't think. I'm not on the preview any more.
