Solved Explorer.exe not loading after boot

Hi guys,

I am desperately in need of your expertise.
I have an ASUS Prime Z390-P Desktop pc that runs Windows 11, installed 3 years ago.
I am also running a Veeam Backup agent on it, that works with a daily incremental backup.

Two weeks ago, I logged into this pc from work via RDP and realized that explorer.exe was not running. I started the task manager and from there I wanted to run explorer.exe but nothing happened. All my other programs seem to be starting when I browse their location and start from the task manager, but not the explorer.exe and other OS-related apps, such as Windows Update. I turned to ChatGPT to get help on other steps, so I have also tried various commands, such as sfc /scannow, etc. however it didn't resolve my problem. Since I didn't want to lose all my installation, settings, and data, installing a new instance of Windows 11 was out of option for me. Eventually, I created a Veeam USB recovery disk and reverted to a backup that had occurred a day before. After that, Windows started normally with explorer.exe running without any problems.
...until yesterday.
This anomaly has happened again, but this time I noticed that there was a Windows update that caused it - this PC always runs in the background and I gave it a restart manually, as it was indicating that there are updates that need to be installed, so after the restart the explorer.exe stopped working again. Again, I turned to Veeam, and restored the backup from 19.11.2024. As soon as it loaded, it started installing all the pending/downloaded updates, and once finished, it started Windows with explorer.exe not running again. I have realized that one of the updates is messing around, so with the help of Powershell commands I identified all the updates that were installed before entering the OS and I have uninstalled the. Once I had uninstalled them all, gave it a restart, and it started an endless loading into system repair - obviously, it damaged the entire OS. Then I loaded a backup from 18.11.2024, and started Windows, but again explorer.exe doesn't run.

Does someone have any ideas on how can I resolve this issue?
Every piece of advice is much appreciated.

Thank you

Welcome to the forum. First, let me say I know absolutely nothing about Veeam so I am going to answer as though this was my computer and I had the same situation with a local backup. Under the circumstances, I do not think the situation would be any different no matter what backup/restore method one uses.

Here's the way I see it. Sometime between when you restored the backup 2 weeks ago and the backup you made yesterday, it appears to me that windows update had downloaded the update and was waiting on you to restart so it could apply. I believe that's why as soon as you restore yesterdays's Veeam backup. it automatically applies at restart and breaks you again.

It would help to know what update breaks it. Did the computer attempt to upgrade to 24h2 or was it the monthly cumulative for 23h2 that came out on update Tuesday (10/12/24) You may not know.

If it was the 23h2 monthly cumulative, you can restore a Veeam backup that pre-dates 10/12/24? If you suspect it was the 24h2 upgrade that screwed you up and don't know the exact date ....at the very least you should be able to use the backup you restored that got you back up and running 2 weeks ago before it broke again. You know that backup was good.

Once you restore the backup, before you restart, disconnect internet access (lan cable if connected, turn off router if wireless) As soon as you restart and verify windows is stable, go to windows update and pause updates for 5 weeks . Then you can reconnect your internet.

You should then be able to access the Veeam backup you made yesterday and restore any individual personal files dated between the date of the backup you restored and yesterday that may be missing.

If you are able to do this, it should get you back up and running.
Then comes the chore of figuring out the problem. Please report back if you can determine the offending update/upgrade. Also do you have any Western Digital drives installed? If so, give model #?
When you borked, do you experience any blue screens at all or is it strictly an issue where explorer.exe won't run.?

Once we have a little more to go on folks can advise you better.

i found this which maybe of help.

best of luck, Steve ..

Are you facing a black screen with only a cursor visible on your Windows computer? This video offers a detailed walkthrough of the troubleshooting methods you can employ to fix this common issue. We will explore several potential causes and provide step-by-step instructions to help you restore your screen functionality. Join me as i tackle this problem and get your system back to normal.

Hi guys,

Thank you for all the help, got to say frankly, I wasn't expecting to get so much good advice on such short notice - it has been resolved!

• XxXxX (Steve), the link you gave was helpful, however I tested everything there, and it didn't resolve the issue
• FreeBooter - I started watching your video, which technically had a lot of common steps with Steve's link, and I reached roughly the middle, where I restarted the PC after going with the selective startup with disabled drivers, etc., and then it triggered the error message attached here.
• glasskuter, your approach would eventually identify the update that was causing the interference, although it would consume some time, but luckily the issue has been identified and it got resolved.

So, after restarting Windows with the selective startup, an error message popup has been triggered. At the beginning of the year (or probably last year) I installed an app from GitHub for now unknown reasons (probably I wanted to use the old-style taskbar on Windows 11), well the name ExplorerPatcher can already say that it has something to do with Explorer . So I immediately uninstalled it without hesitation, and voilà! explorer.exe just simply started by itself, loading the taskbar, start menu, desktop, and so on.
I would summarize that one of the latest updates didn't quite like this app so the culprit(s) were the update and the ExplorerPatcher in joint intervention.

I hope that nobody suffers the same case as I did, and hope that everyone receives such a great support as I did!
Cheers guys!