Explorer hangs, green bar of death, restarting fixes it temporarily

I_Hate_Windows · May 10, 2026

I keep having to restart my desktop once or twice each day because whenever I open an explorer window it gives me the green search bar forever. If I click "stop" it tells me "folder is empty". After I restart explorer it's fine again for several hours, sometimes maybe a whole day, but then it happens again.

I've disabled indexing, run scannow, cleared out the thumbnail cache. I have some external shares which don't change and are healthy. Event Viewer shows no warnings/errors. Nothing helps short of restarting explorer.

Any ideas what might cause this?

Mooly · May 10, 2026

The slow green search bar sounds kind of familiar but its all a very very long time ago. From memory and I'm going back to Vista or maybe W7 days and for me this was caused by something related to my printer. No point me trying to remember the finer details, something needed deleting?? against the printer details as seen in the older control panel options under Devices and Printers. Latest W11 (Canary that I'm running) doesn't have that legacy page.

glasskuter · May 10, 2026

CLEAN BOOT

Perform a clean boot to eliminate software conflict causing the issue. If it doesn't happen in a clean boot, you have some software conflicting with Windows. You have to use process of elimination to find which one. Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 11 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts Tutorial

DISM/SFC

Make sure you have no corrupt system files that is causing this problem. Open a command prompt as administrator and type dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
When complete restart. Then open command prompt as admin again and run sfc /scannow
Pay attention to the scan results to see if SFC found anything it could not repair

Does it happen in safe mode? Boot to Safe Mode in Windows 11

dalchina · May 10, 2026

For how long has this been happening?

File system problems could cause this.

Perform the usual basic checks on your disks (no idea what or how many you have- not in your specs).

Do not omit ANY step. Each does something quite different.

a. Crystal Diskinfo (portable version available) - simply launch and look. Check what it says about each disk.
b. If ok, from an admin command prompt run
chkdsk c: /scan
- look a towards the end.

c. If ok, similarly run
SFC /SCANNOW

Report any failure.

bullshoy55 · May 10, 2026

I think I had the same problem with my system. If you have removable devices attached such as USB drives, try unplugging them until the Explorer window loads. There is a bug with the power management or maybe something influencing the drive itself to malfunction, such as overheating. I had this problem exclusively with the Explorer though because when I changed to Files, a file manager app available in the Microsoft Store, the problem entirely went away. I made an account just to post this comment so let me know if my advice helps.

billmcct · May 10, 2026

Try this:

Restart Explorer v1.7

Restart Explorer is a portable freeware to restart windows explorer (File explorer) in Small issues (Windows explorer freezes,you can not delete some files…)

www.sordum.org

glasskuter · May 10, 2026

You do not need any app to kill and restart explorer. On desktop right click>new>shortcut>in target type C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c taskkill /im explorer.exe /f & start explorer.exe Name it Kill Explorer or whatever you want
Right click on newly created shortcut>properties>change icon. Assign it an icon Ok
Right click on shortcut again and select pin to taskbar.
Any time you click on the taskbar icon, explorer will restart.

zbook · May 10, 2026

I_Hate_Windows said:
whenever I open an explorer window it gives me the green search bar forever. If I click "stop" it tells me "folder is empty".

1) Please post images or share links

2) Add WMIC

Add or Remove WMIC command Feature in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the WMIC command as an optional feature for all users in Windows 11. The WMI command-line (WMIC) utility provides a command-line interface for Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). WMIC is compatible with existing shells and utility commands...

www.elevenforum.com

3) Run Tuneup plus > post a share link

https://www.tenforums.com/attachments/bsod-crashes-debugging/360139d1645183596-batch-files-use-bsod-debugging-tuneup_plus_log.zip

Batch files for use in BSOD debugging - Windows 10 Help Forums

Information This thread is for use by the BSOD team to store batch files that can be used to collect additional data, fix settings or anything else that is useful in debugging BSOD problems in Windows 10. The way I see it working is the first

www.tenforums.com

Batch files for use in BSOD debugging - Windows 10 Help Forums

Information This thread is for use by the BSOD team to store batch files that can be used to collect additional data, fix settings or anything else that is useful in debugging BSOD problems in Windows 10. The way I see it working is the first

www.tenforums.com

4) Run the V2 log collector > post a share link

BSOD - Posting Instructions

BSOD - Posting Instructions This will show you how to help provide needed information about your system and dump files. It will not contain any personal or sensitive information about you or your data. To get better help with your Windows BSOD issue, please read these instructions and follow...

www.elevenforum.com

5) Run administrative PS: > post share links

wevtutil epl Application "$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\application.evtx" /ow:true

wevtutil epl System "$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\system.evtx" /ow:true

6) Place the computer into clean boot > report findings

Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 11 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

This tutorial will show you how to perform a clean boot to start Windows 10 or Windows 11 using a minimal set of drivers and startup programs for troubleshooting application conflicts. Troubleshooting Windows can be a complex process due to the many different drivers, settings, and programs...

www.elevenforum.com

billmcct · May 11, 2026

glasskuter said:
You do not need any app to kill and restart explorer. On desktop right click>new>shortcut>in target type C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c taskkill /im explorer.exe /f & start explorer.exe Name it Kill Explorer or whatever you want
Right click on newly created shortcut>properties>change icon. Assign it an icon Ok
Right click on shortcut again and select pin to taskbar.
Any time you click on the taskbar icon, explorer will restart.

Yeah I'm aware of that however I have been using Everything search forever.
Finds way more then Explorer search.

glasskuter · May 11, 2026

billmcct said:
Yeah I'm aware of that however I have been using Everything search foreve

You did not mention Everything in your original post. Your title said

Explorer hangs, green bar of death

You said in your first post

I_Hate_Windows said:
I open an explorer window it gives me the green search bar forever.......After I restart explorer

Explorer is windows explorer.

dalchina · May 11, 2026

@glasskuter Note: - the first post was not by billmcct....

I_Hate_Windows · May 12, 2026

glasskuter said:
You did not mention Everything in your original post. Your title said

Explorer hangs, green bar of death
You said in your first post

Explorer is windows explorer.

Yes, that's right. Explorer.exe. Restarting explorer = restarting the instance of explorer that displays the desktop.

I_Hate_Windows · May 12, 2026

zbook said:
1) Please post images or share links

2) Add WMIC

Add or Remove WMIC command Feature in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the WMIC command as an optional feature for all users in Windows 11. The WMI command-line (WMIC) utility provides a command-line interface for Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). WMIC is compatible with existing shells and utility commands...

www.elevenforum.com

3) Run Tuneup plus > post a share link

https://www.tenforums.com/attachments/bsod-crashes-debugging/360139d1645183596-batch-files-use-bsod-debugging-tuneup_plus_log.zip

Batch files for use in BSOD debugging - Windows 10 Help Forums

Information This thread is for use by the BSOD team to store batch files that can be used to collect additional data, fix settings or anything else that is useful in debugging BSOD problems in Windows 10. The way I see it working is the first

www.tenforums.com

Batch files for use in BSOD debugging - Windows 10 Help Forums

Information This thread is for use by the BSOD team to store batch files that can be used to collect additional data, fix settings or anything else that is useful in debugging BSOD problems in Windows 10. The way I see it working is the first

www.tenforums.com

4) Run the V2 log collector > post a share link

BSOD - Posting Instructions

BSOD - Posting Instructions This will show you how to help provide needed information about your system and dump files. It will not contain any personal or sensitive information about you or your data. To get better help with your Windows BSOD issue, please read these instructions and follow...

www.elevenforum.com

5) Run administrative PS: > post share links

wevtutil epl Application "$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\application.evtx" /ow:true

wevtutil epl System "$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\system.evtx" /ow:true

6) Place the computer into clean boot > report findings

Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 11 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

This tutorial will show you how to perform a clean boot to start Windows 10 or Windows 11 using a minimal set of drivers and startup programs for troubleshooting application conflicts. Troubleshooting Windows can be a complex process due to the many different drivers, settings, and programs...

www.elevenforum.com

Thabnks, but this is what I ended up doing: I dug into task manager to find the blocked explorer process and right-clicked to find what it was waiting for, which was SSDPSRV. Checking my fileserver revealed that an iptables rule was blocking SSDP requests. I added rules to enable UDP requests on port 1900 for both my local net and the multicast address, and this solved the problem.

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