Solved Explorer switches all windows to desktop when removing/inserting USB drives

mbassiouny · Nov 10, 2024

Hi,

I have a weird issue with my laptop (always had it since day 1). When I insert or remove a USB storage device (HDD/USB flash drive) all open explorer tabs and windows will switch to Desktop.

Sometimes not all of them will switch to desktop, if a Window haven't been used in so long ( I guess it goes to some sort of deep sleep), it will be spared from reverting to Desktop when a USB insertion/ejection happens.

Apparently I am not the only facing this issue, but I had no luck yet finding a solution...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/17p8l7d/file_explorer_reverts_to_home_after

https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/16snbs0/any_explorer_window_reverts_to_desktop_when

Any suggestions on how to solve this? Are there any useful logs that one can check to find what's causing this behavior?

Thanks

glasskuter · Nov 10, 2024

Welcome to the forum. Go to control panel>autoplay>Under removeable drive click drop arrow to the right and select either 'take no action'
(or ' ask every time' if you want that).
Save changes.

mbassiouny · Nov 10, 2024

@glasskuter thanks, already tried that to no avail....

glasskuter · Nov 10, 2024

For grins and giggles, have you tried turning autoplay off entirely to see if it makes a difference(first entry on that page) Then restart.

Kees · Nov 10, 2024

When I insert an USB storage, I never have any automatic action.

That's because I used the option 2 from this Tutorail to disable off autoplay on all drives:

Enable or Disable AutoPlay for All Drives in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable AutoPlay for all drives for all users in Windows 10 and Windows 11. AutoPlay lets you choose an action for different kinds of media when you plug in a device or insert media. You can set AutoPlay to open different kinds of content, such as...

www.elevenforum.com

BTW. Maybe it's the same registry change as pointed at by @glasskuter (I just did not follow that link).

mbassiouny · Nov 10, 2024

@glasskuter already set to no action and autoplay is turned off.
Also already did it via registry and gpedit. tried different combinations ( with restart between different steps)

Issue still persists :/

Edit: I have a culprit in my mind. Others on reddit seem to have the issue with their work laptops (work laptop are usually thinkpad, dell latitude or HP elitebook) mine is a thinkpad too. My guess is, if these people too had thinkpads like me then it might be something included by Lenovo in their version of Win 11

glasskuter · Nov 10, 2024

mbassiouny said:
might be something included by Lenovo in their version of Win 11

Not saying it can't happen, but I would find that hard to believe. You can try a clean boot to see if any of your Lenovo apps are interfering with Windows.

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. Brink's procedure will help you weed out which one. Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 11 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts Tutorial

mbassiouny · Nov 10, 2024

glasskuter said:
Not saying it can't happen, but I would find that hard to believe. You can try a clean boot to see if any of your Lenovo apps are interfering with Windows.

Not hard to believe at all. If you have any good faith in Lenovo in 2024 then you're just too innocent and nice. God bless you.

Lenovo (today- not 10 years ago) are notorious for doing this kind of rubbish.

Confirmed. Before even seeing your clean boot suggestion I Just tried safe mode, issue does not happen there.

For what it is worth:
- The thinkpad t14 gen 1 is known to have issues handling the second SSD in the WWAN port and issues with low power state. (Yes don't be surprised f**k Lenovo) and their later models entirely block SSD in the WWAN and people are getting inconsistent behaviors, sometimes the drive will work, sometimes it won't.
- My thinkpad T14 will not output to 2 monitors via my Toshiba thunderbolt Dock Station (my dell and my HP will both just work fine).

So no, don't be surprised, Lenovo makes crap nowadays, I find my W541 and T480 even more reliable than today's crap.

Sorry for the rant. Back on topic, now I need a reliable way to log apps and services and see which one of them is causing this.

glasskuter · Nov 10, 2024

mbassiouny said:
Any good faith in Lenovo in 2024

Never owned one.

mbassiouny said:
now I need a reliable way to log apps and services and see which one of them is causing this.

That's what a clean boot is for. Finding the demon app or service that screws up your system by using the process of elimination.
But keep in mind, safe boot and clean boot are 2 separate things. If an issue does not occur in safe boot, one would tend to look at drivers, not apps.
Clean boot is strictly for finding offensive 3rd party apps and services.

mbassiouny · Nov 10, 2024

glasskuter said:
safe boot and clean boot are 2 separate things. If an issue does not occur in safe boot, one would tend to look at drivers, not apps.

Got it! Thanks for the explanation I will give the clean boot a try.

glasskuter · Nov 10, 2024

mbassiouny said:
Before even seeing your clean boot suggestion I Just tried safe mode, issue does not happen there.

Then I would be looking at drivers and bios updates. You can use the Lenovo app if you have it installed.

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht003029-lenovo-system-update-update-drivers-bios-and-applications

mbassiouny · Nov 10, 2024

@glasskuter my computer went through various Drivers and Bios updates and downgrades, that's not it (probably, not sure).

tl;dr, solution: disable a service called "Shell hardware detection" (in msconfig> services tab)

I found the culprit. After a tedious work of checking/unchecking services (thanks again for the clean boot suggestion @glasskuter)
Our initial guess (disabling autoplay) turned out to be close to the solution.
I kept disabling and re-enabling services until I was left with only a couple of them, at that point I started googling what each service does (instead of disabling and rebooting every time by bisection), until I found a service called "Shell hardware detection".
I found this page (in french, could not find any thing in English with the same level of details) but it is basically the event notifier for autoplay.
I left it disabled and now everything works fine.

It's not a lenovo service per se, so maybe I jumped the gun blaming it on them, but it's still probably be some conflict between the service and the lenovo Hardware used. At this point I no longer care about a proper solution. I will just live with the service disabled.

Thanks for the fruitful discussion guys, I would have given up after disabling the autoplay if it wasn't for you.

glasskuter · Nov 10, 2024

Yep, at times it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sometimes, you won't find the needle when you're looking for it. Then you step on the darn thing where you least expect it to be. Good on you for finding he problem and thanks for reporting back what fixed it.

nuwanda · Jan 30, 2026

disabling the service called "Shell hardware detection" does solve the problem but create new ones.
If you have a bitlocker encripted drive (virtual drive) when you mount it the system does not ask for password so it remains unaccesible.

wolfstock · Feb 7, 2026

This is not a problem exclusive to laptops, nor is it a problem exclusive to Windows 11. I have had this problem for years on my HP Pavilion, first with Win 10 and now with Win 11 after upgrade. Haven't checked out the solution suggested but will now...

(Even if this "fixes" the problem - it's still a Windows bug, and it would be nice is Microsoft would fix this. The act of detecting and reacting to new hardware shouldn't change the views on already-opened Explorer windows.)

OK so I checked it out. Disabling the hardware detection is not a good solution. E.g. when you plug in a drive Windows will allocation a drive number (e.g. say F:), and it shows up as one of the current drives in Explorer. But then if you unplug the drive it doesn't go away - it's still there in Explorer. So this workaround , while it "works", isn't really good.

coch · Mar 1, 2026

The same happened to me, and I found the cause of my problem. (I don't know if it is the same cause for everyone, but perhaps this will help some of you):

In my case, the cause was a newly implemented tweak for Windows to use Native NVMe driver (for increased SSD performance). Reverting the tweaks resolved the issue.

I also noticed that not all of my Explorer windows were affected, so I dug deeper and made an interesting observation:

Some Explorer windows had the left pane's "Home" section selected, and those aren't affected. Only windows with the "Home" section not selected were affected.
Opening a new Explorer window and browsing starting from the "Home" section (e.g. by using the "Quick Access" links) will keep the "Home" section selected and therefore that window won't be affected.
Explorer windows where you browse to a folder starting from "My PC" will be affected when a USB drive is plugged/unplugged.

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