Why did File Explorer crash so many times while I was browsing?

The other day I was checking through an external portable SSD of mine against the laptop using File Explorer. The External-SSD contained a copy of all my personal files that were also held on the laptop, and I was just manually checking through both copies to check that it was all fine. Each copy was about 80GB in size, containing several hundred folders and several thousand files.

I had two instances of File Explorer open, one on the left-half and one on the right-half of the screen.

I experienced at least 3 crashes while doing this, as the picture attached shows.

Why did File Explorer crash like this? Was it not up to the task of checking those directories? I notice in general that File Explorer can be a bit buggy at times: like after selecting the Address-Bar, it's drop-down list of suggested addresses will remain visible even if I click away from it; and today when I closed a Search it wouldn't actually close and return me to where I was before initiating it, so I had to just close the app. Is File Explorer the best we can do? Are there any good alternative file-viewing apps to be used?

I hope there's no chance of a crash in File-Explorer affecting the integrity of the files it is viewing...

This guide focuses on how you can fix Windows File Explorer not responding on a Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating systems.

How much RAM do you have in the Notebook? I have 12GB in a Dell Vostro 3400 and have had 2 and 3 instances of File Explorer open at time, just a bit ago had 2 open accessing a USB Thumb drive and a 4TB NAS drive for transferring files, no issue. Also have a Mahjongg game and Firefox open.

@Berton Well I have 16GB of RAM so that shouldn't be the problem then.

Should've said, I'm using a Dell Latitude 7430.

_william said:

Should've said, I'm using a Dell Latitude 7430.

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That is in your My Computer but not the RAM part.

I'd run Error Checking to check for corrupted files on both drives followed by SFC /SCANNOW to check the System files. Sometimes it helps to do the Optimizing/Trim.

The drives I mentioned being open was the main/system 256GB NVMe, 128GB USB Thumb drive and 4TB NAS HDDs.[2 x 4TB as RAID 1].

Berton said:

That is in your My Computer but not the RAM part.

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I didn't understand this sentence sorry.

_william said:

I didn't understand this sentence sorry.

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Please fill out your system specs under My Computer. To find out more about your computer click on the start menu and search System Information and open the app. Use the info to fill in your system specs.

This isn't directed at anyone here, this is just a general vent about society.

It takes 2 hours to manually check through those two Drives I mentioned in the OP. There were 3 crashes in that 2 hours. That's 40 mins of continuous tabbing back and forth between windows and directories in order to replicate a single crash. The best advice I've been offered is to check through a ton of different variables by trial-and-error, trying to replicate a single crash for each one. I'm not going to sink further days and days worth of hours into securing my backups. If society can't sell me a computer that won't break and destroy my data when it's used as it's supposed to then I'm done and I don't care and to hell with it all and I'll just make sure to find the lazy greedy apes responsible hiding behind the company logos in a future life and put them in my shoes and see how they like the heat. I'd rather die than sink more time into all of this. It's probably a fool's errand to try and make anything of value in this worthless god-forsaken society anyway, it's probably all about to be nuked to oblivion in any case thank god. If I lose the work I've spent countless hours producing because idiot monkeys can't produce a computer that's any more reliable than a clown car in a circus then I'll simply make a mental note to hold a nasty festering grudge for however many lifetimes it takes to get my hands on the lazy swine responsible.

It's supposed to be s***! It's not supposed to work. D grade is the limit, there are no grades C-A*. I was an idiot for thinking it could be fixed--it's unfixable. You're only allowed to have a so-so chance of success with whatever you're trying to do with a computer; you're supposed to suck it up and like it. I get it now.

I don't know what's worse, spending your whole life-time making a computer that actually works as it's supposed to, but not being able to share it with anyone because no-one else cares about such a thing, nor being able to actually use it yourself for anything because by the time you finish making it you will be so old that it will be time to die; or else spending your life making something with the dog-s*** society produces only to have it destroy most of what you made with an "oops! something went wrong..." error.

**** it.

_william said:

This isn't directed at anyone here, this is just a general vent about society.

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There's not much us Volunteers in helping others with issues that we can do about that, We seldom if ever know if anyone from Microsoft is visiting the forums and reading these things. There's always the Feedback Hub in the Start, All apps menu for such things.

I have 10/10 reliability in RH on 2 of my computers. Either you are doing something wrong, you are installing bad software OR there is something wrong with your computer.

Poking too much into Windows trying to "debloat" it maybe?