How to prevent Windows Explorer from going 'not responding'

[Sebastian42]

When Windows Explorer opens the THIS PC screen in x32Win10ProV20H2, very often it does not fully populate. The right pane may be empty, or lack only the entry for the system drive – correspondingly the left (Navigation) pane will lack the entry for the system drive. After a while 'not responding' appears in the title bar. This happens only in the THIS PC screen of Windows Explorer, so I can get access to destinations I want, by avoiding THIS PC and using the navigation panel of other Windows Explorer screens. In the Save As window of file processing programs, the system drive is often missing from THIS PC. I'm looking for a SPECIFIC remedy for the problem – general procedures like scannow, DISM, scandisk etc have failed to fix it.

 

[Kshipper]

In my experience you are seeing some type of general hardware failure in one component and isolating it can be difficult. Have you check the Event Viewer to see if there are any clues as to what is causing all the errors? You should pop open your Task Manager and see if anything gets 100% busy when you click on This PC..is the hard drive 100% busy? CPU? You could removing extra drives...extra flash drives and even swap out USB devices. I have seen bad USB keyboards bring a new computer to it's knees on 3 occasions. I assume you have waited it out...the not responding never goes away?

 

[Sebastian42]

I had incorrectly thought that to achieve a particular end, I had to keep my phone connected to the PC by a USB lead. Once I broke that connection the malfunction disappeared.

 

[Kshipper]

Ahh very good. I'm glad you figured it out. I don't know why it took so long for someone to answer your post. I just stumbled on it today

 

[Sebastian42]

Not only did it take long, but I tried a dozen forums before someone came up with the correct solution.

 

[Kshipper]

Oh wow...I guess I can be happy that my suggestions would have led to a solution too. It's just too bad it took so long to see your question =(