Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Explorer won't launch after rolling back windows 10

Mar 7, 2016 10:06AM PST

Been ultra frustrated the past few days, I upgraded to windows 10 the other day and had a plethora of problems, so I decided to roll back to windows 8.1 today and everything seemed to work fine. But now when I log in to my normal local windows 8.1 account, explorer doesn't load at all, which leads to no other startup program loading.

I can get task manager open and see that explorer.exe doesn't even start. There are however other processes there including Desktop Window Manager and Windows Logon Application, which would seem to imply that some things are working, but for some reason explorer just refuses to work.

I've tried to run explorer.exe by creating a new task in task manager, but that doesn't load it either; it doesn't even show up briefly in task manager. However, if I run explorer.exe with administrator privileges, it does actually start and my normal startup programs begin to launch when explorer runs. The problem is running explorer with administrative privileges creates other problems that prevents me from doing a lot of things within windows, and doing this action every time I sign in is not a solution in my opinion. In addition, when I restart explorer.exe in task manager, it closes the process but doesn't reopen it.

Prior to upgrading to windows 10 I had no issues like this, so it seems safe to assume that updating to windows 10 and then rolling back is causing it, though I'm not sure how to resolve it. It seems like some sort of user account problem maybe, considering that it doesn't seem to know how to log in correctly?

I would greatly, greatly appreciate any help I can get here, as I said these past few days have been beyond infuriating and this is just icing on the cake. Thank you.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
There is no exact do this fix.
Mar 7, 2016 10:10AM PST

You can try a boot to safe mode and see if it works in safe mode. That's a clue needed to work this.

Also, if you forgot to uninstall norton or such prior to the upgrade along with some other titles, you find troubles.

- Collapse -
Safe mode
Mar 7, 2016 10:13AM PST

Indeed I forgot to mention, I tried booting in safe mode and the same problem was occurring. I don't believe norton was installed prior to the upgrade.

- Collapse -
Sorry I was unclear.
Mar 7, 2016 10:20AM PST

I meant titles like Norton and many others. I've seen the up and downgrade trip up with many protection suites as well as those rather horrid registry repair and speed up apps. Also, those CD/DVD emulators can cause issues.

I can't list them all. Sorry but what I look for is any app that hooks into the OS in any way. Those are removed prior to up or downgrades.

-> This leaves me with 2 ideas.

1. SFC SCANNOW (see google on use.)
2. Maybe the folder File Explorer has a file it can't handle.

Long story. Years ago I found a file that would cause Windows File Explorer to fail. I lucked into a trip to Redmond and took this with me. I met with a few Redmondites and learned a lot about Microsoft from their answer. Ready? "Don't do that." In other words you can't expect File Explorer to handle that or Microsoft to fix it.

- Collapse -
No luck
Mar 7, 2016 4:43PM PST

What you've said makes sense, but unfortunately I haven't been able to make any progress yet. Can you think of any examples of these programs you think might be the cause? I uninstalled Classic Shell, which is a start menu/explorer replacement; I was sure that this was the culprit but the problem is still happening. The sfc scannow also didn't seem to lead anywhere.

I really can't identify any other apps on my computer that would hook into the OS like this on startup. I have Avast installed, should I bother uninstalling that to check? Or is there another idea I might be able to try? Thanks.

- Collapse -
Avast falls inside what I wrote.
Mar 7, 2016 4:56PM PST

It should be uninstalled during OS up and downgrades. Yes, it may work for most but here I've been burnt more than once with an AV installed during such up and downgrades.

For now, use any of those File Explorer replacements till you fix the OS.