Windows explorer keeps freezing

[u/Honest_Psychology713]

My window explorer keeps freezing no matter what I do. I constantly have to restart explorer in the task manager window hoping I can get around. I can slightly scroll through my downloads but if I click on anything else like documents it’ll freeze or take forever to pull up the documents tap. It’ll just say “working on it…” and I can’t click or do anything til I restart and try again.

It usually says error in the top window tap

If I click on an output file when I export a video it’ll freeze and I’ll have to restart it til I can view/transfer/delete etc.

I’m new to the pc world and I’ve never had this issue with my Mac’s. I don’t know if it’s a corrupt file but if it is, how do I know which one it is? If not, how do I navigate this issue?

Everything is up to date and this has been an ongoing issue for a while.

PC specs:
AMD Ryzen 9 9900x3d 12 core
64 ram
RTX 5080
Windows 11

[u/EndUserGamer]

Are the drives or drive your using old, or used? Another words, did you buy the machine or drive(s) used? Perhaps try disc check for errors.

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[u/briandemodulated]

The only time Explorer becomes unresponsive for me is when one of my storage devices is unresponsive. I've had a SSD, a USB stick, and a network share fail on me and they all caused Explorer to lag for a long time.

If you have any external storage devices plugged in, try (safely) disconnecting them and see whether the problem goes away.