this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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I use 11 for work, and so I tried it at home to really dive into the issues I might have. I generally prefer Linux but have always kept my daily drivers Windows....well until last Friday. I had the explorer shell crash on me causing data loss and really was the last straw. Wiped everything and went to Linux, I'm tired of the games Microsoft. I tolerated your bullshit for YEARS because the core of the OS usually "just worked"....except in recent years that's not true and I don't feel like my computer is "my computer" when windows 10+ is on it.
It may have seemed like that, but killing explorer.exe doesn't cause data loss. None of the running applications are spawned by explorer, you just use it to launch them as separate processes.
maybe explorer crashing was a syntom of a lot of the system crashing, and that generalncrash that caused data loss?
In my experience it's a pretty common symptom of a drive that's about to die or is connected improperly. (I had a PC where the vibration from a fan on the hard drive cage would cause a SATA cable to come loose over time.)
Explorer gets hung up trying to read data, becomes unresponsive, and crashes or causes a BSOD.
A lot of apps you launch do become child processes of explorer.exe. If explorer crashes they might misbehave or become zombie process in Unix terms. It depends on the app though. e.g. Firefox and Edge don’t but Chrome does.
That’s why I run explorer in multi-process mode. Folder windows cannot crash the shell process.
I run chrome, firefox and more under win11 at an MSP.
That whole comment is so much not true.
Assuming you have the most up to date version of Edge: It's literally Chromium. Don't kid yourself.
And I crashed more than once my explorer.exe and my whole DE. Not once have I lost files.
If you have done a file move, maybe it would have but not just by crashing while clicking icons.
I'm glad you think that, but in my case it definitely did.
It literally doesn't work that way. Wait, I got another one - BSOD is a problem with the hardware, not with Windows.
Linux actually has really good support for games these days
/(not sure of appropriate tag for dumb "joke")
Lol fortunately I'm not much of a gamer, little sad that BG3 seems kinda broken on Linux right now but I'll live.
Oh what's wrong with it? It has gold status on protondb.
I've literally restarted explorer before to accomplish certain workarounds (like getting the old right click menu back) and had zero issues with data loss.
I don't see how you could have lost data because the shell crashed when I intentionally killed it and had zero interruptions to my workflow. I'm pretty sure it's just a way to interact with the file system.
I recently found out that there is a registry hack you can use to get back this menu. It’s so dumb that you have to even do this but at least it’s an option. https://www.howtogeek.com/759449/how-to-get-full-context-menus-in-windows-11s-file-explorer/
Alternatively, if you're only really bothered by the new one missing shell extensions* then you can use Custom Context Menu to add your own context menu entries. I couldn't stand not having "Add to VLC Playlist" or 7-Zip shell extensions, but otherwise I don't mind it.
*Which is really on the third party devs, as they could easily register them for the new context menu.
That's the method I used, yeah. You have to either restart the computer or just restart file explorer.
I think it's stupid they changed it, 9/10 times when I need the menu I need something that requires an extra click, stupid UI regression.
You can also use Shift +Right Click to show the menu. I just hate having to do that.
Yeah I have too and it's these games I get tired of. In this case I lost data, it's the first time that's ever happened and it 100% was caused by a problem with explorer.exe.
Before anyone asked, I didn't have a backup of this data as it was deemed not important which it was not, but it was the last straw for me.
Windows 11 also drove me to Linux again...
Although to be fair, it came pre-installed on my new laptop and I was just too lazy to wipe it and switch over. My (now) backup laptop has been running ubuntu for years now, same with my desktop before it died.
But I got about 6 months of windows 11 after de-cluttering it. Still wasn't enough to convince me to keep it.
I actually went from 10 to a debloated 11 but found the lack of things like....printer drivers to be annoying.
I just had a flashback of trying to get cups working...
I'm sort of glad I haven't had to use a printer in years.
I do this shit for a living. Unless you were actively doing file moves then explorer crashing didn't cause the data loss.
You really need to do a health check on your drive(s), and you can install Teracopy for faster file move operations that aren't reliant on explorer staying up.
I'm glad you think you know what happened. I'm happy to say you don't. I'm also not going to bother replying as the whole point of my original post is that it happened and I no longer use Windows.
For what it's worth I too do this for a living :)